Here is a brief rundown of the most common types of deeds as I understand them.
Property deeds are legal instruments that are used to assign ownership of real property, to transfer title to the land and its improvements such as a house.
A warranty deed, commonly used in the east and midwest, transfers the ownership of the grantor (seller) to the grantee (buyer) and explicitly promises the grantee that the grantor has good title to the property. A warranty deed says that the grantor is providing a guarantee to the grantee that the title is free and clear of all other claims from the grantor's actions and any other actions from any prior owners. The three guarantees provided by a warranty deed are:
1 The grantor states that the property has not been sold to anybody else.
2 The grantor states that the property is not burdened by any encumbrances apart from those the grantor has already disclosed to the grantee.
3 More important, the grantor will warrant and defend title against the claims of all persons. This means the grantor is guaranteeing the grantee that title is free of any defects that may affect the title, even if the defect was caused by a prior owner.
There is also a special warranty deed that means the grantor is only providing the three guarantees for the time that they owned it and doesn't provide any guarantees of defects that may have been caused by prior owners.
The most commonly used property deed to transfer title in California and some other western states is the grant deed. There are two guarantees contained in a grant deed:
1 The grantor states that the property has not been sold to anybody else.
2 The grantor states that the property is not burdened by any encumbrances apart from those the grantor has already disclosed to the grantee.
A special warranty deed and a grant deed seem to me to be pretty much the same.
Quitclaim deeds are used to convey any interest that the grantor might possess in the property. The grantor might be a legal owner or the grantor might never have formally been identified on a deed describing the property. There is no guarantee that the grantor actually has any legal interest in the property, but if he or she does, that interest is transferred to the grantee.
Quitclaims are most often used during a divorce, to deed the property from one spouse to the other. Or if a married person holds title to a property as sole and separate or perhaps he or she acquired the property before marriage, the spouse not on the deed might be asked to sign a quitclaim deed when the property is sold to a third party, just to make sure that spouse who was not on the deed does not later come back and lay claim to the property.
If you are a buyer, you want to receive a general warranty deed. If you are a seller, you want to provide a grant deed, special warranty deed, or quitclaim deed.
As has been pointed out before in other threads, it would be necessary to use the legal system to force a seller to actually correct any defects even if a general warranty deed is used. This is rarely economically justifiable for a timeshare because of the relatively small purchase prices.
However, I have seen many auctions or sale ads that say that the seller will provide only a quitclaim deed. To me, this is a red flag. I personally will walk away from any purchase when the seller is unwilling to provide a general warranty deed. I make the assumption that there must be some title defect that he or she knows about and is unwilling to disclose; that is not a type of person I wish to deal with.