A nortary makes sure the sale ia properly exevuted and titles properly transferred, he is certifying the transaction and takes on some legal riks dor doing so. This provides legal security for seller and buyer, a service woth paying for in transactions most people only do once in their life (we talk about Germany here). For all others, it is just coat of doing business.
No idea why it is always everybody else who should work for free.
Sounds more like a lawyer or several competencies at the same time.
In Spain the notary "just" works through the signature of the contract:
- Checks the identities of the parties and their legal status
- Makes "sure" both parties understand the contract
- Verifies that the property can be sold (checks for legal issues in the national registry)
- Serves as a legal witness to the signature
- Sends a copy of the contract to the national registry (but AFAIK, doesn't follow up)
The cost here, for that, is around 500-800€. It's regulated by law.
Then you have to contact a registrar to make all the legal papers to make all the legal papers in the national registry. That's araound 300-400 €, I think.
In the US, this can be done by a title & escrow service. They hold the deposit money (assuming there is some, which is normal), and then at closing they will do all of the above, as well as receiving and distributing funds from the buyer/mortgage company.
Does the notary provide the title insurance (as in: if it turns out later that the seller didn't actually own the house, the real owner shows up and proves it, the bank and new buyers have their money covered)?
That would make more sense for the 2% but it's not related to the notary in the US; notary literally just does "I checked the id of the person signing and it matches" which is a service that can be had for free at your bank or at most $50 if you have to pay someone, 2% of a house for that service obviously wouldn't make sense.
In Germany you cannot sell real estate thatbisn't yours, ownership is registered. The notary, as part of his job, makes sure this title transfer is done properly. If the seller isn't the owner, the sale is void, as far as I know sales price is to be paid once the title transfer was requested and approved, upon proof of payment the notary finalizes it. So basically no title insurance needed.
By the way, excerpts of the registry for the real estate in question are part of the sales contract (just remembered).
Ownership is registered in the US and part of the sale is a "title search" to check that and then update the registered title when the sale is executed (both handled by an attorney).
The case of title insurance is only where something weirder happens with wills, contracts, or liens. If there was an owner that died in 2016 and his will said "split my house to all surviving children". And at the time one child shows up who believes they are the sole surviving descendant and claims the house and sells it in 2017, then 2018 a second heir finds out their estranged parent died and shows up to say "actually half of this house was mine, that guy didn't legally have the right to sell it even without any fraud occuring".
Title insurance ends up 'fixing' this problem so that the buyer and actual-should-have-been-owner can both be made whole (and they go after the seller for the amount they didn't actually own, but sometimes that won't be possible to recover). If you don't have title insurance you as the buyer just take the liability that you might not actually own the house (or part of the house) if the record was mistaken and needs to be corrected.
In Germany would this just be a case where if the will is executed and you find out too late the inheritor would be screwed with no way to get what you owned instead?
A notary in the UK is a type of lawyer (although not necessarily a solicitor) and requires special certification and training. Their job is to make sure all the paper work is in order and to sign off and legally certify that is in fact so.
In the US (and I think most common law jurisdictions), a notary public is basically Certificate Transparency for legal documents. The notary records that so-and-so signed such-and-such on this date in their log, and if you have any doubts about that, they can produce that log for you to prove to that they witnessed it.
By contrast, civil law notaries are generally full-on lawyers who are trained and intended to perform several legal tasks.
In Spain, Notaries and Property Registrars are a weird thing.
You have to pass an exam, same as a public servant, and the number of positions is limited. But you don't have a regular salary like any other public servant: you set up a private office and get the money directly from your clients.
The price for the actions is regulated but it's high, and the number of licenses is limited, so generally they have hefty salaries, specially compared to the rest of the public servants and the mean of the population.
Their salary can be very variable based on location (as you get the money directly from your clients), but it's said to typically be from 100K to 200K€
In many states, notaries can marry people as the actual legal step of notarizing the marriage license and returning it to the county clerk's office is the actual deed that makes people legally married.
Seems like it, the parent poster is almost implying there's an element of underwriting the transaction/house for which 2% is not unreasonable (Title insurance is in the 1% (or a bit less) range in the US I believe)
Validating property rights is a fixed-time operation that seems to be one of the basic services a state should offer. I read the parent poster naturally asking why 2% instead of some lower, fixed amount.
No idea why it is always everybody else who should work for free.