Comment by jjmarr
1 day ago
Unlike most common law jurisdictions, the United States doesn't have a central land registry due to lobbying from the title insurance industry.
1 day ago
Unlike most common law jurisdictions, the United States doesn't have a central land registry due to lobbying from the title insurance industry.
No, the United States doesnt have a central land registry because that is not an enumerated power of the federal government. The individual states have sovereignty over their own land and each has its own system for land registration. The article you linked to even names several states that have a partial Torrens title system.
The claim that the title insurance industry is the reason for lack of adoption of Torrens title schemes is uncited, and immediately followed by descriptions of several cases where Torrens title was adopted (often poorly) and later abandoned.
> No, the United States doesnt have a central land registry because that is not an enumerated power of the federal government.
I think you misunderstood the post you were replying to. Torrens title was invented in Australia. Just like in the US, land titles are a state responsibility in Australia not a federal one. But each state has a central statewide land registry which is the authoritative source of truth for land ownership. By contrast, US states hold land title records in a decentralised way (at the local government level not the state level), and those records aren’t legally decisive.
Most common law jurisdictions have centralised land titles, but often centralised at one level below the national government.
In fact, in the US, I'm not sure it even happens systematically at the state level. In the state where I live (Massachusetts) even though counties are largely vestigial, that's where deeds and such are registered and filed as far as I know. (Just went through this for various reasons.)
"No, the United States doesnt have a central land registry [..]"
Fascinating, how is ownership established if there is no single source of truth?
I feel the answer to this is also crucial to understanding OP. It could be a minor annoyance or the real possibility to lose your land.
> how is ownership established if there is no single source of truth?
Oh, boy, let me tell you it is very disconcerting to pay a title company to do a search of legal records on a property, and the only guarantee they offer in some states is that "we didn't find anything suspicious but there is no guarantee that someone from the past won't pop up with a better claim to ownership. You can't hold it against us if that happens." How is it that most people making the biggest purchase of their lives are going along with that? I'm definitely not okay with it, but sometimes you can't buy property without accepting it- no title company will offer a stronger guarantee.
For details, I'm talking about how in some states the Special Warranty Deed is the standard for real estate purchases: https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/what-is-a-special-warrant.... A title company will guarantee that the current seller hasn't entered any agreements that might legally obligate you (such as offering the property as collateral for an outstanding loan), but they are very clear that actions of previous owners are not included in this guarantee. So there is no single source of truth- we just hope that we're not part of the tiny percentage where the special deed is insufficient.
Edit: for context, there is a distinction between title insurance and the deed itself, but the title company is only offering insurance on the deed, so if the deed only covers the previous owner then the insurance only covers that too.
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patio11 wrote a bunch about this: (https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/working-title-insuran...)
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> how is ownership established if there is no single source of truth?
There is: the county clerk in the county where the land is located.
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Mostly, each county has its own registry. (In some cases, there is a statewide registry.) This works, because each parcel of land is clearly in one particular county.
Database mistakes on entry happen in Torrens. Rarer, but not unheard of. Tasmanian "owned" and lived on block for decades, when sold found they'd owned the one next door. There's a critical role in acceptance where somebody as agent has to say yay or nay and a Queensland couple had the agent say the wrong outcome when the real owner didn't consent and it went to the high court if I recall.
Torrens is great but CAP theory still applies.
Hence the statement "possession is 9/10ths of the law" - for the vast majority of property that people care about, you prove you're the owner by possessing it
Property tax is also the other 9/10ths - if someone is paying the property tax they're presumed to be the owner unless there's a court fight; and in fact, if you want, in many places in the USA you can get adverse possession by paying property tax on unknown or unwanted property - or buy them at auction by paying the back property tax.
The ones you can easily do this on are all various kinds and forms of worthless land, but hey, it's out there!
The federal government never enumerated the power to manage a national credit agency and yet we have several.
The federal government doesn't manage any national credit agencies.
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> Unlike most common law jurisdictions, the United States doesn't have a central land registry due to lobbying from the title insurance industry.
These scammers will either (a) start with a stolen identity and see what land that person owns and try to sell it, or (b) find an interesting piece of land and steal that person's identity and pretend to be them.
In either case a 'definitive' database (or lack thereof) is not the problem.
Ontario and BC (e.g.) in Canada have a land registry:
* https://www.ontario.ca/page/overview-land-registry
* https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/real-esta...
That hasn't stopped fraud (attempts):
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/three-charged-stolen-...
* https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64547396
I wonder why a commercial entity that registers ownership / titles for free, and bills for checking, did not spring up. Clearly there is moneyed demand for certainty about title rights, and if you can provide certainty (because the last deal was registered with you), it may be a more desirable product than mere insurance.
It’s turtles all the way down, though — how do you know that last deal had clear title? At some point you’re going to want insurance anyway.
In any case, the US system is already that the government records ownership (not for free, but for a small recording fee) and the title company charges for checking, and for insurance in case they get it wrong.
As just one example of how it can go wrong, here in Seattle it’s common to find out your lot is nine inches smaller than you thought because surveying technology is a lot better now than it was when your deed was written in 1908.
It's complicated. I live on a parcel of a very old property by US standards (early 1800s) that was subdivided shortly before I bought it. Without going into all the details, my neighbor who also lives on a parcel of the original land had a survey done and it turned out there were some significant incursions into other properties.
And we're not talking inches.
But, yeah, even inches (or any liens) can be an issue when it comes time to sell.
The trick with title theft is they target property not closely watched as the author noted, but also worth roughly the legal costs the rightful owner will incur undoing the fradulent transfer.
Prison is crime university and ID theft and related crimes are high yield low risk crimes.
The system doesn't care and such title thefts have been increasing for 15-20 years already
That depends on the state. I live in Iowa where the state records the transaction and verifies everyone's identity. Almost nobody has title insurance because there is nothing to insure. Every other state I've lived in though isn't as good about checking ID and you need title insurance (who is very good about checking id)
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That is more or less how title insurance started back in the day.
In 1800 land was sold in person only by people who knew each other, in front of other witnesses who knew everybody in town. It worked great, which is why some states (I assume like CT) never bothered with a registry. In the mid 1800s as land out west started opening up for settlement (skip the whole bad treatment of the natives) investors "out east" wanted to invest in land and ran into a problem: they didn't want to go out to the land, but they knew scams existed so they started hiring trusted people to travel instead and verify they property owner was really the person they were buying from. Some states have a registry and so you don't need that, the state tracks owners and verifies the people buying/selling really are who they say they are.
Yet another example where "we can't have nice things" because entrenched businesses profit from keeping things not-nice. Title Insurance shouldn't even be a thing. This should be solvable by a database.
There is a database. The insurance covers things that aren't in the database. Claims are exceptionally rare, so it's pretty cheap.
For the risk assumed by the title insurance, it's one of the most overpriced insurance around.