DIGITAL OFFERING PLANS, P.2

The currently free database will get refined, as co-op and condo boards and real estate professionals try it out online and see what works and what doesn’t, in the time-honored tradition of Beta-testing.

"The exact business model isn't finalized yet," Tormey says. "But we're looking forward to taking it out of Beta and moving on to whatever shape it's going to take. A free service for the digital version is still in consideration as one of our options," he notes, adding that the company can't provide hard copies for free, given the costs of printing, collating and securely shipping 500- to 1,000-page plans.

Given the sorry state of the attorney general's office's record-keeping — just try to find offering plans from 1984 — and given the fact that we don't drive horseless carriages, listen to the Victrola and dial rotary telephones, it seems reasonable to assume that the AG's office will go digital in the near future, as many government entities, such as the New York City Department of Buildings, already have.

Until then, TitleVest is at the admirable vanguard. Digital offering plans and prospectuses are coming — tollbooths use EZPass, Metrocards replaced tokens and we do have this thing called the "Internet" — and someday the AG's office will make these public documents available for us in digital form. In the meantime, co-op boards and condo associations now can have a, shall we say, TitleVested interest.