Grantee

Key Takeaways

• The grantee is the party who receives an interest in real property under a deed, which in an ordinary sale is the buyer.
• The grantee is named in the deed but does not sign it. Washington requires the deed to be signed by the party bound by it, and on a transfer that party is the grantor (RCW 64.04.020).
• Recording is what protects a grantee. Under RCW 65.08.070 an unrecorded conveyance is void as against a later good faith purchaser for valuable consideration whose conveyance is recorded first.
• County auditors index every recorded instrument under both names, grantors alphabetically in the direct index and grantees alphabetically in the inverted index (RCW 65.04.050).

What It Means

The grantee is the party who takes an interest in real property when a Deed transfers it. In a sale that is the buyer, but the role is wider than buying: an heir receiving a distribution, a spouse added to title, and a lender taking a security interest are all grantees in their own documents. The party on the other side, giving the interest up, is the Grantor.

Two things about the grantee trip students up. First, the grantee is named in the deed but does not have to sign it. Washington requires a deed to be signed by the party bound by it (RCW 64.04.020), and on a transfer of ownership that party is the grantor. Second, the grantee's name is what the county auditor indexes the transfer under, so the name written on the deed has to match the name the grantee will use the next time the property changes hands. A grantee who takes title as M. Vega and later sells as Marisol Vega Ruiz has handed the next searcher a puzzle to solve.

Whatever Title the grantee ends up holding is only as good as what the grantor had to give, which is why a grantee's real protection is the public record rather than the paper itself.

How It Works in Washington

In Washington, being named as grantee is the start of the grantee's job rather than the end of it. RCW 65.08.070 provides that a conveyance not recorded is void as against any subsequent purchaser or mortgagee in good faith and for a valuable consideration from the same vendor whose conveyance is first duly recorded. That is a race-notice rule, and it means a grantee holding a signed deed in a desk drawer can lose the property outright to a later buyer who knew nothing about the first sale and reached the auditor's counter first.

So the grantee's deed goes to the county auditor, promptly. To be recordable it has to satisfy RCW 64.04.020: in writing, signed by the party bound (the grantor), and acknowledged. RCW 65.04.050 then requires the auditor to index the instrument under both names, with grantors in alphabetical order in the direct index and grantees in alphabetical order in the inverted index. That inverted index is how the next buyer's title searcher finds the grantee's ownership at all. See Recording for the mechanics of the filing itself.

Example

Marisol Vega buys a cabin near Leavenworth from Ted Brandt for $310,000 and closes on March 3. Ted signs a statutory warranty deed naming Marisol as grantee, hands it to her at closing, and Marisol takes it home and files it with her tax papers. Nobody records it.

On March 20, Ted signs a second deed on the same cabin, this time to Priya Nair for $325,000. Priya has never heard of Marisol, pays real money, and her escrow records her deed with the Chelan County Auditor on March 21.

Priya wins the cabin. Under RCW 65.08.070, Marisol's unrecorded conveyance is void as against a subsequent purchaser in good faith and for a valuable consideration whose conveyance is first duly recorded. Marisol was the first grantee and she still loses. What she has left is a claim against Ted for the $310,000 she paid and for breach of his warranty covenants, worth only as much as Ted can pay. Recording on March 3 would have taken one trip to the auditor's office and ended the story there.

Common Mistakes and Exam Traps

• The grantee does not sign the deed. Any answer choice stating that a deed requires both parties' signatures to be effective is wrong.
• Being named as grantee is not the same as being protected. In Washington a later buyer who acted in good faith and recorded first can take the property from an earlier grantee who never recorded.
• Grantee and grantor differ by two letters and are constantly swapped. The -ee ending marks the party who receives, matching lessee, mortgagee, and optionee.
• A grantee who takes title under one form of a name and sells under another creates a break in the index. Auditors list grantees alphabetically, so a name mismatch hides the transfer from the next searcher.