Ownership goes online
A proprietorship register is the identity card of any property, and is indispensable at every transaction, such as selling, buying or leasing real estate. In Poland, there are 16 million of these documents in paper form and two years ago the process of converting them into an electronic database began.
When it is finished, access to these documents will be as easy as a few simple keystrokes. Currently, it takes 1.5 months to process a new proprietorship register, which is a vast improvement on a few years ago, when the waiting time could be up to six months.
The courts receive about 2.6 million applications for registering real estate per year. After the first six months of 2004 there were 391,881 deferred issues, which means that the average waiting time was 1.6 months, which was the best result since 1992.
Computerizing the proprietorship registers started in July 2003 as a result of an amended bill on proprietorship registers and mortgages. One of the project's objectives was to synchronize the proprietorship registers system with the filing system of lands and buildings. According to the Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for computerizing the records, the process will last for 10 years.
Unfortunately, it is impossible for the process to avoid mistakes. Currently in Warsaw a property can only be registered electronically, and the computer program that supports this does not allow registering flats located in buildings that have more than 340 apartments. Thus, individual owners of particular flats have to wait for their cases to be considered separately and last year this led to problems with establishing proprietorship registers for newly built flats in the city. A.B.
When it is finished, access to these documents will be as easy as a few simple keystrokes. Currently, it takes 1.5 months to process a new proprietorship register, which is a vast improvement on a few years ago, when the waiting time could be up to six months.
The courts receive about 2.6 million applications for registering real estate per year. After the first six months of 2004 there were 391,881 deferred issues, which means that the average waiting time was 1.6 months, which was the best result since 1992.
Computerizing the proprietorship registers started in July 2003 as a result of an amended bill on proprietorship registers and mortgages. One of the project's objectives was to synchronize the proprietorship registers system with the filing system of lands and buildings. According to the Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for computerizing the records, the process will last for 10 years.
Unfortunately, it is impossible for the process to avoid mistakes. Currently in Warsaw a property can only be registered electronically, and the computer program that supports this does not allow registering flats located in buildings that have more than 340 apartments. Thus, individual owners of particular flats have to wait for their cases to be considered separately and last year this led to problems with establishing proprietorship registers for newly built flats in the city. A.B.
