In my current job I am on the other side of this - registering the properties for the Scottish equivalent of the Land Register. Some pretty mundane work but some of it quite interesting especially when you have to trail through old deeds to find the "rights and burdens". A farm that has a river running through it - farmer owns the land, someone else owns the fish in the river, someone else has the right to the water etc etc.
Also worth noting that a lot of effort goes into doing these knowing that 99.9% of the time, they will never be looked at and if you ever did want to do something about your rigts and burdens, you would be talking lots of legal costs.
As an example, where I live all properties have a long list of conditions relating to heights of fences, no commerical vehicles to be kept, no caravans etc etc. Obviously over the years, these have been totally ignored and no one has felt inclined to do anything about it.
There is also a huge reliance on solicitors doing their job properly as we mostly take at face value what they tell us. So if A has been left the house in the will by B and we get the paperwork to that effect from the solicitor, we will register accordingly.
If you have a bent solicitor, a bent mortgage consultant, you can run amok!!
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