Registrar-Generals-Department-Annual-report-1959-1960 — Page 11

growth of the new procedure of selling flats outright that the Land Office has had to open no less than 52 special sub-division registers since 1956. Reflecting this tendency to smaller units, the average pur- chase price per assignment has dropped to about $46,000 as compared with $51,500 in 1958/59 and $64,000 in 1957/58.

7. The grand total of considerations stated in the instruments registered has for the first time crossed the $1,000,000,000 mark, reach- ing the prodigious sum of $1,075,985,000, over $113,000,000 more than the previous year's total. A breakdown of the total is given in Table IV. It is interesting to observe the continued growth in the amounts advanced on building mortgages. Whereas ten years ago the amount advanced on such mortgages constituted little more than 1% of the total advanced on mortgages, the amount advanced on building mort- gages in 1959/60, nearly $60,000,000 represented about 17% of that total.

Searches

8. An essential preliminary to every land transaction is a search in the land registers to ascertain who is registered as the owner of the property and what, if any, incumbrances are registered against it. During the year 5,973 searches were made by members of the public, a fee of $2 being charged for each lot or section of a lot for which records are produced. The vast majority of these searches were carried out by Solicitors' clerks, who are familiar with the Land Office system of keeping the registers. In addition to these, thousands of searches were made for Government Departments either by their own or by the Land Office staff. The lay-out of the Land Office in the Department's new accommodation in the Central Government Building, West Wing, includes a spacious, well-lighted search area where members of the public can consult the Land Office records in air-conditioned comfort, a great improvement on the dark and congested search space in the old Land Office in the Supreme Court Building.

Stamp Duty

9. The total amount of stamp duty paid on instruments registered was $13,088,000, $857,000 more than the previous year's total of $12,231,000. The increase was mainly due to the larger total of con- siderations in assignments.

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