Tenure Security and Titles Insurance: Privatization of a Public Responsibility? Sécurité foncière et assurances de titres: la privatisation d'une responsabilité publique?

SUMMARY In Quebec, the security of tenure is the jurisdiction of the provincial government since the mid-19 th century; it relies on a system of land registration consisting of a land register based on a cadastre. Over the years, this system has been greatly enhanced by the continual action of land surveyors and notaries, achieving a high standard of land titles quality. Nowadays, this high standard quality seems to be threatened by the arrival on the land tenure security market of a new product coming from the United States, the title insurance. In several American states, the title insurance has imposed itself in the absence of a public land tenure security system reliable and efficient. Private insurance companies became over the years the principal holders of land ownership data (as found elsewhere collated in cadastre and land books), for commercial purposes, instead of the State for public information, safety and security. At the time of a real estate transaction, a title insurance policy is attractive to consumers because it can be issued quickly (often within a 24-hour period), at a low cost (a few hundred dollars). In comparison, the joint intervention of a land surveyor and a notary is much more time consuming and expensive: the production of documents recording the physical condition of the building and the quality of the legal title may be spread over several weeks, for a cost of few thousand dollars. But is the title insurance holder better protected in case of problems (e.g. a defect in the land title)? Is he well informed of possible defects and risks inherent to his title and his real property? Is the title insurance a product that fits well with the state public mechanisms for land tenure registration? Is it a complement or a substitute to the joint work of the land surveyor and notary? These are some of the major issues that animate current discussions between Quebec land surveyors and notaries. Fears are great to see a long-term decrease of the quality of land titles, if the impacts of such title insurance products are not well defined in the context of land law in Quebec.

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