During the past decade, Cape Town has embraced a new set of valuation statutes, updated its technology and processes, and continued to make improvements on an annual basis. From its general valuations in 2000, 2006 and 2009 to recent systems upgrades, Cape Town has realized quantifiable returns on its investments and added value to improve efficiency and provide better outcomes for its citizens.
As part of our commitment to being a Well-run City and responding to the needs of our citizens, the City of Cape Town annually conducts a Community Satisfaction Survey.
This past Sunday I had the honor of attending a special brunch hosted by John McLaughlin, host of the McLaughlin Group, and Stephen Adler, editor-in-chief of Reuters News in Washington D.C. The brunch was held on the rooftop of the Hay Adams hotel overlooking the National Mall, the White House and all of the great downtown D.C. scenery.
Robert Meza, project lead for California’s mobile strategy, heads a team that’s working to make the state portal a destination for on-the-go taxpayers — and their efforts are generating results. An average of nearly 2,000 people access Ca.gov from handheld devices daily, and iPhone and Android traffic constitutes 95 percent of it. With the proliferation of smartphones in our society — there are 91.4 million devices in the United States alone, according to data compiled by GO-Gulf.com — governments are adapting their presence and offerings to what users want: mobile access.
It is evident that property rates are meant to be a significant source of local revenue in South Africa. It was deemed important enough that the National government drafted and instituted legislation to outline the rules governing the use and implementation of a local property rates strategy.
It is in the interest of the nation to document all individuals, especially the underprivileged, and place them on the continuum of land rights. Peter Rabley discusses the key elements for successfully documenting property ownership of the poor.
“Implementing an Affordable, Rapid Deployment Land Records Management Solution for Liberia” provides insight into the context, unique challenges, and innovative solutions for the rehabilitation of land records and reconstruction of land rights in post-conflict Liberia. After nearly 25 years of civil strife, Liberia’s land records are missing, unreliable, and at risk of further deterioration. The nation requires a trusted land information management system to support the nation’s stability, security, and future economic growth. The Liberian Centre for National Documents and Records Agency (CNDRA) is responsible for the establishment of a governance and management system for land records. CNDRA’s low-cost, rapid deployment approach provides the basis for a reliable land records management system in Liberia that can be applied in other countries and regions.
In Ghana, as in many developing nations, there is a strong need to improve land records systems and processes. Thomson Reuters worked with partners Trimble, Opportunity International, and Sinapi Aba Trust to develop property folios, a collection of property information to provide the foundation documents for secure land title. A property folio is valuable in establishing a secure sense of ownership as well as facilitating credit from micro lending agencies by using property as collateral. This stimulates long-term investor confidence in the economy and establishes the building blocks of a mature economy. Thomson Reuters developed its entry level registry and cadastre solution, OpenTitle™, to effectively and efficiently collect and digitize images, testimonials, videos, and documents related to properties and associated individuals. From this information, OpenTitle™ can produce and print comprehensive property folios for households that are used to document rights and map properties.
This paper provides a brief overview of the different forms of land records found on modern day United States. This paper was a result of discussions among PRIA members as to the use of Torrens Registration Systems in the United States and why its use was not more widespread. We hope that this paper in some part provides answers to that question.
As is common throughout Afghanistan, the city of Jalalabad does not have an updated urban plan, and until the city approves a new one, the existing 50-year old plan remains the official city blueprint. For both the municipality and citizens alike, this means that community needs and municipal goals cannot be achieved, services are not adequately provided, and land use goes unchecked.
The Chinese government is currently experimenting with methods to quickly and accurately register arable land contracted to rural households. This is, in part, to encourage more equitable wealth distribution throughout the country, and also, at a microeconomic level, to protect agricultural lands from rapid industrial, retail, and residential land development. In this paper, a modeling approach is introduced to derive costs and benefits for a systematic land registration and mapping campaign. Mapping methods were field tested and costs calculated for Anhui Province, China. Mapping methods and tools included total station surveying, satellite imagery digitization, global positioning systems (GPS), and measurement tape. Results of a cost analysis for a land registry system completed by Thomson Reuters (formerly International Land Systems (ILS), Inc.) demonstrated that the use of satellite imagery digitizing offers very specific cost and efficiency gains within assigned accuracy thresholds of 50 centimeters (cm). The cost-benefit analysis aids project design, and subsequent planning, tracking, and financing for land registration projects, as well as communicating registry benefits to policy makers and the public.
Leon Verstappenisa professor of Private and Notary Law at University of Groningen in Groningen, the Netherlands. His specialties are in Private law, in particular family property law, inheritance law, company law and real estate law, as well as regulation of notaries.ILS recently sat down with Verstappen to discuss.
For more than 15 years, Thomson Reuters has provided unique solutions to specific challenges using innovative yet proven approaches. We contribute software, consulting services, customized training, system maintenance, public outreach and much more to all our projects to create a complete land and property information management solution. • Workflow enhancement and simplification • Comprehensive system analysis • Formulation of land policy • Institutional strengthening and capacity building • Systems configuration and design • Secured and digital land records storage • Maintenance to ensure system sustainability • Customized training courses • Public education campaigns • Land use urban planning • Cost benefit modelling • Electronic tax billing and collection • Customizable valuation engines • Multiple valuation approaches • Statistical valuation modelling • Data conversion
Guam - The Department of Revenue & Taxation is moving full steam ahead with new systems and cost-saving initiatives to better serve island residents. Rev & Tax has been overwhelmed for years. A slew of mandates and a shortage of personnel have contributed to long lines and growing frustration for employees and customers.
More than a decade ago, Jamaica embarked on a bold plan to change the way its government operated. It transformed several official departments into executive agencies that function with some of the autonomy and many of the expectations of private-sector businesses. Their goals are to streamline operations, reduce government costs and improve services delivered to Jamaican citizens.
Urbanization has come quickly to Ulaanbaatar and a handful of other cities in Mongolia. In recent years, rural Mongolians have been abandoning their long-established nomadic lifestyle for permanent and settled urban livelihoods. Population in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar has tripled since the 1980s, and the top four urban centers in the country are now home to nearly two thirds of Mongolia's three million people.
Thomson Reuters, in collaboration with Sinapi Aba Trust (SAT) and Habitat for Humanity Ghana (HfHG), are currently engaged in a project designed to address the acute shortage of quality housing in Ghana. A key contributing factor to this housing shortage correlates to the lack of financing available for home improvement or home construction to all but the very wealthy. In fact, many main stream banks do not offer a home loan product, in part due to the lack of ability to verify property ownership, caused by a poorly functioning land registry system.
As part of a U.S. Trade and Development Agency-funded technical assistance program, Thomson Reuters supported Anhui Province in East China in conducting a rural land registration and certification pilot project. China's Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) had coordinated eight land registration provincial pilot projects, all at the village level; the Anhui Province project was one of these pilot projects.
