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> The concept of title insurance doesn't exist in Germany

(Title insurance is where you must buy insurance when buying a house to guard against the risk that the house may have unknown liabilities or owners)

It doesn't exist in Sweden either, because the ownership of houses is in a central register. You can't make a claim against a house if it is not registered.

Funnily enough, there's no such register for condos in Sweden. So you can end up with a nasty surprise if it turns out you bought a condo that there were unknown bank loans against. But it doesn't happen often enough that there is title insurance against it.



When I asked a real estate agent about buying a condo already owned by another they replied surprisingly "how can it happen? that would be illegal"


:) Yeah, nothing illegal ever happens.

Was this in Sweden? In that case, I have heard of cases where a condo that someone bought had an unknown bank loan taken out against it.

The bank loan is still attached to the condo even if it changes owners. The bank can force you to sell the condo to pay the loan back to the bank.

You can then turn around and sue the previous owner who took out the loan. Good luck with that.

I don't think this happens very often and usually the condo association knows which loans are taken out against which condos.


Insurance companies have a similar product though, 'dolda-fel-försäkring'.

I'm not sure what a condo is, but if it's a 'bostadsrätt' then you check with the 'bostadsrättsförening', they're responsible for keeping a register of 'pantsättningar'.




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