The importance of land registration

When it comes to real estate, the big issues are almost always leasing, housing, construction and land use. Land registration (or the lack thereof) is a serious problem that precedes many of these issues, essentially affecting the legal certainty of real estate transactions and the potential for land use.

 

Living with people who have a talent and taste for mathematics, I got used to hearing about calculation challenges. My lack of skill always affected my participation (none), but I remember one of these challenges well: a train leaves Porto for Lisbon at x o'clock and travels at an average speed of x km/hour; another leaves Lisbon for Coimbra at y o'clock and travels at y km/hour; in Santarém, there is a cow grazing near the line; now calculate. Even for those who were committed to the subject, the question ‘calculate what?’ was inevitable, followed by laughter and the answer: ‘the fright the cow got’. This story comes to mind when talking about calculations and scares. Because it is a big scare – worse than the cow's – that you get when you try to physically identify a building in Portugal. Because there is no updated land registry and, I dare say, there is not enough land for all the registered buildings. I am not talking about urban buildings in cities, with a street, police number and floor. I am talking about all other urban, rural and mixed buildings. Because a legal building may not physically exist and there are physical buildings without legal existence (such as AUGIs – urban areas of illegal origin).

 

Read the full article in Portuguese here.