Court Realty Section In Fairfax Is Doing Land-Office Business; Inundated Agency Asks County for Help
The office at Fairfax County Circuit Court that handles land-related transactions is buckling under the county's booming housing sales and failing to meet legal obligations, according to court officials.</br></br>"The massive development in the county, coupled with the interest rates being low . . . have just inundated us," Glenn T. Dryden, chief deputy clerk of the Circuit Court, said yesterday.</br></br>Employes in the Land Records Division, which leads the Washington area and Virginia in work volume, are mentally and physically exhausted from the nonstop pace, Dryden said. He said the court had asked the Board of Supervisors to add two positions to the current 20 and extend seven temporary slots. The board is expected to approve the request Monday.</br></br>"It's just incredible," Supervisor Thomas M. Davis III (R-Mason) said of the frenzied pace in Land Records. "It's like the New York Stock Exchange."</br></br>The number of documents recorded in the Land Records Division through March of this year was 175,748, a 50 percent increase over the same period last year, said Joan Dumas, a division supervisor. Dumas attributes the increase to housing and commercial sales, the number of homeowners who are refinancing to take advantage of low-interest rates and the high residential turnover in the county, particularly among the large military community.