Comment by iso1631

The US system is more the oddity, its the legacy England system from pre-19th century. England and Wales adopted and modified an Australian system, and its adopted a fair bit across the commonwealth. In other developed countries a lot are very much registry-is-correct. I think France is the main one which is "deeds based"

The advantages are you can see who owns the land, there's no argument in 20 years time when someone puts a competing claim.

There's an entire industry in the US dedicated to working around the problems that buyers have https://www.alta.org/

If you buy land, then build a house, then someone comes along from 1932 saying "actually that land is mine", you are screwed.