Comment by pdonis
1 day ago
> In the Torrens system, if you do not register the transfer of property with the government, then the transfer hasn't happened.
This is also true of county clerks in the US: any transfer of property in the county has to be recorded on a deed that is submitted to the county clerk and kept on file by them. Otherwise it hasn't happened.
> if the land registry fucks up the transfer is still final
This is the part that might not be the same in all US jurisdictions (though it appears it is the same in some, someone posted upthread about Iowa having a system like this).
> This is the part that might not be the same in all US jurisdictions (though it appears it is the same in some, someone posted upthread about Iowa having a system like this).
As I pointed out in a reply to that comment, that's a popular misconception – legally, Iowa uses essentially the same land title system as every other US state; the main difference is instead of private title insurance, there is a state government monopoly on title insurance. But Iowans use the phrase "title insurance" to mean "private title insurance", making many of them wrongly think their state doesn't have title insurance at all.
Several US states previously enacted Torrens title, but largely unsuccessfully – few titles were ever converted to Torrens, and in almost all of them Torrens title is either repealed or effectively moribund.
The only place under US jurisdiction where Torrens title is fully mainstream, is Guam. Guam adopted it in the early 20th century, around the same time as the US territories of Hawaii and the Philippines did. It survived in the Philippines, but the Philippines became an independent country. In Hawaii, it was successful in a few parts of the state (in particular Lānaʻi), but otherwise largely not.
> any transfer of property in the county has to be recorded on a deed that is submitted to the county clerk and kept on file by them. Otherwise it hasn't happened.
No, the point is that this is actually not true. The transfer has happened as soon as the deed has been executed. There are many reasons you generally want to record the deed in a timely fashion, but doing so is not strictly necessary.
> the point is that this is actually not true
It is in Florida, which is where I live. Florida Statutes section 695.01:
"No conveyance, transfer, or mortgage of real property, or of any interest therein, nor any lease for a term of 1 year or longer, shall be good and effectual in law or equity against creditors or subsequent purchasers for a valuable consideration and without notice, unless the same be recorded according to law"
I can't say whether every US state has similar law in place, but I suspect most of them do, since both the State and the county clerks get revenue from the recording fees.
I would characterize that as a patching of some of the problems that arise from the system, not a changing of the system's underlying semantics.
By my lay reading of that, it doesn't even actually necessitate recording the deed sooner for it to have those effects - rather it just means that the deed needs to have been recorded some time before you get to court.
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