Under a race-notice recording statute, which statement correctly describes priority between two otherwise comparable purchasers?

• A. Earliest recorded deed wins regardless of notice.
• B. No notice protects the later purchaser regardless of recording time.
• C. First to record who had no notice wins.
• D. The later grantee with no notice always wins.

Answer: (C)

In race-notice jurisdictions, winning depends on two things: you must take without notice and you must record before anyone else who also took without notice. When two purchasers both have no notice, the one who records first has priority.

So the correct way to describe priority is that the winner is the first to record among those who had no notice. The other descriptions mix in either pure race logic (earliest deed wins regardless of notice) or pure notice logic (no notice protects the later purchaser regardless of recording time), or say the later no-notice grantee always wins, which isn’t right because recording timing still matters among those who had no notice.