Deed vs. Title

[Charlie Gruber]

I’ve been looking into difference between Title and a Deed and below are a few notes. Please let me know if something look incorrect or if left out important details. Thanks.

A deed is actual piece of paper that records a single event about a property such as transfer of ownership. The deed is recorded as public record. A property can have many deeds that have been recorded against it over time but only the most current shows current ownership.

A title is the entire history of a property. It is not an actual document but more of a “concept” or history of a property showing all deeds, judgements, leans etc. recorded against property. The title is not recorded as part of public record.

An analogy I came up with is a title is like a job resume and a deed is like a single job instance on your resume. Just like how a resume is a summary of your entire work history a title is summary of property history over time. In addition, just like how a past job represents an event in your history a deed represents an event is history of property.