I was having lunch at a hotel bar in Vegas a number of years back. A Brit, I think, was paying for his meal and he was like "why are they taking my card???" So I explained. In my experience in the UK, they don't want to even touch your card.
"everything I see online" is probably disproportionately outliers. I use a credit card hundreds of times a year in many places around the world and at least cursorily keep my eye on charges in my statements and fraudulent charges are rare--like maybe every few years at most.
It might be more pleasant for the people who are able to pay for every website, every magazine, every news source etc. (Maybe. I do discover a lot of things through advertising.) Probably less so for everyone else.
I'm not sure I get the huge safety risk. You buy a property and you're in a public registry. There's no anonymity at that point in the US other than setting up trusts or other ownership screens.
First of all, like you say, those registries can have an LLC's name or the name of a trust, etc. It may not be my name. But some rando showing up doesn't know me, they want to occupy my house.
Second, those registries are much harder to find me in than a random Facebook Marketplace ad.
Third, those registries do not advertise that I am trying to sell my property or rent it out; there is no invitation to come to my home and approach me. I have literally had people show up at my door asking why I'm there if my house is for rent. Imagine if one of those people - as is common on Facebook Marketplace - was unhinged or dangerous, or got mad when I told them the truth.
It is a direct threat to my safety in a way that the mere record of my ownership of the property wouldn't be (if it had my name on it).
In fact, in the US, I'm not sure it even happens systematically at the state level. In the state where I live (Massachusetts) even though counties are largely vestigial, that's where deeds and such are registered and filed as far as I know. (Just went through this for various reasons.)
A number of years back I somehow managed to lose my driver's license between the car and the airport door. Even called the limo company to have the driver look. But <poof> apparently. Normally I have a backup ID but this was a very last minute and short trip.
Amazingly (to me) the TSA process was easy. What wasn't easy was checking into a crappy Travelodge near the airport. I imagine if I were staying at one of my usual chains where I have a loyalty card, a manager would have waved away any problems. (I did have photo ID and I was plastered all over the Web; I just didn't have backup government issued photo ID which I now make a particular point of carrying.)
It's complicated. I live on a parcel of a very old property by US standards (early 1800s) that was subdivided shortly before I bought it. Without going into all the details, my neighbor who also lives on a parcel of the original land had a survey done and it turned out there were some significant incursions into other properties.
And we're not talking inches.
But, yeah, even inches (or any liens) can be an issue when it comes time to sell.
I used a calculator throughout college; they had just become relatively affordable. But I still generally brought a slide rule to exams in case something happened to my calculator. (They were LED displays and things weren't as generally reliable at that time.)
reply