Title company? Title insurance?!? A third-party for-profit company handles some aspect of the transfer of property, instead of, you know, government? And in case this third party fucks up, you need to pay for insurance?!?
You said the real estate agent handles it where you are from- are real estate agents government officials where you are? You don't have to have a title company, you could do it yourself, but a typical real estate transaction involves large amounts of money and multiple parties, so most people want someone else to handle it all. If you are borrowing money, you lender will probably insist on it.
This is how it works in Sweden, as far as I understand it:
Real estate agents have to be licensed, and part of their duties is of course to verify that the seller is who they say they are and that they own the thing they're trying to sell. When I sold an apartment, I had to show my ID to my agent so he could verify me.
The registry of who owns what pieces of land is managed by a government office, and government data is by legal default public, so checking if a seller actually owns a piece of land is trivial. You don't need to chase down a distributed sealed deed history thing thing, it's basically a single national database at this point.
So it's really simple to do, and the responsibility is on the seller's agent, who in turn has a strong incentive to not screw up, or they lose their license and their job.
When you go to your lender for a pre-approval on a mortgage, they want to know which piece of property you're buying, and they typically check that it's being sold by a licensed real estate agent, because if it is, then they can be assured that the seller is verified and actually can sell the property.
When you sign the purchase contract - which is typically one or two pages long - you sign one copy for the seller, one for the buyer, one for the agent, and one for the government office, and the agent helps you fill out the (short) form that goes with it so you can send it in and get the ownership legally transferred to you. That's it.
There's so little work involved with verifying ownership and transferring ownership, that it's just put on the shoulders of the real estate agents. The idea that you would need yet another party to handle this aspect is completely ludicrous in Sweden, it makes no sense.
Jesus.