Land Ho!

[KC813]

Marvin- I like the approach you are taking.  Going in with your eyes wide open, knowing getting all family members to agree is like herding cats! 

 

[Mike J]

For those not familiar with the term Mother Title.  About 10 years my wife and I looked for land.  As part of this search we found a nice lot that part of a subdived property covered with a Mother Title.  I was advised to keep looking by a person who has a lot of experience in Philippine real estate law.

https://filipinohomes.com/blog/mother-title-mean/

The ownership of a land or property does change through time. A lot can be sold many times or transferred to heirs as time goes buy. Hence, when purchasing a property, it is not only important to know the details about the previous land owner but also about all the previous owners of the land who can be traced. Any suspicious transfers or invalid transfers between two parties involved in the ownership of a property could lead to a potential problem to the current buyer.

There’s this situation I witnessed in Iligan City, where one of the heirs sold their lot to a business man. The two initiated the sale. The buyer paid the seller in cash. The moment the new owner started to register the purchase for transfer, it found out that the title was still on its original owner which means still in its MOTHER TITLE. No extra judicial settlement was signed and was not event transferred to the heirs of the original owner. It was then they found out that the seller has eight siblings and they don’t know anything about the sale. 7 out of 8 filed claims over the property and since the transaction invalidated due to the claims of the heirs; the new owner lost the case. What went wrong? The buyer herself did not do her assignment for due diligence.

Buying properties is not that easy as buying cellphones in a gadget store. More than checking its physical appearance, documents needs to be reviewed properly to protect your hard earned investments, most especially if the property is still on its MOTHER TITLE.

WHAT IS MOTHER TITLE?

Mother Title is the original title of ownership of a land or property. It’s the very first registered title of the property. It is the document that traces the origin of the property. Sometimes called the ancestral lot.

As the property changes hands from one owner to another through various transactions like gift deed, inheritance, etc., these needs to follow through the transfer document. The sequence of transfers should chronologically order. Any missing transaction in the mother deed needs to be fixed or understood by obtaining relevant documents from the registration authorities or through further discussions with the seller. The flow of transactions should be ascertained to the current seller. The right of each intermediary in the transfer of property should be checked especially when it includes PoA, etc. One should check whether the PoA assignment was registered or not before the sale or purchase of property through PoA.

Mother document is executed between the original owner of the property and the new buyer. Hence, the study of the mother property helps us realize the actual owner who has the title of the property. Gift deed, will, etc. should not be misunderstood as mother deed. [Source: India Real Estate Forums]

As a Buyer of a property with mother title, it is best to seek assistance with a real estate lawyer to help facilitate in checking the authenticity and legality of the title of the property.

WHY IS IT NOT ADVISED TO PURCHASE A PROPERTY WITH MOTHER TITLE?

Titles which are not transferred on time, incur a lot of penalties that may be higher or bigger than it’s selling price and market value. Other than that if other heirs do not cooperate with the transaction, as the buyer, you need to facilitate a settlement with them as well, which will somehow blow up the total purchase.

WHAT IF I ALREADY PURCHASED A PORTION OF A LOT IN A MOTHER TITLE?

If somehow you have purchased a portion of the a property in a mother title, as long as the heirs have initiated partition of the lot or they have subdivided the lot already and have changed the name in the tax declaration records at the city assessors, bring a copy of your Deed of Absolute Sale (DOAS) and submit it to the Registration of Deeds for annotation of the mother title. In the annotation, the ROD will attach in the title that this portion of the lot is sold to you and you are the new owner of that portion of land. [Source: UNTV]

[Marvin Boggs]

Yes, in effect a mother title is worthless to the potential buyer.  The portion I'm buying must first be titled in the name of the actual supposed owner, which by now could mean even the kids of the guy who inherited it but is now dead, etc.  Can't imagine trying to do this on the fly, or without any legal guidance!  One of the checklist items from our meeting yesterday, believe it or not, is a family tree of the sellers!

[Mike J]

19 minutes ago, Marvin Boggs said:

 One of the checklist items from our meeting yesterday, believe it or not, is a family tree of the sellers!

Very common here for relatives to appear after a sale has been made.  Also quite common for the seller to forge the signature of other relatives who may have an interest in the land.

[davewe]

Property is like women in the Philippines. So many guys decide to fall in love with girls who have huge amounts of impossible to overcome baggage when in fact there are thousands of completely single and baggage-less girls here.

The same can be said for property. Unless the deal is incredible, why but a lot without clean title? Many sellers claim they have clean title or can get it - and cannot. Only buy a lot where they seller has all the documents necessary (and it's a long list) to transfer the title to you. They are out there. Even when you find such a lot it's still a PITA, so don't burden yourself with a lot you will never get the title for.

[hk blues]

I think Marvin is taking the right approach. He has identified a plot of land and is now looking into the practicalalities of purchasing it - and has said if it looks iffy he will move on. Nothing wrong with trying as long as no sugnificant money is changing hands.

[Snowy79]

1 hour ago, Marvin Boggs said:

Yes, in effect a mother title is worthless to the potential buyer.  The portion I'm buying must first be titled in the name of the actual supposed owner, which by now could mean even the kids of the guy who inherited it but is now dead, etc.  Can't imagine trying to do this on the fly, or without any legal guidance!  One of the checklist items from our meeting yesterday, believe it or not, is a family tree of the sellers!

A problem my previous partner came across was deciding what heir had what parcel of land.  She has just completed a land purchase from her own family.  She decided to buy up all the parcels to make one large lot.  She was in the fortunate situation of it being her family. It turned out there were 6 heirs.  

She knew all six and contacted them all to buy and each one said sure no problem. I laughed and told her wait until money is involved.  Sure enough the cats got out the bag. Two upped their price and a third started arguing over who had what parcel of land.  One wanted it split 6 ways vertically, one wanted the lot facing North another wanted the bit in the middle. 

It turned into a long drawn out process which fortunately as there was no foreign interest got squared away at a sensible price but the land required a few surveys then separate titling.

Good luck if you don't know the family.  Sometimes even the family don't know all their siblings. 

[Marvin Boggs]

1 hour ago, Snowy79 said:

A problem my previous partner came across was deciding what heir had what parcel of land. 

Yep its easy to imagine the confusion.  Without a proper survey, or with just pencil notations on a xerox map.  That's not even getting into the use of nick-names which is ever so common.  So here are parcels A, B, C, D, E listing the inheritors....one is dead, one is a woman using her nickname who is now married and has a different last name, etc.  Chaos reigns!  

Not to get off topic, but I also noticed when I was in China that Asians peoples are very....imprecise.  It stems from the language itself I believe.  For example, in Philippines the use of single pronouns.  Or, often they may have a single noun for a certain concept, where in English we will have 5 different nouns depending on the nuance.  

Also someone had mentioned big families -- that is so true.  We are working on the wife's family tree and there are 79 first cousins!  Good Lord Almighty.

[Snowy79]

My partners family also have land in Mindanao.  She says it's in a great location and her Father has a claim on it but to forget it as the family there are like rabbit's.  Her uncles have children by lots of different women.  She lost count in the end.  On one visit she found two half brothers she never even knew about.  There was no mistaking them as all three were a similar age and looked like triplets but by three different women. 

[Marvin Boggs]

Update:

Well its mission-abort on this property.  The mother title ended up needing far too much work -- and in this case, complication means time.  Even though all parties were willing and eager, the attorney said we are really looking at about a 3 year process to sort it all out.  Way too risky, since we would want to build asap.  

Shucks.