Seems like this isn't really a problem? Who sells land without questions?

They didn't do anything with their land and doesn't have any plans for it for the foreseeable future. It's not like a snowblower that sits in your garage unused. It's land, a piece of planet. If you own it, you should use it for something. If you don't, return it back to people.

    Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life.

Much less on a property deal where identity and ownership are heavily scrutinized.

Becoming marginally more popular in the US but still the exception.

Again - it varies state to state, as the constitution dictates.

Regarding the victim, Kenigsberg:

> Kenigsberg received an undisclosed sum. Sky Top Partners gained a clean title to the land, finished the house and made the sale.

> Kenigsberg remains critical of the system that failed to stop the fraud and of public safety agencies that have not found the perpetrators. Under the law it's possible he could have seen the house destroyed and himself enriched more than he was. He prefers to see the case almost as an outside observer, above the fray.

Furthermore, at least in Massachusetts, when you purchase property you also purchase title insurance that protects you against this. I remember very specifically, at closing, that my attorney explained that the insurance was in case someone came around with an old claim to the land.

It would be interesting to find out who and what paid out, because these scams have been going on for a bit. (There was one linked to where a property owner drove by and found a house being built on their land.)

https://massrealestatelawblog.com/tag/title-theft-concord-ma...

TLDR: The real property owner contacted the town to block the building permit, and then contacted the other people involved in the sale, the documents provided by the scam artist were obviously foraged, but the sale still went through and construction started.

The other major difference between this one and the other link I posted is that the owner was very likely going to build a home on the property when they retired; unlike the other link that I posted where the property was most likely an investment and going to be sold.

In any case, it hasn't happened again since I started using tap to pay whenever possible.

Sidenote: I don't bear any ill will towards whoever used my SSN. It's not like I was targeted, or even that any harm to me was intended. This was a "hack" of a dysfunctional immigration and employment system, in a way that's totally obvious and easy to anticipate. My ire is reserved for those in positions of responsibility who maintain a regime that is manifestly not fit for purpose.

In any case, the US system is already that the government records ownership (not for free, but for a small recording fee) and the title company charges for checking, and for insurance in case they get it wrong.

As just one example of how it can go wrong, here in Seattle it’s common to find out your lot is nine inches smaller than you thought because surveying technology is a lot better now than it was when your deed was written in 1908.

In 1800 land was sold in person only by people who knew each other, in front of other witnesses who knew everybody in town. It worked great, which is why some states (I assume like CT) never bothered with a registry. In the mid 1800s as land out west started opening up for settlement (skip the whole bad treatment of the natives) investors "out east" wanted to invest in land and ran into a problem: they didn't want to go out to the land, but they knew scams existed so they started hiring trusted people to travel instead and verify they property owner was really the person they were buying from. Some states have a registry and so you don't need that, the state tracks owners and verifies the people buying/selling really are who they say they are.

Nowadays it’s less of an issue as those terminals cost peanuts and WiFi is ubiquitous so they have many of them and can just bring one to your table.

Strictly speaking they require /a/ Social Security Number, not necessarily /your/ SSN.

When I signed up for my most recent cellular service, I hesitated at giving my information to the guy in the store. I told him that since it was a pre-paid account I wasn't asking for credit, so there's no need for him to have my information.

He was OK with that, and pulled out an ID card the store keeps in a drawer for just such occasions.

Salespeople have a sales quota, not an enforce-the-rules quota.

I had not used the card in several weeks. Coffee and a breakfast sandwich at Wendys was the only purchase I made that day. ~4 hours later my card was declined when checking in to my hotel in LA. Called their security department, they wanted to know whether I had authorized a $4000 purchase at a Best Buy in Dallas.

Where are these low-trust areas of the US? I want to visit and check it out.

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.

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.

I’ve had one fraudulent charge in my entire lifetime. Once a quarter seems insane. Are you putting your card info into random websites or something?

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.

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.

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.

As I pointed out in a reply to that comment, that's a popular misconception – legally, Iowa uses essentially the same land title system as every other US state; the main difference is instead of private title insurance, there is a state government monopoly on title insurance. But Iowans use the phrase "title insurance" to mean "private title insurance", making many of them wrongly think their state doesn't have title insurance at all.

Several US states previously enacted Torrens title, but largely unsuccessfully – few titles were ever converted to Torrens, and in almost all of them Torrens title is either repealed or effectively moribund.

The only place under US jurisdiction where Torrens title is fully mainstream, is Guam. Guam adopted it in the early 20th century, around the same time as the US territories of Hawaii and the Philippines did. It survived in the Philippines, but the Philippines became an independent country. In Hawaii, it was successful in a few parts of the state (in particular Lānaʻi), but otherwise largely not.

No, the point is that this is actually not true. The transfer has happened as soon as the deed has been executed. There are many reasons you generally want to record the deed in a timely fashion, but doing so is not strictly necessary.

> it just means that the deed needs to have been recorded some time before you get to court.

No, before whatever event happens that might trigger a lawsuit.

For example (hypothetical as far as I know): say I purchase a property from a fraudulent seller. They promise me they'll record the deed after it's signed and notarized by both of us, but they never do so. (Of course I'd be stupid to do things this way, but maybe I'm a real cheapskate and want to save on title company fees.) Then they sell it to someone else. In order for my ownership rights to be protected by Florida law, I would have had to see that the deed was not recorded, and do it myself (and pay the recording fee), before the date of the second sale. Before the date of the court hearing to challenge the second sale would not be sufficient.

It's true that, in a typical closing in Florida (and in every other state where I've bought real property), the closing takes place at the title company's office, their notary notarizes all the documents and gives me copies before I leave, and I get the key to the house at the end of that. I don't have to wait until the deed is recorded with the county to take possession.

My question would be, how does a closing work in jurisdictions that have Torrens title? Does the closing have to take place at the land registry, so they can confirm that everything is checked and valid and recorded before I get the key to the house?

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.

The record from the land registry includes things like wayrights for third parties, known ground contaminations, utilities/water/power lines etc. -- all very relevant to me as a potential buyer. I did enjoy the notaries explanations of various aspects, which went beyond reading the contract out loud and making sure we verbally understood what we were going to sign. The process also forces both parties to have written copies of everything prior to the final meeting, which provides another chance to let it sink in and potentially reconsider -- which in our case, we did. Also, they're really trained to verify IDs, not like a random clerk in some liquor store.

I understand one can experience it as "bureaucracy" and "annoyance" in their individual case, but then I wonder how much such people consider the bigger picture and what the benefit of all of it really is, for their own and for societies sake, and what kind of shitshow it would turn into if we got rid of all the "bureaucracy" -- such as described in the very blogpost here.

Even if I (wrongly?) assume I am always on top of things and I will not get ripped off ever, only so-called stupid people will, I really don't need more angry people who fell for scams or made quick decisions that they regret or whose identity got 'stolen' around me/on public streets/in bars. If it was for me, we could add even more such layers of protection, which you seem to see only as "(unnecessary) bureaucracy"?

Commonly what happens-in legally complex situations, they’ll refuse to register the change in ownership; and then you have to challenge their refusal in the local jurisdiction’s courts-which are much better equipped to deal with complex legal issues, especially those involving interactions with foreign jurisdictions than the lands title registry is-and if you convince the court, they’ll order the registry to register the title change.

For deceased estates, they want to see an order from probate court telling them what to do before they do anything (if there is a will which nobody disputes, such an order is basically a formality). They don’t accept overseas court decisions; you need to apply to a local court asking for an order for the execution of the foreign judgement, and if the local court grants it, then the land registry will action it.

In your scenario where someone dies in another state, the legal process in Australia is-you apply to the probate division of the Supreme Court of their state of residence for an order of probate. Then you apply to the probate division of the Supreme Court of the state in which the property is located to get an in-state court order endorsing the out-of-state court order as valid. Then you send both court orders to the land title registry, and it will register the change of title in accordance with them. All the land title registry has to do is (a) validate the court order is real (I think they have access to court computer systems to double-check this); (b) in the (very rare) case there is any vagueness or ambiguity in what the court order tells them to do, they’ll reject it and tell you to get another court order with more precise instructions.

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...

> which is to make sure that the land registry's records always are the "single source of truth" for who owns what.

I think you're coming at this from a tech perspective of fully authoritative digital databases a little too much. Look at the ambiguity that remains after a non-Torrens transfer, and after a Torrens transfer. Eliminating that is the main point of Torrens title. It still can't solve the entire problem and be a "single source of truth" the way we see things in the tech world.

That Florida statute would seem to eliminate a good chunk of that ambiguity as well, but not all.

I'm not sure what those have to do with this question, since it's a legal question, not an accounting question.

> I feel pretty confident that if a state tax authority agrees with the deed date being the transfer date, then the IRS would as well.

In many cases a state tax authority wouldn't even be involved, since many states don't tax capital gains (which is what would be involved with a home sale) while the US Federal government does.

> negative sentiment about government bureaucracy

Evidently your experiences with government bureaucracies have been very, very different from mine.