A seemingly tidy and fair solution to a very complicated problem, a deed in escrow gives a borrower additional time to sell or refinance its property while still giving the lender an efficient means to obtain the property if the borrower defaults anew.  This is hardly a gift in New York though, where the oft-called “deed in a box” is almost always held to be unenforceable.

Under N.Y. Real Prop. Law §320, a “deed conveying real property, which, by any other instrument, appears to be intended only as a security in the nature of a mortgage, although an absolute conveyance by its terms, must be considered a mortgage.”