[userulluipeste]

"Under normal circumstances, property law in England and Wales dictates the original owner cannot claim their property back even if the title change was made fraudulently."

That's... a curious thing to have in the body of laws. What's its purpose and who does it serve?

[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.

[refurb]

The US title system varies by state. Some are deeds based others are Torrens (registry), though deeds based dominates.

And as for being screwed, that’s why real estate transactions have title insurance - to cover damages from incorrect titles.

[iso1631]

A neverending land tax to a private company because the state can't keep a record of who owns what