Title of torrens

The active development of real estate registration systems coincided with the period of the industrial revolution in Western Europe in the 19th century . According to some authors, the development of registration systems could be caused by the need to reduce transaction costs in the emerging real estate market, which, in turn, would facilitate the attraction of real estate as collateral for obligations and the implementation of collateral in case of insolvency of the debtor. Prior to the advent of the centralized registration of the system for transferring rights to real estate, they were unreliable and did not meet the needs of rapid capital turnover. In particular, until 1857, South Australia had a classical common law system that established ownership on the basis of a transaction document and required verification of the entire chain of previous transactions to establish the "legal purity" of the owner’s rights to the subject of the transaction ^[1] .

When creating a new real estate registration system for South Australia, Robert Torrens chose a model for centralized registration of real estate rights (also called the land registry system), in which the transfer of ownership occurs when the information about the new owner is entered into the register. Perhaps the choice of registration model by Torrens was influenced by German lawyer Ulrich Hübbe, who was well acquainted with the system of land books used in Hamburg ^[1] .

The Torrens title system is based on the state registration of the title deed, in contrast to the registration of property transactions in many jurisdictions. The presence of a registered change in the owner's record in the unified register is the only necessary and sufficient condition for the emergence of ownership of the property. The title of Torrens makes the procedure of “checking the purity of the transaction” unnecessary by tracking the chain of previous agreements in order to justify the rights of the current owner and identify suspicious transactions in the past. Realities of implementation of the Torrens system that are actually operating in various jurisdictions, as a rule, provide for one or another scheme of material compensation to persons who have suffered from incorrect maintenance of the state unified registry.

The transfer of registration of property rights from the traditional form to the registry entry is voluntary, therefore, in most countries using the Torrens system, land plots that are not registered in the registry remain. ^[2]

The following principles are fundamental to the Torrens system: ^[3]

1. The principle of reflection (mirror principle) - the principle means that information in the state register is recognized by law as reliable and significant. Thus, in the interests of the owner is a message to the registry about all material information about the property. Within the framework of this principle, when selling real estate in a title, only information about the owner changes, and information about land, buildings and structures, encumbrances and other things remain the same. The state unified register of real estate in the Torrens system is public, that is, open to all comers for review. In modern implementations of Torrens titles, everyone has access to read and search the database of a single registry through the Internet.
2. The principle of sufficiency (curtain principle) - the principle means that information not entered into the registry does not exist. This principle firmly stands for the protection of the rights of a bona fide acquirer: regardless of the legitimacy of past transactions, a bona fide acquirer cannot be deprived of property.
3. The principle of insurance (indemnity principle) - means that material damage to the owner or former owner of the title resulting from incorrect maintenance of the state register is subject to immediate fair compensation by the state, up to the full value of the property. The state at the same time receives the right of claim against the perpetrators in recourse . The principle of insurance complements the protection of the rights of a bona fide purchaser with a guarantee of immediate fair compensation for damage to any former owners at the expense of the state.

Torrens himself cited the following advantages of his system ^[4] :

1. It provides legal protection in place of the previous vulnerability;
2. It reduces the cost of finance and time for the transfer of titles and the establishment of encumbrances, turning pounds of costs into shillings, and months into days;
3. It offers brevity and clarity in return for verbosity and confusion;
4. It so simplifies land transactions that any person who has at least writing, reading and counting skills can independently make transactions with his property;
5. It completely eliminates the possibility of fraud and fraud in the real estate sector, which are periodically written by English newspapers;
6. It restores the natural value of land ownership, which is significantly reduced due to unclear rights to it and subsequently discovered encumbrances;
7. It reduces the number of litigations surrounding real estate, eliminating the very basis for them.

The transition to the title of Torrance in the British Commonwealth is described in detail in 1920 in the book of James Edward Hogg. ^[five]

Australia

The transition to the open registry and the title of Torrance occurred in Australia between 1857 and 1875. The first implementation can be considered the registration system, introduced in South Australia by Robert Torrens himself, on the basis of the law on real estate in 1858. ^[6]

Canada

The second jurisdiction to adopt the Torrance model after Australia in 1861 was the British colony of Vancouver , now part of the Canadian province of British Columbia . ^[7]

Dominican Republic

In the Dominican Republic , the Torrens system was implemented in 1920 and is still in use today. ^[eight]

New Zealand

New Zealand switched to the open registry and the title of Torrens in 1870. ^{[9] [10]}

Singapore

In Singapore , the Torrance system was introduced in 1993 by the Law on Land Titles. ^[eleven]

Estonia

In Estonia, the principles of the Torrens system are established by the 1993 laws “On Property Law” and “On the Land Register”, adopted as part of the 1992-1994 reforms at the initiative of Prime Minister Mart Laar during the presidency of Lennart Meri . ^{[12] [13] The} practical implementation of the regulation of real estate accounting and turnover in the Estonian state real estate cadastre ^[14] is considered one of the most advanced in Europe.

Russia

The advantages of the Torrance system were noticed in Russia almost immediately after its appearance ^[15] , however, the demolition of the Russian legal system during the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly made all the ideas of Russian imperial jurists legacy.

The current system of registration and registration of rights to real estate in Russia cannot be called a full-fledged Torrens system or cadastral system, although some of its elements comply with the principles of the Torrens title. Real estate, its property, as well as transactions made with it, are recorded in the Unified State Register of Real Estate (USRN) ^[16] . The openness of cadastre and registry information has been established and a single organization responsible for their maintenance, the Rosreestr, has been appointed. Record in the USRN is a necessary and sufficient condition for the emergence of property rights to the property. Information about the property contained in the cadastre and registry is quite detailed and structured, covers most of the essential information about the property, an open cadastral map works. ^[17] Using a fairly simple web form, you can find and familiarize yourself with some of the information about any real estate object. ^[18] . These laws, however, do not establish the immediate full material liability of the state for the correctness of the information contained in the databases. As in the original Torrens system, it is permissible to have property that is not properly registered and is not included in the USRN, in particular, as of 2017, there is a significant amount of unregistered communal property ^[19] .

In 2015, a bill was closed in the State Duma that closed public access to information about property owners ^[20] . The bill was supported by the government ^[21] . According to some experts, limiting the openness of information reduces the ability of the public to identify cases of illicit enrichment and increases business risks ^[22] .

• Bona fide purchaser
• Land Registry