Blog – Tuesdays with Mary

Tuesday, September 8, 2026 Land, Title and Ownership in America at 250 Series America had a lot of land.  What it didn't have nearly as much of was money. That mismatch mattered in a place where the prospect of owning property was part of what drew many people across the Atlantic. There was land to buy and people who wanted to buy it, but hard currency was chronically scarce. Mortgages offered one way to bridge the gap. There was nothing new about them. Lending secured by land long predated the American colonies. What is more interesting for our story is what [...]

Tuesday, September 1, 2026 Land, Title and Ownership in America at 250 Series Over the course of this series, we have watched as Americans, step by step and layer by layer, built something that did not spring forth fully formed inside the new nation, our own system of property ownership. It took a remarkable amount of work to get there. Our young country had to decide which claims it would recognize and which sovereign had the authority to recognize them. Enormous territories had to become identifiable parcels. Rules for transferring land had to develop. Public records had to become dependable [...]

Tuesday, August 18, 20206 Land, Title and Ownership in America at 250 Series The public recordation system had done exactly what Americans asked it to do.  It had grown; it had successfully scaled while remaining local. As land changed hands across the growing nation, each generation added to the one before it. Deeds were recorded. Estates passed property to heirs. Easements were granted. Judgments attached. Parcels were divided, combined and described in new ways. While those public records were preserving the literal history of the land, understanding that history and what it meant in practical terms required a growing level [...]

Tuesday, August 11, 2026 Property records are public records. Anyone in our industry knows that. For generations, anyone willing to visit the county recorder, search an index or pull a deed could discover who owned a parcel of land. Public notice is one of the foundations of our property system. It protects ownership, establishes debt priorities and gives buyers confidence in what they're purchasing. Two weeks ago, New York City sparked a different conversation. As part of implementing its new pied-à-terre tax, the city published a searchable database identifying property owners who might be subject to the new assessment. The [...]

Tuesday, August 4, 2026 Land, Title and Ownership in America at 250 Series One of my earliest lessons about real estate happened long before I ever worked in the title industry. A member of my family expected to inherit a home that had been in the family for generations. In her top dresser drawer was a deed signed by her father-in-law. She proudly talked about it and believed that, when he passed away, she would simply record it and become the owner. I was less than ten years old when someone explained that the situation wasn't nearly that simple. There [...]

Tuesday, July 28, 2026 One of the earliest blogs I posted here was about Chesterton's Fence, the idea that before removing something that appears unnecessary, we should first understand why it was put there in the first place. Sometimes what looks like inefficiency is actually the solution to a problem we've forgotten existed. Its very success can make the original problem almost invisible. Before we tear down the fence, we should understand what it has been protecting. That thought came back to me last week. Romania's National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration (ANCPI), the government agency responsible for maintaining [...]

Tuesday, July 14, 2026 Land, Title and Ownership in America at 250 Series One of the easiest mistakes we can make when studying history is assuming people in another era were trying to answer the same questions we are today. Take voting, for example. Today, we generally think of voting as a fundamental right. At the time of the Founding, many Americans understood the franchise quite differently. Voting was widely viewed as a responsibility that should be exercised by people thought to possess both independence and a tangible stake in the community. In many states, that meant owning land or [...]

Tuesday, July 7, 2026 When the Supreme Court issues a unanimous judgement, usually the story is over. After all, nine justices agreed on the outcome in Pung v. Isabella County, one of the most significant property rights cases since Tyler v. Hennepin County. The Court held that when property is sold through a tax foreclosure, the Constitution generally measures "just compensation" by the amount realized at the tax sale rather than by the property's fair market value. It is an important ruling for anyone involved in title, settlement, real estate law or local government. Our editorial team takes a much [...]

Tuesday, June 30. 2026 Land, Title and Ownership in America at 250 George Washington spent a surprising amount of time thinking about land. Washington’s land activities were far from passive investments. He spent years pursuing military bounty claims, securing patents, commissioning surveys, and defending ownership interests in western lands. At times, those efforts led to disputes with competing claimants and settlers. Long before title insurance existed, Washington learned firsthand how complicated ownership could become. Years ago, while visiting Mount Vernon, I came across correspondence related to one of Washington’s land claims, clouded by what we would now call a title [...]