Your Land Title – at risk
I have written about the issue of Land Title previously. It is such an incredibly important issue that I find myself again penning a small brief snippet for all. Land Title “at risk” is quite a difficult idea to grasp, because for so long it has been so good in NSW. It has been certain. It has been assured. It has been definitive. It has been absolute. Today, as you read this, if you have a Land Title in your name you can be 100% certain that you own that land and that nobody can take it away from you (as long as you keep paying your bills).
But the truth is that with the Baird Government’s plan to privatise the land title arm of the public service, that your land title in the future might be something less than the 100% guarantee of today. In the future the land title that you hold might be 99% certain, or maybe 98% or maybe even 90% certain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my land title to be 99% certain. I want it to be 100%! But even if we, as citizens, accept that 99% or 98% is still a very good land title system, there is every chance that your bank or financial institution, that has funded your mortgage, will take a different view. You see, their (banks, etc) job is to avoid risk, and, where possible, have absolute certainty. So the view of your bank is likely to be that they would like you to take out “just in case something goes wrong” insurance on your land title. If someone were to challenge your title, or contest your land boundary, or falsify documents to say that you don’t actually own your land, then the bank would consider themselves at risk. The way to avoid the risk in this case is to have insurance. Future cost to you – about $200 p.a. for a $250,000 home/land title. The money that the Baird Government gets from selling the land title arm is expected to be about $1billion and will go into sports stadiums in Sydney. So in effect, your $200 per year, for at least the next 35 years, will be a cost to you, to fund sports stadiums.