Just to contrast this to other parts of the world: in Germany, the land registry is the only authoritative source for ownership information. So the excerpts fro

Just to contrast this to other parts of the world: in Germany, the land registry is the only authoritative source for ownership information. So the excerpts from the registry about a certain property are always the complete information by definition. The downside of this is that if a clerk makes an erroneous entry, that error then becomes legally binding. While rare, this does unfortunately happen occasionally and can have pretty wild repercussions.