21. Also noteworthy in Table III are the increase from 343 to 466 in Exclusion Orders under the Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, portending even greater building activity in years to come; the increase from 236 to 387 in Surrenders; and the increase from 1,558 to 2,315 in Miscellaneous Instruments, this being mainly due to more sub-leases and tenancy agreements. The total considerations advanced to the new record of $2,330,980,000, $191,000,000 more than in 1961-62.
22. The record number of deeds presented for registration could not have been registered promptly but for the sustained hard work and enthusiasm of the registration teams, who willingly worked almost every weekend in order that the deeds might be registered and returned to solicitors within a maximum of two weeks after presentation. This is however usually possible only where the memorial of the deed is free from errors, which unfortunately is only so in about one memorial out of three. The need to have errors corrected, most of which could with care easily have been avoided, necessarily slows up the registration process. A further great handicap is the fact that registers required by the registration team are often not immediately available owing to their being in use by solicitors' clerks searching titles or by Land Office and other Departments' staff checking titles. To meet the difficulty, prepara- tions were completed for the introduction on 1st April 1963 of a new system of registration of deeds relating to flats and other units of multi- storey buildings. Nowadays it is standard practice for developers to sell buildings off in separate units of flats, shops, or floors by assigning an undivided share in the land coupled with the right to the exclusive possession of a particular flat, etc. Hitherto, deeds relating to such units have been registered in what are known as sub-division registers, and not infrequently the whole of a register is required for a single building. It therefore often happens that the same register is required by several people at the same time. Under the new system a separate card will be opened for each unit on which will be recorded the same particulars as are now entered in a folio of the sub-division registers. There will in addition be a control card for each building or in the case of a large building for each floor therein, and on this will be recorded in an easily understood fashion references to the individual unit cards. It is intended ultimately to transfer the whole of the Land Office records to cards, which will besides being more convenient to handle effect great savings in space and bookbinding costs.
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