Vermont has a population of about 600,000, and we have 251 separate sets of land records to accommodate them.  Each town (not county) keeps its own land records.  I average 125 miles per day, and cover only about 60 towns in the southern part of the state.  My friends in the northeastern part of the state cover more territory than that, with a sparser population density.

Not to mention that the roads are mostly two-lane and about a third of them are unpaved.  Gotta love Vermont.  Very few of our land records are computerized, the vast majority are handwritten indexes, and each of our town clerks is phobically independent about how the land records are indexed, so we have to learn each individual clerk's indexing techniques to find ANYTHING.  In addition, our state Supreme Court has ruled that both state and municipal permitting issues can constitute clouds and/or defects on title, but that seems to be totally unimportant to the "information companies" who want only a deed and the mortgage information.

Doesn't sound like the perfect state for national databases to work in, but who knows. I'm coming to the conclusion that anybody can sell anybody anything if the buyer is just willing to believe the seller has the goods.

=A=