Payoffs and lien releases, tracked from the commitment to the recorded release.

Today a closer orders a payoff letter for each lien on the commitment's requirements, checks its good-through date and daily interest, and pays it from escrow at closing. Weeks later a post-closing processor is still waiting for the lender to record a release, satisfaction or reconveyance, chasing the ones that don't arrive, and clearing each requirement before the final policy goes out.

In the proof of concept, AI builds that tracker from the file. It lists every lien the commitment said must be paid or released, matches each one to its payoff letter and to the release later recorded, and marks the ones still open with the follow-up date your procedures set. Nothing goes to a lender, a servicer or a county recorder. Your reviewer, whoever runs post-closing, compares the tracker with what your team actually tracked.

Payoff letters follow rules of their own. On a consumer loan secured by a dwelling, Regulation Z gives the servicer no more than seven business days after a written request to send an accurate payoff statement, with only a reasonable time required for loans in bankruptcy or foreclosure, reverse mortgages and shared appreciation mortgages. Florida's statute calls the letter an estoppel letter, gives the servicer 10 days, requires an itemized balance with daily interest where it applies, and lets a corrected letter received by 3 p.m. at least one business day before payment replace the earlier one. So the tracker keeps each letter's date, its good-through date and whether a newer letter replaced it, with the wire instructions blacked out before we see it.

Release deadlines differ by state, and each clock starts on a different day. Florida gives the mortgagee 60 days after full payment to record a release and send it to the owner. Wisconsin gives a secured creditor 30 days to submit a satisfaction, then lets a title insurance company, acting directly or through an authorized agent, serve as satisfaction agent on residential property: after notifying the creditor, it may record an affidavit of satisfaction if 30 more days pass with nothing recorded, signed by two of its authorized employees. The tracker counts from the dates your procedures name and never decides that a lender is late or that an affidavit is due.

Finding who has to sign is often the slow part. The lender on the recorded mortgage may no longer hold or service it, so the tracker lists every assignment the search showed and notes when the security instrument carries a MERS Mortgage Identification Number. For loans registered with MERS, its free ServicerID service names the current servicer from the property address or that number, and your processor runs the lookup, not us. A credit line needs one more step: Wisconsin's statute lets the satisfaction notice travel with a notice to terminate a line of credit or future advances, and the tracker marks every line with no termination request in the file.

Not every lien is a mortgage, and each kind has its own paper. A paid judgment needs a recorded satisfaction, and Florida gives the creditor 60 days after full payment to record and send one. A federal tax lien comes off a property being sold through a certificate of discharge, and IRS Publication 783 asks that Form 14135 go in at least 45 days before the sale; once a tax debt is paid, the IRS says it releases the lien within 30 days. The tracker gives each lien its own line, the document that clears it and the clock that applies.

Your own recordings belong on the same list. ALTA's Best Practices ask agencies to send documents for recording within two business days of the later of settlement or receipt, track delivery and receipt, deal with rejections promptly and confirm each document actually recorded. So the deed and the new mortgage sit beside the old releases, each with its recording data once it appears. Your reviewer will look for a release recorded against the wrong instrument, a partial release read as a full one, a satisfaction signed by a lender that had already assigned the loan, and a requirement marked cleared with nothing recorded behind it.

Once your reviewer agrees, files closing over the next 30 days or so go on the tracker the day they close.

Your post-closing team does every follow-up. The AI never contacts a lender, servicer, recorder, buyer, seller or underwriter, never reads or repeats wire instructions, never handles funds or confirms an amount to send, and never clears a requirement. A licensed person decides when a lien is released and when the final policy can issue.

Your reviewer scores the live tracker against the same written criteria the test used.