Torrens Title: A revolutionary cost-saving solution or an outdated relic?

"for a premium, a title may be insured with a title insurance company, the very existence of which is surely no compliment to our present system" - Charles Alfred Patterson, 1938

However, since the distribution and protection of land is generally held to be a natural function of the State, why can not the guarantee of title also be included as a natural function in the protection of land? — Charles Alfred Patterson, 1938

I’ve recently arrived home from a two-week holiday in Japan.

When searching for viewing content for the flight home I stumbled across Tokyo Swindlers. It’s a show about scammers who pose as land sellers and trick buyers into paying large sums of money for land in Tokyo that buyers can never register as their own with official land registers.

I also recently listened to the below Planet Money podcast explaining the a case of identify fraud and the role of titles insurance in such matters.

These events led me to ponder the world outside of Australia’s Torrens Title property system.

Although we talk a lot about property investment and homeownership, Australians don’t think much about the system of property titles itself — how claims of ownership operate, how much the system costs, and how this matters for risks involved in buying and selling property.

That’s because Torrens Title makes things easy.

I was initially astonished that such cumbersome property dealings exist in modern economies like Japan and the United States in 2025.¹ Property buyers can be swindled billions of yen in Japan with no ground truth about ownership and no insurance. Americans spend over USD$20 billion annually on title insurance, which is unnecessary in Australia because of Torrens Title.

In this article, I indulge my curiosity triggered by these events and contemplate some big economic questions around the issue of title security, transaction risk and cost between Australia’s system and the alternatives abroad. I then muse about why the revolutionary Torrens Title system, and Australian invention from the 1850s, has not caught on more widely.

Consider this article not a communication device for me to share my intimate knowledge with you. Instead, consider it a record of my thinking and learning process about these issues that I hope you find interesting.

I would hence appreciate your comments and links.

I will also remind you of how much of a rabbit hole the concept of property really is—what right to property are owned is never clear cut. We too often talk as if complete property rights are already clearly defined but the reality is that we are still making it up as we go.

Before we dig in, here’s a quick overview of what I have learnt about property titles in Japan and the United States compared to Australia:

1. In Japan, there isn’t a title insurance market and buyers often risk billions of yen paying a seller BEFORE they are guaranteed ownership. Buyers reduce their risks by doing extensive identity checks, but this still leaves open the gate for identity-thieving swindlers.

2. In the United States, the deed system provides no guarantee of ownership after a property purchase. All dealings with a property (inheritance claims, mortgages, etc.) happen independently of any central authority. Risks from previous parties making a claim against a purchased property have fostered a title insurance market that resolves losses for buyers in the case of disputed ownership claims or other errors.

3. In Australia, the Torrens Title system keeps an indefeasible record of all property and dealings with the property, and the Titles Office is hence a party to all transactions. As the final record keeper, it resolves almost all risks hence there is no need for a title insurance market, nor extensive identity checks by buyers (identity checks happen on the seller side of its relationship with the titles office).

Torrens titles versus deed-based property

Torrens Title is named after South Australian governor Sir Robert Torrens, who first implemented this system of property record keeping and public guarantees in South Australia in 1858.