land

I was thinking about purchasing land in Maine in an unincorporated area. Until recently, I didn't know there was such a thing as an unincorporated area. But I guess there is up in Maine and I like the sound of that.

If I were to purchase land, is this purchase recorded in a national database? I was wondering if it's possible to purchase land and be "off the grid" of the internet, meaning, not have have the land purchase easily searched on via a computer. I'd prefer if the purchase was just recorded locally, at a local town hall with pen and paper. Could someone who has purchased land recently explain how this works?

I suppose if you are "on the grid", your land purchase would have to be recorded publicly because you're using public utilities like water and sewer and electricity. But if you purchase land "off the grid" with no amenities, perhaps it's not necessary to record the purchase publicly?

 

Somebody owns the land, incorporated area or not. So, unless you are squatting, the transfer is recorded in the county records. As far as I know, there is not federal land records other than federally owned land. Whether or not the county records have been reduced to electronic access, I have to think that's a variable.

 

I bought land this year and it was filed and recorded with the county clerk. The county is small though so I am not worried about it.

 

I don't know of a national database of land owners/purchases, there being no need. Every State I've dealt with, it is recorded by each county. Whether you have utilities or not has nothing to do with the recording of ownership....so 'grid' or 'not grid' has zero to do with it.

In the past, you would have to actually go to the county seat and the recorder's office (it's call the Registrar of Deeds in Tennessee) and get out the deed books (which increasing have gone to microfiche)and look up ownership of any given parcel in the county.

In the computer age, a lot of that is now online....for example, now in Tennessee, there is a State wide database that shows all property ownership records...you can look it up by owner name, or property address, or parcel/map number if you know it .....every piece of land in a county is assigned a parcel number and map number for property tax purposes.....my guess is all States use something very similar.
Tennessee Property Data Home Page

So while there is no national database, you could sit in Oregon and look up a whole lot of information about my property in Tennessee IF you have my name and location. Or you can simply do random searching of any property, but unless you knew my name, you couldn't tie it to me.

NOW, if your question is more about how to hide the fact you own it, there are at least a couple ways.

1. You could simply lie about your name. I could sell you a piece of property in Tennessee, write the deed up myself (I've done it...simple process) and sell you the property. IF you tell me your name is Joe Blow, and your money is good, I really don't care. IF you go thru a lawyer, they want proper ID, and they want social security numbers for the seller because the IRS has leaned on lawyers to 1099 the seller so they can try to force you to pay capital gains on the sale (if there are any) . But as of right now, the Registrar of Deeds will record anything you bring in as long as she gets her recording fee. (That of course probably will change...creeping government)

2. You could incorporate, hide behind that somewhat (you have to file articles of incorporation with the State, pay fees, annual reports/etc) and buy it in the corporation's name. There are probably ways to do it with off shore corporations I'm sure that offer a lot more privacy, I claim no expertise in those.

3. You could have an elderly relative buy it, give you a lifetime estate and/or leave it to you in a will, and maybe hide that way.

Lot of it has to do with your long term plans. Give a fake name, you may have a hard time selling it down the road IF that ever happens. My question is IF you're trying to hide ownership, why ? I really don't care who knows I own my place...nobody is getting it unless I'm dead of natural causes, or in a battle over it, or I've decided to sell....so what difference does it really make ?

 

well, you are going to be disappointed if you want to be invisible.
You buy a piece of property, it gets recorded ultimately, there was a big push a dozen or so years back to move off of the meets and bound and move to lat/lon. The federal gov't was offering money to counties to update their records .. and they took the money.
ever notice how services like google / zillow / others can show you the property boundaries .. it's been digitized.

I think right now the database is probably north of 150 million parcels (when i worked with the dataset it was just under that).
it had geospatial info like corners or verticies for irregular properties, height above sea-level, and working with data aggregators, property owners, addresses, annual income, and other juicy tidbits of info.

Best bet? Set up a trust and call it some non-personally identifiable name like 'Mudlark swamp land trust' and have that entity purchase the property.

The more layers and disparate data sources one needs to dig through will provide you some amount of privacy but with more and more data sources becoming electronically searchable, time is running out. Check with the county and see if they participate in the digitized of parcel boundaries.

want to see it in action?
Shapefiles, Parcel Data, Boundaries & Property Lines Online

or some of the thousands of attributes they add to geospatial data ..
Geocoding and Data Enrichment Solutions - Precisely

Oh did i mention they also overlap this data with aerial and satellite photography ...

Yeah, privacy is dead. Best you can do is obfuscation through layers.

Sorry.

 

I live in an Unorganized Township in Maine.

The majority of Maine is Unorganized Townships.

I like it too.

Deeds are recorded with the county.

If the realtor association wants to pay to digitally photocopy those deeds and to put them into a database, they may. But it will never be the county or the state that pays for it.

I know of other people who have the same concern.

You can form a corporation [like an LLC] and then have that LLC to purchase the land. That way the LLC name is recorded with the county, but not your name. Of course all LLC's are recorded in a different database where it would provide your name, etc.

I recently formed an LLC and I had my deed changed over to the LLC instead of being in my name.

 

There are no 'municipal utilities like water or sewer in the Unorganized Townships [UTs] of Maine.

Some UTs may have power lines, but most do not.

 

I hired a lawyer to record my purchase.

For a $200 flat fee, he did the title search and insurance, his office typed up the new deed and got it recorded. All for $200.

There was no requirement for me to show ID, or SSN.

 

Actually it was the 'State' that paid for it. In this case, it was you and i that paid for it via taxes to the federal government that gave a grant to the states and counties to cover the cost of 'Upgrading'

access to the data isn't cheap through an aggregator but boy, the data you get to see about the property and it's owners, neighbors, etc. is freaking amazing. And by amazing, it will make you never want to purchase anything via a credit card, online or taxable ever again.

Anyone ever get an estimate for lawn fertilization, mowing, a roof job, siding, windows, in the mail that had a dollar amount on it? Data aggregator and service providers helped them make an accurate estimate that they sent you.
You think the price is a good deal for you? it's also a good deal for the person that sent you the estimate as well. They are going to make a profit, and that's even before the upsell.

Here is just one of the aggregators that take data from all over and bundle it up for anyone willing to cough up the 250k per quarter to have access to all kinds of data that you wish wasn't available in one place.
Industries We Serve - CoreLogic

 

There may well be when you SELL it.

 

Appears at least 3 counties are..... Maine Real Property Official Records Search
From Cumberland County page:
"Cumberland County Recorder Of Deeds Disclaimer
The Cumberland County Recorder's Office present the information on this web site as a service to the public. We have tried to ensure that the information contained in this electronic search system is accurate. The Recorder's Office makes no warranty or guarantee concerning the accuracy or reliability of the content at this site or at other sites to which we link............"

And a ton of info here for a lot more counties: https://publicrecords.netronline.com/state/ME

And the State GIS site here: Maine Office of GIS

 

Yeah that crap is ALL online these days. Sorry.

 

I'm from maine, it's kind of a shit hole.
The current governor is doing everything she can to ruin the state.
Stay away.
Oh and you are going to pay taxes on the land. A surprising amount of taxes. Not getting around that. That land will be in someone's name.
Otherwise it's one of the whitest states in the nation and maine is top 2 for lowest violent crime rates in the 50 states, DC and 4 inhabited territories (just a coincidence I'm sure) . At least it was last time I checked.

 

Wow, a ton of helpful information here. Thanks so much for all of your answers.

I live in Massachusetts currently. I see how corrupt the local gov't is. The other day I was thinking how nice it would be if there was no local gov't, and then I learned about unincorporated townships in Maine. That is a beautiful thing. You have no idea. The less gov't, the better.

 

So they can see EVERYTHING you purchased via credit card... for your whole life? That is really scary. They must have an incredible amount of data on all of us. So that means one of my neighbors could have access to one of these databases and know every last little thing about me? How long before someone hacks into that database and publishes that information for the entire world to see?

 

Yes, I just saw your governor doing everything she could to make a brewery go out of business because they wouldn't uphold an unconstitutional executive order concerning COVID. Very sad state of affairs. Unfortunately, I live in Massachusetts which might somehow be even more draconian than Maine. I like that you have unincorporated areas with no local gov't. I also have heard that Maine has much less stringent gun laws. I'd like to live somewhere where I have more freedom. I hate authorities telling me what I can and can't do. There might be other places that allow for more freedoms besides Maine, like Alaska or Utah, but they are far away and quite foreign to me.

 

Is there such a thing as not having Property Taxes? That is another thing I would like to get away from. Not because I don't have the money to pay Property Taxes, but just because of the principle. I think if you buy your land, you should own it and that's that. If you have to pay Property Taxes on the land that you bought, then you don't really own it. The gov't actually owns it, and as far as the gov't is concerned, you're just a pesky peasant who is leasing their land. They have to enforce Property Taxes on the land, even if it's a dollar a year, to make sure you know that you don't really own the land. They do.

 

If your neighbor is the government or a corporation .. then yes.
it's not one database, it's hundreds if not thousands of databases. Most only know a little bit about you. It's the corps and gov'ts that have access to these data sources and joins them together that paint the picture of you.

as for how long before it's been hacked? erm, it happens all the time. It's better if they don't publish it and use it to manipulate you. Most of us leak data and leave breadcrumbs we live in a surveillance society. Cameras, open wi-fi, blue tooth, rfid, MAC addresses, loyalty and branded credit cards, state issued ids and documents, banking info, facebook, twitter, cookies, etc. No putting the genie back into the bottle.

Best you can do is try and remove your existing data and then throw so much erroneous data at it to try and hide in the noise and hide your true self. But a well crafted sql statement can probably still find you.

 

You will meet USA / American Maine folks who act like Canadians !!
Don't be Scared , just a little different !!
Sloth