Quote Originally Posted by rtitle View Post
Oh, we're going to miss the contract date (basically now) due to lost title. The piece of paper that is, he does own the property. I don't think that happens in the US (owners don't hold the physical title). Lawyer says I could legally cancel due to missed date but advises to instead just wait on replacement title because cancellation is itself a long process. I.e. wait for home or wait for 18m J back would be about the same wait. So might as well wait on home since cancelling isn't going to get me any other property faster. I'm learning a bit about the real estate process in Jamaica which is different from US.
I have had several friends who when trying to purchase land in the Treasure Beach Area (for example) found that the original title was in a great, great, grandfather's name or sometimes even back to the Land Grant days and was never transferred to the next owner in line. Lots of time people think they own land but they are not the "registered legal" owners. It took a good friend almost 11 months to get a clean title owning to the line of failures to register death certificates. It happens a lot more than you even probably think.