Title

Key Takeaways

• Title is the ownership interest itself, not a document. The deed is the paper that transfers it.
• Title can be divided among several holders at once, so an owner, a lender, an easement holder, and a lien claimant can all hold recorded interests in the same parcel.
• In Washington, an interest in real estate passes by deed under RCW 64.04.010, so title moves by written instrument rather than by payment or possession.
• Washington is a community property state, and RCW 26.16.030 bars one spouse or domestic partner from selling, conveying, or encumbering community real property without the other joining in the instrument.

What It Means

Title is the ownership itself: the bundle of legal rights a person holds in a piece of real estate, including the right to use it, to keep others off it, to borrow against it, and to sell it. Title answers two questions at the same time. Who owns this property, and how much of it does that owner still hold?

The second question matters more than students expect, because title is not all or nothing. A single parcel can carry the owner's fee interest, a lender's recorded security interest, a neighbor's easement, a utility right of way, and an unpaid contractor's lien, all at once. Every recorded interest other than the owner's own is an Encumbrance on what that owner can deliver at closing, and what a seller can convey is whatever is left after the other holders take their share.

Title is also not a piece of paper. Students hear the word and picture a certificate like the one for a car. Washington real estate ownership works differently. Title is proved out of the Chain Of Title, the recorded sequence of instruments in the county records that shows how ownership travelled from earlier owners to the person selling today.

How It Works in Washington

In Washington, title moves by written instrument and nothing else. RCW 64.04.010 requires every conveyance of real estate, or any interest in it, and every contract creating or evidencing an encumbrance upon it, to be by Deed. Money changing hands does not move title, and neither does taking possession. A signed and acknowledged deed does.

Two Washington rules decide who is able to convey. First, Washington is a Community Property state. RCW 26.16.030 makes property acquired after marriage or after registration of a state registered domestic partnership community property, and provides that neither spouse nor domestic partner shall sell, convey, or encumber the community real property without the other joining in the deed or other instrument, which must be acknowledged by both. A deed signed by one spouse alone on community real property is a defect a closing agent is expected to catch before recording.

Second, priority runs through the public record. RCW 65.08.070 makes an acknowledged conveyance recordable in the county where the property sits, and makes an unrecorded conveyance void as against a subsequent purchaser or mortgagee in good faith and for a valuable consideration whose conveyance is first duly recorded. Title in Washington is therefore proved out of the record rather than out of the seller's description of it, which is why closings turn on what the county index shows.

Example

Priya and Aaron buy a house in Everett for $610,000 during their marriage and take title in both names. Six years later Aaron accepts an offer at $735,000 and signs the deed by himself, because Priya is out of the country that week.

The closing agent stops the file before recording. RCW 26.16.030 does not permit one spouse to convey community real property without the other joining in the instrument and acknowledging it, so the deed as signed will not clear. Priya signs before a notary at a consulate, the corrected deed records, and the sale closes at $735,000, which is $125,000 more than the $610,000 they paid.

The same record search turns up a utility easement recorded in 1998 running ten feet along the north lot line. That easement does not stop the sale and nobody is asked to remove it. It is simply part of the title the buyer receives, and it stays attached to the land long after Priya and Aaron have moved on.

Common Mistakes and Exam Traps

• Title is the ownership and the deed is the instrument that transfers it. If the answer choice is a document someone signs and records, it is the deed.
• A preliminary title report or a title commitment is not title. It reports what the public record shows and what the insurer is prepared to cover.
• Recording does not create title. RCW 65.08.070 makes an unrecorded conveyance void only as against a later good faith purchaser for value who records first, which is a priority rule rather than an ownership rule.
• In Washington, one spouse cannot convey community real property alone. RCW 26.16.030 requires the other spouse or domestic partner to join in the instrument, and it must be acknowledged by both.