vigour. So long as boom conditions prevail and the demand for flats remains strong, cases like Peony House West Block will be rare, but the dangers inherent in the situation are obvious, and are receiving the close attention of the Government, which has set up a Working Party of which Mr. R. H. MUNRO, Deputy Registrar General, is Chairman, to study this and other problems relating to large blocks of flats.
7. Under these conditions it was inevitable that the number of instruments registered in the Land Office during the year would for the eighth year in succession be the highest ever recorded. In fact, the number rose over the previous year's figure by 4,209, the highest increase ever in one year, to the new record total of 24,610. The principal categories in which increases were recorded were assignments which rose by 2,655 to 12,635, mortgages by 561 to 4,572 and agree- ments by 741 to 1,508, this last possibly being due to the desire of purchasers, warned by the Peony House West Block case, to protect their position as far as possible. Of the 12,635 assignments 10,553 were of undivided shares in land coupled with the right to a flat, floor, or shop. The total of the considerations in these 10,553 assignments was $337,195,055 so that the average consideration per assignment of this kind was just under $32,000. One cannot say this is the average price per unit, because many of the assignments were of two or more units. 8. Last year the grand total of considerations stated in the instru- ments registered for the first time exceeded the $1,000,000,000 mark. This year in one bound of over $426,000,000 the total has crossed the $1,500,000,000 mark, to set up the new record of $1,502,351,000. A breakdown of this total is given in Table IV, from which it will be seen that the increase is almost entirely accounted for by increases in the totals for assignments and mortgages other than building mortgages. One interesting feature is that the total for re-assignments, has actually dropped slightly, which means that there has been a significant increase in the amount of money remaining invested in mortgages of land.
9. The Land Registration Ordinance (Cap. 128) provides that regis- tration thereunder shall be made by a memorial containing prescribed particulars delivered to the Land Office signed (in the normal case) by one of the parties, and that every memorial shall be verified either by the oath of some competent person or by the certificate of a Solicitor. Nothing is said about the production of the original instrument, but in practice this is invariably produced, and the memorial is checked to ensure that the particulars therein correspond with those in the instru- ment. That this process of checking is essential is proved by the fact
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