HOUSING AND LAND
121
Several sites were disposed of to holders of land exchange entitlements (Letters ‘A' and 'B'). They included a site measuring 8 116 square metres in Sha Tin for non-industrial development and a site measuring 7 508 square metres in Tai Po for commercial/residential development. The number of sites offered to land exchange entitlement holders was 36, of which 13 were disposed of. The majority were in Sha Tin.
The total amount of land disposed of in the New Territories during 1981 was 45.777 hectares. This compares with a total of 31.527 hectares disposed of the previous year.
Land Office
The issue, renewal, variation and termination of Crown leases are dealt with by the Land Office, a division of the Registrar General's Department. Records of transactions relating to land on Hong Kong Island, in Kowloon, New Kowloon (with a few exceptions) and some of the more urban parts of the New Territories are kept in the Land Office. Records relating to transactions affecting other parts of the New Territories and the few exceptional New Kowloon cases are kept at district land offices, operated by the New Territories Administration. During a phased programme, the Registrar General's Department will be taking over the responsibility for land registration in the New Territories. The first registry to be taken over under this arrangement will be at Tsuen Wan.
The Land Office has responsibility for the registration of all instruments affecting land; the drafting, completion and registration of conditions of sale, grant and exchange of Crown land; the granting of mining leases; the registration of owners' corporations; the apportionment of Crown rents and premia; the recovery of outstanding Crown rents; the enforcement of lease conditions; and the provision of conveyancing services for the Housing Authority in connection with the sale of flats built under the Home Ownership Scheme. It gives legal and other advice to the government on matters relating to land and government land transactions.
A report on a comprehensive survey of the existing system of registering, keeping and retrieving Land Office records, recommended that all memorials, Crown leases and conditions of sale, grant and other documents should be kept in microfilm form. To facilitate the implementation of the microfilming system, the Land Registration Ordinance was amended by the Land Registration (Amendment) Ordinance 1980, which came into operation in June 1981. The Land Registration Regulations 1981, providing for the microfilming of Land Office records and for other registration procedures of the Land Office; and the Land Registration Fees (Amendment) Regulations 1981, which revised the fees payable in respect of the registration of instruments in the Land Office and other fees, also came into operation in June.
The Land Registration Ordinance provides that all instruments registered under it shall have priority according to their respective dates of registration. This provision applies unless they are registered within one month of execution, in which case priority generally relates back to the date of the instrument. However, for charging orders and pending actions, prioity runs from the day following the date of actual registration. The ordinance also provides that unregistered instruments, other than bona fide leases at rack rent for any term not exceeding three years, shall be null and void as against any subsequent bona fide purchaser or mortgagee for valuable consideration. Registration is therefore essential to the protection of title, but does not guarantee it.
During the year, 189 745 instruments were registered in the Land Office, compared with 193 092 in 1980. More detailed statistics and comparisons with previous years are in Appendix 29. At the end of the year, the card index of property owners contained the names