The impact of land titling on land transaction activity and registration system sustainability: A case study of St. Lucia

Various theories link land titling, the existence of the cadastre, and formalization of tenure, to tenure security and information availability and thence to formal land transaction activity. To test this link, this research questioned whether land titling projects lead to the establishment or the invigoration of the formal land market in the medium term (10--20 years). This research also explored the factors that affect sustainability of the formal land registration system over the medium term since currency of the system is required to support formal land market activity. Data acquired from St. Lucia, which was the subject of a land-titling project sufficiently long ago for assessment of impact and sustainability, informed the research.Previous empirical research on the impact of land titling and land registration on land transactions over the medium term, particularly in the Caribbean, is limited. This research focused on formal land transactions over the medium term after a systematic and compulsory land titling and land registration program in St. Lucia.This research finds that land titling programs have limited impact over the medium term on formal land transaction activity. In this research, family land tenure was found to significantly affect the volume of land market transactions. Despite the posited benefits, no significant movement from family land tenure toward individualization was found. Failure to register inheritances and leases was found to be the primary manifestation of the lack of sustainability of civil participation in the land title registration system.These findings can be used to determine what are the outcomes to be anticipated from embarking on programs to perform comprehensive establishment or re-engineering of cadastral and registration systems, particularly in the presence of community tenure forms in developing countries. This empirical research adds to the body of information that tests the validity of the theories under different conditions and contributes to the design of more effective and comprehensive land administration programs.