Comment by cataphract
1 day ago
Don't know exactly on it works in Romania, but proving you purchased a patch of land is a different question -- for that you have the deed. You then submit the deed to the land registry. So this situation could at most result in the seller being able to sell the land more than once or disputes over the priority of sales over liens and other competing acts subject to registration.
The United States is rare. Most countries (seemingly including Romania[1]) have adopted either a cadastral/Torrens title system in which the land registry is definitive legal evidence of who owns a particular piece of land. If you purchased a piece of land and that wasn't recorded in the registry, you are SOL because registration is what conveys title.
The United States on the other hand has a massive title insurance industry, which wouldn't exist if this system was implemented. So you can make random handshake agreements all you'd like and sue over it.
[1] https://www.elra.eu/the-principles-underlying-the-land-regis...
> If you purchased a piece of land and that wasn't recorded in the registry, you are SOL because registration is what conveys title.
Sort of. The registration is what provides opposability against third parties. But between buyer and seller, the transfer of ownership happens by the contract itself. You'll have a harder time against creditors of the seller placing liens on the property, or other people claiming to be owners (e.g. if they bought the foreclosed property); how hard a time depends on the country.
And there may be still be encumbrances/claims to the property that are not subjection to registration like adverse possession or rental agreements that can be asserted against the buyer and for which the buyer's only option is to sue to the seller.
Here in Brazil lots of people deal land by word of mouth. The country is just too big and there isn't enough state present to make every transaction official, so people shake on it, draft an unofficial document and actually living and developing the land over a long period of time is what consistitutes ownership.
It doesn't take much. A neighbor and I just had to deal with a bunch of property line confusions in the US where a property subdivision 25 years ago wasn't handled correctly. None of us really cared but it would matter in the event of an eventual sale and it cost thousands of dollars in surveyor and legal fees.
ADDED: We also had a bunch of easements and cooperative maintenance agreements that were only partially documented in the deed and mostly done via a handshake. So we got that all squared away in the expensive binder from the lawyer.
The public public land record in Croatia is notorious for being outdated and poorly maintained. Basically, the last time it was properly maintained was during Austria-Hungary a century ago, or at least that's the popular opinion. Right now we have the cadastre and the land registry and they do not always align. And for your example of unofficial agreements, the land my father and his brothers inherited is still in my grandfather's name, he died over 20 years ago, now my parents are aging, and there is just a verbal agreement on how the property is divided.
This is well documented in the the book "The Mystery of Capital" by Hernando de Soto. When it was published I thought it would change the world, but apparently nobody cared. :-)
In his thesis, this is the reason capitalism cannot work well in Latin America and other nations around the world. He says that registered land ownership is the foundation of capitalism. This is how one can borrow money against your land and invest it to make more capital. Very common for example with farmers in N. America to borrow against their farm, for machines, seeds and fertilizer.
(I am not an economist)
The reason capitalism cannot work well is that it assumes endless resources and infinite growth, not because people don't like electronic transfers. Capitalism is failing in all countries and those that are not are already transitioning to some form or another or post consumerism.
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That’s how it works in the US too. We don’t record documents with the county recorder to make them official, we do so to provide notice to third parties who might purchase the land.