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LAW, ORDER AND RECORDS
of registration is broadly similar to that in the Yorkshire Deeds Registries in England. The Land Registration Ordinance provides that all deeds and instruments registered under it shall have priority according to their respective dates of registration, and also that deeds and instruments not registered (other than bona fide leases at rack rents for any term not exceeding three years) shall be absolutely null and void as against any subsequent bona fide pur- chaser or mortgagee for valuable consideration. Registration is therefore essential to the protection of title, but does not guarantee it. Deeds affecting land in Hong Kong, Kowloon, portions of New Kowloon, and a few lots in the New Territories are registered in the Land Office, Victoria; deeds affecting land in the rest of New Kowloon and all other lots in the New Territories are registered at the district land offices of the New Territories Administration (land tenure is described in chapter 10). The Land Office, besides being a deeds registry, advises the Government on, and does the Government conveyancing in, all matters relating to land, including the sale, grant and exchange of Crown land, both in the urban areas and in the New Territories.
The building boom of recent years continued unabated. As mentioned in chapter 10 a great deal of new land was put on the market by the Government, in addition to which developers and brokers were very active in buying up old properties for redevelop- ment. In view of the extremely high price of land in all areas it has become necessary for economic reasons to build upwards, and in almost all parts of the urban areas large new blocks of flats were erected. Most of the schemes were undertaken by limited companies specially incorporated for the purpose there were no fewer than 417 land investment and development companies incorporated during the year. These companies sell off to individual purchasers the flats, shops, floors or other units in the building erected or being erected, each purchaser getting an undivided share in the land and building coupled with the right of exclusive posses- sion of a particular unit. There are often many hundreds of units in a block and in one case there were 920. A new feature noted during the year was the growing practice of splitting units up among several co-owners, who thus apparently become owners of cubicles in a flat. A working party set up by the Government in 1961 to study the problems of management and maintenance of