[dcrazy]

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.

[skissane]

> 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.

[ghaff]

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.)

[weinzierl]

"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.

[parsimo2010]

> 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.

[semiquaver]

  > You can't hold it against us if that happens

No, what you describe is the entire purpose of owners title insurance. The idea that it “only covers previous owner” is false, it covers a wide variety of title defects.

[parsimo2010]

I was getting ready to debate you, but I'll admit that I'm mostly wrong about title insurance.

Special warranty deeds only cover the current seller, but title insurance can defend against prior ownership claims. I will note that just because title insurance guarantees they will defend against ownership claims, they don't guarantee it will be settled in a particular way. There's a theoretical possibility that an agreement can't be reached that keeps you in the house you thought you bought legally- like in this story the buyers got their money back but didn't keep the house that wasn't theirs https://www.thetitlereport.com/Articles/Title-Insurance-at-W...

[toast0]

> I will note that just because title insurance guarantees they will defend against ownership claims, they don't guarantee it will be settled in a particular way.

Of course, insurance doesn't guarantee you won't have a covered loss. Insurance compensates you if you have a covered loss.

When I've purchased real estate with title insurance, the offer from the title company has been pretty specific about what risks are covered, what risks are specifically not covered, and what the dollar limits are for covered losses. There's a lot of paperwork involved in purchasing real estate, but the title report and the title insurance offer are worth taking the time to read.

[sidewndr46]

I've read the terms of title insurance and no, you can't hold them liable if it turns out you don't get the property as intended. It's basically useless.

[dcrazy]

It makes sense that you can’t hold an insurer liable for the very thing they are selling you insurance against. The insurance exists to make you whole if you, e.g. pay earnest money and then someone disputes your title.

[raini]

patio11 wrote a bunch about this: (https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/working-title-insuran...)

[Aeolun]

I couldn’t keep reading this. Why is that thing so insane?

[ghaff]

Because everything about real estate is insane if you peel back the covers. I've just been going through this and I couldn't tell you how many pages of documents I've had to go through. And this isn't even a new purchase. It's just trust and neighbor agreements (in part because the guy I bought the property from 25 years messed up some stuff).

[pdonis]

> 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.

[skissane]

No, the county clerk records aren’t a “single source of truth”. In the US system, it is possible to convince a court the county records are wrong, and order them overridden-which makes them not the single source of truth.

By contrast, in the Torrens system, whatever the government records say are final. If you are the innocent victim of a mistake by the government (or a fraud against it), the government has to compensate you; but you don’t actually get the land back if it has since been sold to an innocent purchaser.

[pdonis]

> in the Torrens system, whatever the government records say are final

First, it doesn't seem like that's always the case, based on another post upthread talking about a land ownership case that went to the high court because of an error in the government's records.

Second, since there is no single government for the entire world, any government trying to implement a Torrens system is still going to face the problem of events happening outside its jurisdiction that its records do not and cannot contain, which affect ownership of property in its jurisdiction. So there cannot be a "single source of truth" in the sense you appear to be using the term, even in the Torrens system.

[rendx]

> is still going to face the problem of events happening outside its jurisdiction that its records do not and cannot contain

Excuse my German ignorance, but my understanding of how it works here is that unless the transfer is notarized, logged and recorded with the local authority, there has not been a legal transfer. So, by that definition of land ownership, no "events outside of its jurisdiction" can take place. Any such agreements become binding only upon their verified registration. A notary is responsible not only for confirming the transfer but also as independent consultant so neither party gets seriously ripped off. (And if they didn't, they would be in serious liability trouble.)

The "share of the database" is managed and owned by the local government, but its records are available all across Germany for authorities to look up. The vector database of lots is public, and there are procedures to request access to ownership documents for various purposes. The procedure is that when you want to buy a certain property, the owner confirms that you have permission to get the official record directly from the land registry, which then become the basis for any serious negotiations as what is recorded there is in fact the single source of truth.

[toast0]

In the three states where I've been involved in or observed real estate transactions, the system is similar in that a real estate transaction must be recorded with the county clerk to become effective. Generally documents are notarized to validate the identity of the signatories, and a notary is expected to confirm that the signatories understand what they are signing.

However, afaik, county clerks do not validate deeds; they will dutifully record any submitted deed if it follows the proper forms. If there is doubt about the validity of a conveyance, the whole history of recorded deeds for a property can be examined and potentially set aside if found to be fraudulent. Adverse possession laws can moot disputes about old conveyances though: after some time, someone who has "color of title", actual possession, and pays property taxes will gain actual title to the property, even if their original deed was deficient.

In a land registry system, the keeper of the registry generally validates that conveyances are approved by the current owner; this doesn't happen in a system of registered deeds. Deeds I've seen don't truly identify the grantors or grantees either. Typically just the first and last names. There are many people with my name, but if you have a deed for my house signed by the Pulitzer Prize winning author who shares my name, you can record it even though it's not actually valid.

[labcomputer]

Yes, it does sound like typical German bureaucracy to make events like death outside the jurisdiction impossible unless the deceased has obtained prior approval to kick the bucket. :)

[skissane]

> First, it doesn't seem like that's always the case, based on another post upthread talking about a land ownership case that went to the high court because of an error in the government's records.

I don’t know what High Court case they are talking about-they didn’t give a citation just a vague recollection-they might be remembering wrong.

But the assumption in the Torrens system is the government database is correct. There are rare exceptions-e.g. the so-called “paramount interests”-but they are narrow and very much exceptional. By contrast, in the US system, a court is totally open to entertaining the argument the county title records are incorrect, in many states there is no presumption against such an argument, and you aren’t required to convince the court some narrowly drawn exception applies before it will consider the argument. (Actually Australia still has something like the “US system” too-we call it “old title”-but old title is extremely rare. Anyone trying to sell an old title lot is going to convert it to Torrens before selling it. I don’t think you can legally sell it until you do so. So in practice the only old title lots left are those which haven’t changed ownership-other than by inheritance-in many decades.)

> Second, since there is no single government for the entire world, any government trying to implement a Torrens system is still going to face the problem of events happening outside its jurisdiction that its records do not and cannot contain, which affect ownership of property in its jurisdiction.

That’s not how it works. Overseas contracts, court judgements, etc - if you don’t lodge them with the land title registry, they don’t legally exist as far as land titles go.

[pdonis]

> if you don’t lodge them with the land title registry, they don’t legally exist as far as land titles go.

As I pointed out in another post downthread, that is also the case in US jurisdictions that record deeds: if the deed transferring ownership isn't recorded with the county clerk, the transfer doesn't legally exist.

The difference, at least in many US jurisdictions, as I pointed out in that other post, is that in those US jurisdictions the county clerk does not guarantee that the deed is final, any other legal challenges notwithstanding. For example, I think someone else upthread gave the example of someone making a will in a different state that left property to their children instead of their spouse. When that person dies, yes, whoever is supposed to inherit the property would need to record a transfer deed in the county where the property is located to effect the transfer. But their legal right to do so depends on a will executed in a different state.

In many US jurisdictions, the county clerk is not responsible for checking to see if the person recording the transfer deed has the legal right to do so; that's up to other parties involved. But under the Torrens system you describe, it seems like the government land registry would have to do such a check in order to make the guarantee it makes. But how can it? It doesn't control or have access to things like wills in other jurisdictions that determine who has the legal right to take title to a property.

[rcxdude]

In the Torrens system, if you do not register the transfer of property with the government, then the transfer hasn't happened. So whatever else happens in the rest of the world doesn't matter (at least, unless the land itself is annexed by another government).

(And, from similar cases in the UK which has this system, if the land registry fucks up the transfer is still final and this has been upheld by the court, the government may just be liable for damages)

[pdonis]

> 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).

[sidewndr46]

It's also entirely possible for a judge to just change the records because they don't like them. It's pretty common in Texas to see deed restrictions removed if the local government doesn't want them on there for example.

[xenadu02]

FWIW even in the US system the courts usually won't order someone off land they are living on or using even if this were the case. At worst they would order compensation be paid - which is what title insurance actually covers.

Many states have a statute of limitations anyway. If you live on the land and pay the property taxes for N years everything else becomes irrelevant. Either the title was transferred to you or you squatted on abandoned land for N years: in both cases it becomes yours.

[mandevil]

But at least in some places in the US that's actually just a log of some kinds of transactions (sales and mortgages): you don't have a normalized field in a database somewhere that spits out "this person owns this spot" instead you have to build up from each individual transaction- plus there are transactions that don't take place on the log, e.g. deaths and inheritance or marriage/divorce that could take place outside the purview of the county clerk.

e.g. a married couple buys a house, then one of them dies, and the will is recorded in a different state and leaves their property to their kids rather than the spouse, that sort of update would not be recorded in the county clerk's office in my state.

[pdonis]

> at least in some places in the US that's actually just a log of some kinds of transactions

That's true--but as I pointed out just now in response to another post, since there is no single government having jurisdiction over the entire world, there is always the possibility of events happening outside a given jurisdiction that affect the ownership of property in that jurisdiction. No system of records in a jurisdiction can completely prevent that.

[mcherm]

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.

[ggm]

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.

[bombcar]

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!

[cmiles74]

The federal government never enumerated the power to manage a national credit agency and yet we have several.

[peaseagee]

The federal government doesn't manage any national credit agencies.

[cmiles74]

I don't see how that matters, the point is that we don't need the federal government's mandate in order to have a national clearinghouse of title data.

[dcrazy]

That’s not what’s being discussed. In other countries that operate under what’s called the Torrens title system, the government maintains an authoritative central land registry. If you wind up in a legal dispute about ownership of a piece of land, the judge looks at the government books and is bound by what they say (with minimal exceptions).

We cannot have such a national registry in the United States. We could have 50 independent ones, but the few states that tried it have given up and reverted.

[IcyWindows]

Since title events, like marriages, can happen outside the US, that only helps a little.