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There is a whole legal system around property transfer in most reasonably run countries. Title registration, a legal process including a process to refute a cla

There is a whole legal system around property transfer in most reasonably run countries. Title registration, a legal process including a process to refute a claim. Simply having a fraudulent piece of paper saying "Deed" doesn't go very far beyond getting you a free trip to jail. Further I don't see how a blockchain would help at all. So if I can acquire someone's keys I can transfer their property to myself and I'm thereby the full and legal, irrefutable owner? It has all of the same problems mentioned about the Mona Lisa.

eldaisfish 5y ago
You've hit the nail on an issue that bothers me about the tech industry in general - not understanding how the real world works and trying to create problems where none exist. This is in an attempt to shoehorn "tech" into the process when there is no need. The block chain in real estate is a great example. The blockchain and crypto currencies in general both seem to be solutions looking for a problem.
- giaour 5y ago
  The real world problem in real estate titling today is the pervasive need for title insurance. In a typical real estate transaction, both the buyer and the seller will have an insurance policy to cover losses stemming from a sale based on an illegitimate title. In theory, because title registers are public (at least in the US) and run by a the local government, you could have higher trust in a title (and therefore lower title insurance premiums) if you could query the current holder from the appropriate government. That said, I'm not sure why blockchain makes more sense for this use case than, say, a read-only API at land-register.<city/county>.<state>.gov.
  - defaultname 5y ago
    Title insurance is very inexpensive because there are few actual title disputes. Those that do arise are usually of right of way claims, encroachments, or survey issues. Actual cases of someone defrauding someone of property is astonishingly rare.
pydry 5y ago
>Simply having a fraudulent piece of paper saying "Deed" doesn't go very far beyond getting you a free trip to jail. That's exactly what MERS did. It tossed people out of their homes on the basis of a row in their privately run database. It took a supreme court ruling to overturn this. Lower courts (e.g. the supreme court of michigan) LET them foreclose. The row in the privately run database reigned supreme. >Further I don't see how a blockchain would help at all. MERS was created to circumvent this whole legal system around property transfer because the system might be trustworthy, but is archaic, slow and frustrating. A nationwide adopted blockchain system that didn't require private ownership by a party like MERS whom you clearly can't trust or an archaic, slow and frustrating paperwork system serves everybody's interests (except the people who used MERS to, y'know, steal people's homes).
- defaultname 5y ago
  I have zero doubt that there are flawed systems in some jurisdictions. That's the nature of the real world, with its ugly edges. However a cursory examination is that MERS wasn't title registration at all. It was a registration of mortgage holders, where mortgages would be "assigned" to MERS. And the dispute wasn't over the accuracy of the rows in that database (which would be trivial to legally dispute and correct), but a technicality of whether MERS could be the one to foreclose -- itself a whole legal process, only at the very end impacting the title -- versus the one who assigned the mortgage. The net effect is identical, and I'm not sure if the difference between ABC Credit foreclosing on a defaulted mortgage versus MERS foreclosing means "stealing" someone's home.

eldaisfish 5y ago

You've hit the nail on an issue that bothers me about the tech industry in general - not understanding how the real world works and trying to create problems where none exist. This is in an attempt to shoehorn "tech" into the process when there is no need. The block chain in real estate is a great example. The blockchain and crypto currencies in general both seem to be solutions looking for a problem.

giaour 5y ago
The real world problem in real estate titling today is the pervasive need for title insurance. In a typical real estate transaction, both the buyer and the seller will have an insurance policy to cover losses stemming from a sale based on an illegitimate title. In theory, because title registers are public (at least in the US) and run by a the local government, you could have higher trust in a title (and therefore lower title insurance premiums) if you could query the current holder from the appropriate government. That said, I'm not sure why blockchain makes more sense for this use case than, say, a read-only API at land-register.<city/county>.<state>.gov.
- defaultname 5y ago
  Title insurance is very inexpensive because there are few actual title disputes. Those that do arise are usually of right of way claims, encroachments, or survey issues. Actual cases of someone defrauding someone of property is astonishingly rare.

pydry 5y ago

>Simply having a fraudulent piece of paper saying "Deed" doesn't go very far beyond getting you a free trip to jail. That's exactly what MERS did. It tossed people out of their homes on the basis of a row in their privately run database. It took a supreme court ruling to overturn this. Lower courts (e.g. the supreme court of michigan) LET them foreclose. The row in the privately run database reigned supreme. >Further I don't see how a blockchain would help at all. MERS was created to circumvent this whole legal system around property transfer because the system might be trustworthy, but is archaic, slow and frustrating. A nationwide adopted blockchain system that didn't require private ownership by a party like MERS whom you clearly can't trust or an archaic, slow and frustrating paperwork system serves everybody's interests (except the people who used MERS to, y'know, steal people's homes).

defaultname 5y ago
I have zero doubt that there are flawed systems in some jurisdictions. That's the nature of the real world, with its ugly edges. However a cursory examination is that MERS wasn't title registration at all. It was a registration of mortgage holders, where mortgages would be "assigned" to MERS. And the dispute wasn't over the accuracy of the rows in that database (which would be trivial to legally dispute and correct), but a technicality of whether MERS could be the one to foreclose -- itself a whole legal process, only at the very end impacting the title -- versus the one who assigned the mortgage. The net effect is identical, and I'm not sure if the difference between ABC Credit foreclosing on a defaulted mortgage versus MERS foreclosing means "stealing" someone's home.