Land Titling, Registration and Economic Growth John W' Bruce

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Land Titling, Registration and Economic
GrowthJohn W. Bruce
March 3, 2009 Best Practices for Land Tenure
and Natural Resource Governance in
Africa Holiday Inn -- Nairobi, Kenya
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Contents

• Deed registration
• Title registration
• T/R and Growth Linkages
• Systematic/Mass Titling and Registration
• Issues and Concerns
• Improving Projects
• Points to Take Away

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Deed Registration

• A chronological register of transfers
• Often primitive parcel identification
• Unlinked to modern maps
• Unconnected to records of successions
• Legal impact only on priority of conflicting
  transactions
• Title insurance done for each transfer

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A Deeds Registry Office in Ghana
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Title Registration

• Origins in South Australia or Hamburg?
• The register is organized around the cadastral
  map
• Each parcel on the map has a unique parcel number
• The register consists of sheets with their parcel
  numbers showing the original title, transfers
  successions
• Registration legally confirms (clears) the title
  so titles must be investigated prior to
  registration
• Title registration may be sporadic or systematic

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Systematic/Mass Title Registration

• Almost all donor-funded titling and registration
  is on this model piloted here in Kenya
• Confirms the title and registers it in a title
  registry, thereby giving it conclusive legal
  effect
• Where does it have the most potential?
• Establishing property rights in post-socialist
  countries
• Implementing broad tenure reforms
• Registering squatter land holdings
• Re-establishing tenure security post-conflict

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Titling/Registration Growth Linkages 

• What do economists expect secure, registered
  titles to accomplish?
• Improve security of land tenure
• Lower risk in land transactions
• Improve access to credit through mortgages
• Increase investment in land
• These are predictions based on theory and will
  not be fulfilled in every case, because other
  necessary conditions may not be present

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A Model for Potential Economic Impacts
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Economic Impacts Empirical Findings

• Security of tenure usually increased
• The principal exception appears to be attempts to
  reform and replace customary land tenure
• Value of land usually increased
• Investment usually increased, though the extend
  varies dramatically
• Access to credit is rarely increased
• Pro-poor results are largely unsubstantiated

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Mass Titling Pros and Cons

• Low per parcel cost
• High total costs because of large number of
  parcels
• Low beneficiary costs and easy access for poor
• State subsidy of costs expensive
• Processes more transparent and participatory
• Processes and result less easily corrupted
• Provides comprehensive parcel-based data for land
  administration, taxation, planning
• Thin beneficiary response, because no
  self-selection

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Issues and Concerns

• Process issues
• Individual registration often ignores rights of
  wives, other individuals
• Registration process sometimes manipulated to
  divide resources previously managed as commons
• Incomplete tenure transformations increase
  insecurity
• Failures to register subsequent transfers
• Marketability issues
• Marketability poverty desperation sales
  landlessness
• Husbands sell land out from under families
• Market-dominant ethnicities use markets to
  accumulate land

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Alternative Approaches

• Adapt/Integrate customary land tenure and work
  with traditional institutions to increase the
  transparency and accountability in their
  operations (Ghana)
• More limited, less marketable forms of tenure
  (state leasehold, or ownership with restricted
  transferability) (Tanzania)
• Focus on registering group rather than individual
  titles (community titling in Mozambique)
• Rely heavily on community participation
  (community land certification in Ethiopia)

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Ethiopian Land Certification
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Improving Projects

• Consider carefully the rights to be registered.
  Are they robust?
• Be more open to transitional models (e.g., land
  certification in Ethiopia)
• Link registration to popular demand
• Recognize that titling and registration, to be
  effective, must be accompanied by serious
• Education on rights and registration processes
• Assistance to poor households in utilizing system
• Reduction of the costs of participating in the
  system
• Enhanced rule of law for rights enforcement

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LEP and Registration Project Design
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Points to Take Away

• T R are key tools for building security of
  tenure and low-risk land markets
• T R will fail if it gets too far out ahead of
  land scarcity and market development
• T R will fail without strong support measures
• T R impacts depend on local conditions, so one
  size will not fit all. Initial implementation
  areas need to be very carefully selected
• T R should not be treated, as is often the case
  today, as a panacea or default solution.