Welcome!

Our site is intended to inform the public about our records and our services at our only office, here at the Albany County Court House (corner of Eagle and Columbia Streets in downtown Albany) in Room 128. Together with the Albany County Hall of Records we were the first Albany County department to develop a web site, and we hope that you find this site useful and informative.

If you're a first-time visitor, let me suggest that you start by clicking "Services" at the upper left of this screen. If you need directions to our office or our office hours, click "Driving Directions," also at left. Our "Forms Available Online" include DBA forms and those for requesting Public Information/FOIL. Our most popular website feature is "Deeds and Mortgages Online," which allows you to view most recorded deeds and mortgages since 1980 right from your computer; that link is at the left side of this page.

Literally, hundreds of millions of pages of documents are on file or recorded in this office. We are working to place more and more of the most popular of these online, starting with deeds and mortgages, and continuing with the Naturalization records on our Hall of Records website. By law, we charge fees for our services that keep us from being a burden on the taxpayers. (We actually generate a modest surplus every year, which goes to reduce County property taxes.) A copy of our fee schedule is available on this web site for your information.

The people of Albany County have made this page possible. We appreciate their support, and we welcome your electronic visit to the Albany County Clerk's office. We hope that you will have the opportunity to stop in at our office in person.

About Our Department

The Albany County Clerk's office is well-known as the County's record-keeper, from all deeds and mortgages of every property within the county, to every record of Albany County State Supreme Court and County Court, to the inactive records of most County agencies (and City of Albany agencies as well.)

Less well known is the large financial responsibility of the County Clerk: in 2012, a record $33 million in revenue was received in this office, of which nearly $3.5 million was net revenue for the operation of the County Clerk's office (the other millions of dollars in revenue were distributed directly to the State, the County, and the cities, towns and villages within the County.)

The County Clerk supervises 27 staff at the County Court House, and 17 at the Hall of Records. The department's annual expenses totaled $3,123,334 in 2012; which when subtracted from all net 2012 revenues of $3,673,797, means that the department overall returned a surplus of $550,463 to the County to reduce County property taxes that year.

The Hall of Records preserves County records dating back to the Dutch colonial days, as well as assisting County and City agencies in managing over 90,000 cubic feet of inactive records. More and more tasks are being handled online: deeds and mortgages recorded since 1980 are available on our website at no charge, and increasing numbers of court cases are being filed electronically, rather than on paper.

The Albany County Clerk is also the Public Information ("FOIL") Officer for County government, and a member of the Contracts Administration Board. While many County Clerks in New York State have DMV responsibilities, the State operates the Albany DMV office directly (as it does in Syracuse and in the downstate metropolitan area.)