What is the “The North Carolina Conner Act”

What is The North Carolina Conner Act?


The North Carolina Conner Act is: “a state law that requires many types of real estate documents to be recorded for protection against claims from third parties.” These documents include deeds, mortgages, purchase contracts, installment land contracts, assignments, options, leases exceeding three years, easements, and restrictive covenants, and pure race statute.


Why was The North Carolina Conner Act created?


The reason that the Conner Act was created is to protect you from claims from third parties. Without the Conner act then somebody would be able to sell their house twice to two different people at the same time. Person A could sell there home to person B but then could Sell the house again to person C the same day and collect money from both person B and C. With the Conner act, person B could record their deed and their house would be protected from being sold again.


If person B does not record their deed and person C records their deed before them then person C is the rightful owner of the deed and person B is just purely out of luck. This kind of recording is called the pure race statute, this means whoever records first prevails, even if that purchaser had personal knowledge of a previous interest that was unrecorded.


Also remember that when applying the Conner act to leases, that any lease over three years needs to be recorded to be protected against third parties. If a lease over three years is not recorded then if the property is bought out by another person, the terms of the lease are not required to be honored.