Who Owns This Field? The Answer Depends on Which Register You Trust

The system consists of a map dividing an area into parcels, each with a unique identifier, and an accompanying register recording for each parcel its extent, its boundaries, its use, its value and the person or body holding rights over it. The map and the register are linked, so any parcel can be found from either direction. The essential feature is that it is comprehensive and public, covering all the land in the area rather than only the parts somebody has chosen to register, and open to inspection so that anybody dealing in land can establish what they are dealing with.

The record serves several purposes that pull in slightly different directions:

• •Assessing and collecting tax on land, which is usually why it began
• •Establishing who holds what, so that sale and inheritance are secure
• •Providing the basis for lending against land as security
• •Resolving boundary disputes without a fresh survey each time
• •Planning infrastructure and controlling development
• •Recording rights short of ownership, such as rights of way and tenancies

Countries divide broadly into two approaches and the difference matters enormously to anybody buying land. Under a deeds system the register records the documents of transaction, and a buyer or their lawyer must trace the chain of those documents back far enough to be confident the seller can sell, which is slow, expensive and never entirely certain. Under a title system the state registers the current holder and guarantees that registration, so a buyer deals with the register rather than with history and is protected if the register is wrong, usually through a compensation fund. The second is faster and cheaper to use and much more expensive to establish, since every parcel must be surveyed and adjudicated once.

Recording where a parcel ends turns out to be the hardest part, and two approaches divide the world. A fixed boundary system surveys the line precisely, records coordinates, and treats those coordinates as definitive, which gives certainty and costs a great deal to establish and to maintain. A general boundary system records the line only approximately, relying on the physical features on the ground, the hedge, the wall or the ditch, to say where it actually runs, which is cheap and leaves neighbours to argue about a strip half a metre wide. England uses the second, which surprises people who assume their title plan shows the exact line, and it does not.

A large share of the world's land is held without any formal record, and the consequences have been argued about extensively. The economist Hernando de Soto argued in 2000 that land held informally cannot be used as security for a loan, so the considerable wealth it represents is locked up and unavailable as capital, and that formalising it would release enormous investment. That argument drove large registration programmes funded by international agencies. Results have been mixed, and later work found that formalising can dispossess people whose customary rights are real but do not fit the categories being recorded, particularly women, pastoralists and communities holding land collectively. The current view is that recording existing rights accurately matters more than converting them into a standard form.

A comprehensive public map and register of land parcels supports taxation, secure transfer, lending, planning and dispute resolution at once. Deeds systems record transactions and force buyers to trace a chain, while title systems record and guarantee the current holder, which is cheaper to use and far costlier to establish. Registration programmes aimed at unlocking credit have sometimes dispossessed people whose customary rights did not fit the form.