The vast majority of states in the United States employ a system of recording legal instruments (otherwise known as deeds registration) that affect the title of real estate as the exclusive means for publicly documenting land titles and interests.
The principal difference is that the recording system does not determine who owns the title or interest involved, which is ultimately established through litigation in the courts.
The system provides a framework for determining who the law will protect in relation to those titles and interests when a dispute arises.
This is usually the sovereign, which is the federal government or the Crown of the nation which owned a former colony now located within the United States.
Then, the grantee's name is searched in the grantor index to find the deed by which it has subsequently conveyed the title, and so forth until no more grants are found.
Then the grantee index is searched again to find the source of that grantor's title, and so on until you reach the grant from the sovereign.
[3] In municipalities with a large population and states that do not support tract indices, the Grantor/Grantee method can be time-consuming and difficult altogether due to common names within the index.
The record title holder is not necessarily the actual owner of the land if there are previous unrecorded deeds to it to others.
So, for example, after a deed or mortgage has been recorded by someone in the chain of title, no subsequent purchaser will be protected against it.
Thus, if Oscar purports to sell a piece of land to Alice for $100,000, and the next day purports to sell exactly the same piece of land to Bob for another $100,000, then whichever of the two buyers is the first to reach the recording office and have the sale recorded will be deemed the owner of the property.
Race statutes are extremely rare because it is generally viewed as unfair to protect a party who had actual notice of a prior conveyance.
Currently, Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and West Virginia are the jurisdictions where a notice statute is in effect.
Currently, Alaska, Arkansas, California, [5][6][7] Colorado, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky,[8] Maine,[9] Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio (regarding mortgages, Ohio follows the race statute), Oregon, Pennsylvania (regarding mortgages, Pennsylvania follows Race), South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin,[10] and Wyoming are the jurisdictions where a race/notice statute is in effect.