Deeds Registration
9. Table II shows the number of instruments registered in each year since 1952-53; Table III, the number of instruments by categories in each year since 1957-58; and Table IV, the total considerations in the principal categories for each year since 1952-53.
10. Notwithstanding the decline in the cost of private building work completed during the year, the number of deeds registered and the grand total of considerations stated therein reached new record high figures. Two years ago in 1958-59 the grand total of considerations recorded in one year crossed the $1,000,000,000 mark for the first time and reached what was then described as the prodigious sum of $1,075,985,000; in 1960-61 the total jumped by $426,000,000 to $1,502,351,000, and in 1961-62 a further great leap forward carried the total $637,000,000 up to $2,139,912,000. A breakdown of this total is given in Table IV together with the figures for the previous nine years for comparison. As compared with 1960-61 there were increases of $356,000,000 in assignments, $144,000,000 in mortgages other than building mortgages, $13,000,000 in building mortgages, $81,000,000 in re-assignments and $42,000,000 in miscellaneous, the last due mainly to the increase in the number of agreements for sale registered. The steady growth of the amount of money secured on mortgages of land may be seen by comparing the totals of mortgages of both kinds with those of re-assignments; over the past ten years the grand total of the former has exceeded the grand total of the latter by $1,218,000,000.
11. As for the number of instruments registered, this rose by 2,608 over the previous year's total to 27,218, that is to say, more than the total number registered in the first 56 years of the Land Office's existence. The principal categories in which increases were recorded were assignments up 525 to 13,160; mortgages up 634 to 5,206; re- assignments up 360 to 3,650; agreements up 653 to 2,161; Exclusion Orders up 186 to 343; and miscellaneous up 296 to 1,558. Unfortunately, the increase in the number of instruments registered was accompanied by a parallel increase in the number of errors in the memorials thereof; indeed, the percentage of memorials with errors rose a fraction to 30.4%. Of the 13,160 assignments 11,134 were of undivided shares in land coupled with the right to a flat, floor or shop. The total of the considera- tions in these 11,134 assignments was $400,456,000, so that the average consideration for an assignment of this kind was just under $36,000, as compared with $32,000 in 1960-61. One cannot say this is the average
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