Property held abroad is recorded under the rules of the jurisdiction in which it sits, not those of the owner's home country. The owner who is private in one place may be public in another, and the difference can come as a surprise. The land registry of one country may treat ownership as private information accessible only to the parties and to the tax authority; another may publish names and prices on a register open to anyone.

In France, the cadastre records the geographic detail of every parcel; ownership is held separately at the conservation des hypothèques, with access limited but not closed. In Spain, the Registro de la Propiedad is open in principle though the inquiry must be specific. In parts of the United States, county recorder offices publish deed transfers with prices and names. In England and Wales, the Land Registry records title with the owner's name visible on payment of a modest fee.

For a private individual with property across several countries, the picture is rarely consistent. A house in one jurisdiction may be searchable by name; the same person's house in another may be effectively unfindable without prior information. The owner has assumed a uniform level of privacy that the registers do not, in fact, deliver.

The structures placed around foreign property (a local holding company, a trust, a nominee arrangement) interact differently with each jurisdiction's rules. What works in one place may produce a more visible record in another, because the structure itself must be registered and the registration is more open than the underlying ownership would have been.

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The desk reads foreign property holdings in the registers that actually record them, not in the registers that would record them at home. The picture that emerges is sometimes different from the picture the owner expects, and the work begins from there.

Where this picture matters to a client, the desk reads it in detail and considers what considered work is feasible.