In many economies property titles are
registered manually and most titles
remain stored in paper archives with
restricted access. In 62 economies
property titles are kept only in paper
format. Relying on a paper-based
system increases the time required to
conduct a title search and the opportunities
for fraud.4 It also increases the
vulnerability of the records to political
instability, poor climate conditions,
natural disasters or such incidents as
the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which
destroyed almost all the city’s real estate
records. More recently, in Kosovo
the entire cadastral system had to be
reconstructed after years of armed
conflict led to the loss or destruction of
the system’s records.5 In Pakistan the
floods of 2010 destroyed thousands
of paper land records, leading to the
loss of the only evidence that people
had of their land tenure.6 There was no
backup.