Also known as: bona fide purchaser · bona-fide purchaser · bona-fide purchasers · BFP · good faith purchaser · innocent purchaser for value
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A purchaser who acquires property for value in good faith and without notice of prior interests or defects in title.
Blake Butler paid value for a parcel from a seller who had earlier conveyed the same land to another buyer. The first deed remained unrecorded. Blake had no actual or constructive notice of the prior deed and recorded his own deed first under the applicable statute. The recording act gave Blake priority over the earlier unrecorded interest.
Belinda Baxter purchased land from a grantor whose neighbor openly used a driveway across the parcel. Visible use put Baxter on inquiry notice of the neighbor's unrecorded claim. Baxter paid value and recorded promptly yet still lost priority because the notice element failed.
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Brendan Burns obtained a painting by fraud and sold it to Bobby Brady who paid value without knowledge of the fraud. The original owner sued Brady for conversion. Because Brady qualified as a bona fide purchaser the conversion claim against him failed.
Bradley Banks received a forged deed to a lot and later conveyed it to Birchwood Apparel for value. Birchwood had no notice of the forgery and recorded its deed. Under the recording act Birchwood took free of the true owner's claim in the jurisdiction's notice statute.
Boubacar Bah entered an installment land contract and paid half the price before discovering a prior unrecorded claim. The court awarded the land to the prior claimant but granted Bah an equitable lien for the amount already paid because Bah qualified as a bona fide purchaser to that extent.
Benson Motors purchased an ongoing bottling business with knowledge that the seller had committed an unfair labor practice. The purchaser continued the same operations. The Board could order the purchaser to remedy the violation because it acquired the business with notice of the prior wrong.
The purchaser must take in good faith, give valuable consideration, and acquire the property without actual or constructive notice of the prior unrecorded interest.
No. Inquiry notice of an unrecorded interest prevents the purchaser from claiming bona fide purchaser status and blocks priority under the recording act.
A forged deed conveys no title, yet in some jurisdictions a subsequent bona fide purchaser who records may still prevail against the true owner depending on the type of recording statute and chain-of-title rules.
The court may award the land to the prior claimant while granting the installment buyer an equitable lien equal to the amount already paid.
…of a painting. An efficient registry of original works of art might better serve the interests of artists, owners of art, and bona fide purchasers than the law of adverse possession with all of its uncertainties. L. DuBoff, The Deskbook of Art Law at 470-472 (Fed.Pub.Inc. 1977). Although we cannot mandate the initiation of a…