22. For the eleventh successive year the number of instruments registered rose to a new record total. In fact, the 1963-64 total of 37,554 exceeded the previous year's total by no less than 8,557, which itself is well above the total for the whole of 1953-54. Table III shows that the number of instruments registered annually has approximately quad- rupled in the past ten years and doubled in the last five.
23. The figures given in Table IV show that there were substantial increases in all the main categories of instruments registered. The marked drop in the number of assignments in 1962-63 was more than made good in 1963-64 with the total rising to 13,274. Of these 1,715 were assignments of whole lots, sections or sub-sections, and 11,559 assign- ments of undivided shares in hand coupled with the right to use one or more units in the building erected thereon. The total of the con- siderations in all assignments rose to the new record total of $1,201,463,000, of which $609,607,000 represents the total considerations in assignments of undivided shares. Dividing this last total by 11,559, the number of assignments of undivided shares, one gets an average consideration of about $52,000 for transactions of this type as against $46,000 in the previous year. One cannot say that this represents an increase of $6,000 in the average price per unit because many of the assignments were of more than one unit. Nevertheless, the increase does to some extent indicate a true increase in the prices of comparable premises due partly to rising land values and partly to increased building costs. In this connexion it should be borne in mind that in the case of new premises the prices included in the assignments are usually prices fixed perhaps one or two years previously when the agreements for sale and purchase were entered into.
24. The number of Agreements for Sale and Purchase rose sharply to 7,619, ten times as many as in 1959-60. This was due partly to increased use of the procedure under which the Registrar General's consent may be obtained for the sale of flats in uncompleted multi-storey buildings held under Conditions of Sale or subject to Exclusion Orders, and partly to the fact that the practice is growing of selling flats by instalments payable over up to ten years with the assignment postponed until payment of the final instalment.
25. With the increased number of assignments there was naturally a corresponding increase in the number of mortgages, the total increasing from 5,953 in 1962-63 to 7,410, including 343 building mortgages. The grand total of mortgage considerations passed the $1,000,000,000 mark for the first time, to reach $1,160,457,000. This included $267,466,000
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