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meitros | 2 years ago

Is this what title insurance tries to solve (in the us)?

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flangola7|2 years ago

How are title errors even a thing? You can't accidentally give someone my email or bank account, but you can accidentally give them a house?

mindslight|2 years ago

More like you accidentally didn't give [transfer] them a house [land], because you didn't actually own the land in the first place.

Your ownership claim descends from the chain of previous owners. It's possible that there are encumbrances that aren't currently known. A common example is "paper streets" where a neighborhood was planned out but never built. Then all your neighbors might have an argument that they were looking forward to that right of way that was supposed to run through what is now your plot. It's a huge uphill legal battle on their part, but the point is it's possible they could make it. As more old records are digitized, things like this pop up.

It's not a great system, but like most things in the US, that's just the way it is (in most areas).

MattGaiser|2 years ago

Lots of land titles are murky, land title offices keep bad records, deliberate fraud, illegal renovations not up to code, etc.