(2018). Fit-for-purpose land administration – administration that suits local circumstances or management bumper sticker?. Survey Review. Ahead of Print.

The study examined the effectiveness of a community-operated land record system (CRS), a product of an evolutionary information system planning approach under hybrid governance arrangements in Monwabisi Park informal settlement in Cape Town. To structure the analysis, the authors adapted an analytical framework for analysing land registration effectiveness to community records systems. It serves as a tool for analysing, designing and managing similar information systems. The CRS is an element of a participatory planning and development project involving a triad: (a) community-based organisations (CBOs); (b) a non-governmental organisation (NGO), which has acted as a change agent, facilitator and resource provider; and (c) the City of Cape Town. The hybrid governance institutions comprised a set of local community and government protocols. Of further significance are the organisational cultures of the CBOs, and the NGO’s information system team differs markedly from that of most land registries. The researchers examined the CRS database and operations management, interviewed key-informants and interviewed shack residents door-to-door. The CRS was effective because residents used it and largely adhered to the associated documented community protocols to defend their tenure and to effect transactions in shacks. Further contributors were the NGO and CBOs continually managed the institutional and leadership dynamics relevant to the CRS, factors often ignored in similar projects.

Networks of social relationships and how they evolve in relation to land interests are a fundamental attribute of land tenure systems. Individuals may be members of complex, multi-layered, changing and conflicting social networks at any particular time in changing situations. The Talking Titler relational data model (TTM), data mining and social network analysis (SNA) were used to visualise and explore rapidly changing land interests using an urbanizing customary society as the illustrative context. Land tenure relationships may change rapidly in situations where both external forces and internal agents foment conflict and social change in local politics, and elites may abuse their power to grab land. Peri-urban customary systems evolve in response to urbanization, titling programmes and land sales that put pressure on traditional customary norms. Social network analysis can facilitate visualizing complex patterns of relationships between people and how they relate to land. It may also identify new, previous, unknown and changing relationships and structures on the ground. There are practical challenges to applying the tools, but the methodology and data mining and network analysis techniques show promise as an addition to the set of tools that may be used to improve tenure security and as a scenario analysis tool.

Many of the estimated three million state-subsidised houses that South Africa has delivered to the poor in registered ownership since the end of apartheid in 1994 have changed hands off-register, creating cloudy titles. This is indicative of effective tenure administration being ranked below other policy goals without suitable strategies to address the shortcomings of granting ownership as the tenure form upfront. Interviews with residents, community leaders, officials, and land professionals indicate that buyers register transactions if the registration system is accessible, the family unit believes registration is useful, and that they are aware of the risks of off-register transactions. The South African land governance system is somewhat incoherent, with various hybrid official and unofficial arrangements. In this environment, community-based organisations (CBOs) may unwittingly encourage off-register transactions. It follows that continual title maintenance and CBO engagement are crucial in maintaining clean titles.

The value of real estate is an important matter for municipal authorities, since property tax is one of their main budget sources. Its estimation tends to be a complex process, owing to the diversity of factors affecting it. One of those factors is property location, which embraces the geographic relationship between the property and the surrounding local amenities. Hedonic modelling is frequently applied to estimate the value of a property; to consider the influence of property location within such models, the region under analysis is usually divided into homogeneous areas. This division can introduce a bias (a particular vision) related to the modifiable areal unit problem. Our intent in this paper is to apply data mining techniques to address a possible valuer bias, a particular valuer’s vision, in the current City of Calgary assessment model. Employing the decision tree technique, one locational attribute (Sub-Neighbourhood) was represented by the (x, y) coordinates of the properties, with approximately 96% correct classification with respect to their City of Calgary sub-neighbourhood designation. By adopting the regression tree technique, we show that it is possible to explain approximately 73% variability of the Sale Price attribute, using only the attribute Sub-Neighbourhood or the (x, y) coordinates as input. In general, the results showed a consistent relationship between property value and location. Additionally, the sale price patterns of actual properties do not conform strictly to the politico-administrative units adopted by the city. Those patterns usually cross the unit boundaries limits or are mixed inside a unit. Our results suggest that using a property’s spatial coordinates, instead of political-administrative subdivisions, to express its location, would lead to more accurate results and not incur the possibility of bias.

Study of Effective Land Registration Usage in State-Subsidised Housing