Conveyancing Rules

The law requires certain procedures to convey title to real estate.

The law requires certain procedures to convey title to real estate.

California law requires certain basic procedures for conveying title to real estate. These conveyancing rules involve the preparation and execution of the required legal paperwork, plus additional steps involved with placing that legal paperwork in the public records. Because of the nature of title to real estate, the public must be involved in order to protect the recipient's title to the real estate.


Under California law, the proper legal document for conveying title to real estate is a deed. Specifically, California law allows three different types of deeds, including the warranty deed, the grant deed and the quitclaim deed. The deed must identify the grantor, which is the person selling or giving title to the property, and the grantee, which is the person purchasing or receiving title to the property. The grantor must sign the deed and have a public notary acknowledge his signature on the deed.

Legal Description

The concept of owning title to real estate is a fluid one, because property boundaries constantly change and because it is so difficult to "mark" ownership on the property itself. To deal with this problem, the law relies on deeds to prove paper title to real estate. The proper way to identify real estate in a deed is by legal description, sometimes called a metes and bounds description. The legal description describes the property according to the property's location relative to fixed monuments on the property grid. Unlike a mailing or street address, those monuments never change, which means the legal description never changes. Therefore, California conveyancing rules require the use of legal descriptions, not just addresses, to permanently identify the conveyed property.


The final conveyancing rule for California real estate is that the deed, after it has been signed and notarized, must be recorded in the public records. Recording a deed involves taking the original signed deed to the county recorder's office in the county where the property is located. You will pay a small fee to have the county recorder file and index a copy of the deed in the public records. Recording allows mortgage lenders and future potential purchasers to identify the chain of title and to verify that the borrower/seller actually has good title to the property. A real estate conveyance is incomplete until the deed has been recorded.

References (2)

  • NOLO: Deeds FAQ

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