Satisfaction of mortgage

A satisfaction is the instrument recording that a mortgage debt has been paid and its lien discharged — the paper ending of a financing. Lenders are obligated to provide it on payoff; recording it clears the property's record of the encumbrance.

Its analytical value is in the bookkeeping: comparing recorded mortgages against recorded satisfactions shows what remains open of record. The comparison has noise — satisfactions lag, get recorded late or occasionally never, and refinancings can leave superseded instruments looking open — but a recent satisfaction with no successor mortgage marks a genuine deleveraging event, and a stack of open mortgages with no satisfactions marks either leverage or paperwork neglect, each worth distinguishing.