Another aspect of this question is what we encounter here on the coast----almost on a daily basis we find a property free and clear.  It is usually a property worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  This phenomenon was suprising to us when we first moved our business to SC, but now it's clear.  The interest rate is higher for second homes (ie. vacation, beach, etc) therefore there is a growing trend of owners who are mortgaging their primary residence (usually in another state), so there are no liens on the property in SC.  We see this also with development or resort companies that mortgage other properties to build or maintain rental properties in vacation areas. 

I also agree with another post about finding unrecorded mortgages in defunct title offices.  I'm not putting anything onto the title companies in SC but one of the problems we face daily is that many of the counties we service are woe-fully behind.  Charleston's thru date is only 11/01 as of today!  Therefore, when we drop of a recording, we don't see or hear from that paper for at least 8-10 weeks.  If we didn't have a database to remind us to check on our recordings to see where they are in the process, we would probably forget some.   Most of our clients previously mailed in their recordings to the courthouse.  If a problem was found, the recording was rejected and mailed back to the client who had to fix the problem and re-mail the recording back to the courthouse.  However, they only checked the first problem.  If the clerk found a problem, they stopped checking THERE so after the client resubmitted the document, if there was another problem further in the document, they mailed it back to the client.  With a limbo of 8-10 weeks, you can see where a mortgage could come up among the missing:)

Wendi