Glad you liked the “not-exactly-an-ad-because-it-is-related mention.” While the probability of a forged deed is relatively low, the impact is not. In addition to the risk of a thief just forging a deed to a property they have no connection to, there is also the risk of intra-family deed/mortgage forgery. This intra-family forgery is likely substantially underreported, and causes the family to lose the property it has acquired through hard work because of one bad apple.

In addition, people are (rightly) highly risk-averse about anything that affects their family, their home, or the assets that they built over years and decades. For example, real estate investors commonly put their property into an LLC (which costs $800/year in CA) or buy liability insurance, even though the probability of incurring a large liability is low.

With respect to costs, even though land records are public, machine-parseable title/recorder data is expensive. Data from the tax assessor (even machine-parseable) is relatively cheap, but is not as complete as recorder data. For example, it does not have mortgages. We intend to achieve economies-of-scale with respect to recorder data. At that point we intend to offer additional value at the same price (for example, insurance) and add a free-but-sell-leads service.