Real Estate Title Insurance

Sounds like your country may have a market for something we call (in the USA) "title insurance".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_insurance

What?! You can't transact real estate in the US without recording the deed in your local county clerk's office...

This is somewhat the point of "title insurance" in the US. In this case the buyer would be protected since technically the real owner never actually sold the property.

Wouldn't that be unethical of the lawyers and title companies?

Is this what title insurance tries to solve (in the us)?

In theory the state could be a trusted authority on land ownership, but in practice they don’t have their act together. It’s such a mess that you have to pay for third-party “title search” and “title insurance” to protect the lender from the risk that a sale might not be honored because of a dispute about the property line a century ago. I once had an entry-level temp job verifying old claims on microfiche; I could easily believe they still have to do that today.

Title insurance at least here in the US. Not sure what you guys do in the UK.

Cash or not, won't the buyer have absolute power over the property (Tumblr)?

Vast majority of house sales involve at least one of* an estate agent* a mortgage company (on the purchase or the sale)* involve a sale at a market rate* involve parties that know each other personally (family etc).To not have any of those surely should raise a warning flag that "this requires a little more investigation" than a forged driving license. This wasn't an abandoned house being sold after being empty for several years.

This isn't completely unlike a deed to a house. People have conned folks out of their deeds to properties, and sometimes the transaction is upheld and the bad actor gets to move into a house, and sometimes the transaction is recognized as invalid, and nobody gets kicked out of a house they've paid for.