290. Definitions; effect of article. 1. The term "real property," as used in this article, includes lands, tenements and hereditaments and chattels real, except a lease for a term not exceeding three years.
2. The term "purchaser" includes every person to whom any estate or interest in real property is conveyed for a valuable consideration, and every assignee of a mortgage, lease or other conditional estate.
3. The term "conveyance" includes every written instrument, by which any estate or interest in real property is created, transferred, mortgaged or assigned, or by which the title to any real property may be affected, including an instrument in execution of a power, although the power be one of revocation only, and an instrument postponing or subordinating a mortgage lien; except a will, a lease for a term not exceeding three years, an executory contract for the sale or purchase of lands, and an instrument containing a power to convey real property as the agent or attorney for the owner of such property.
4. The term "recording officer" means the county clerk of the county, except in a county having a register, where it means the register of the county.
5. "Recording" or "recorded" means the entry, at length, upon the pages of the proper record books in a plain and legible hand writing, or in print or in symbols of drawing or by photographic process or partly in writing, partly in printing, partly in symbols of drawing or partly by photographic process or by any combination of writing, printing, drawing or photography or either or any two of them, or by an electronic process by which a record or instrument affecting real property, after delivery is incorporated into the public record. "Recording" or "recorded" also means the reproduction of instruments by microphotography or other photographic process on film which is kept in appropriate files.
6. "Electronic" means of or relating to technology having electrical, digital, magnetic, wireless, optical, electromagnetic or similar capabilities.
7. "Electronic record" means information evidencing any act, transaction, occurrence, event or other activity, produced or stored by electronic means and capable of being accurately reproduced in forms perceptible by human sensory capabilities.
8. "Electronic signature" means an electronic sound, symbol, or process, attached to or logically associated with an electronic record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.
9. "Paper document" means a document in a form that is not electronic.
10. "Digitized paper document" means a digitized image of a paper document that accurately depicts the information on the paper document in a format that cannot be altered without detection.
11. "Wet signature" means a signature affixed in ink or pencil or other material to a paper document.
12. This article does not apply to leases for life or lives, or for years, heretofore made, of lands in either of the counties of Albany, Ulster, Sullivan, Herkimer, Dutchess, Columbia, Delaware or Schenectady.
Last modified: February 3, 2019