Our Past 30 Years
The Land Registry (LR) was established in 1993 as one of the first trading fund departments with greater resource flexibility in pursuing quality services and responding to customer needs. Since its establishment, the LR has successfully transformed the land registration system through digitalisation over the past 30 years to support the operation of the property market.
Back to TopPath to Digital Transformation
1984 - 1997: Computerisation of Land Registers
- To pave way for implementing a Central Registration System (CRS) allowing access to the land registers across the territory speedily, the LR completed the conversion of 2 million paper-based land registers, which were in card form for Urban Land Office (1984 – 1991) and book form for New Territories District Land Offices (1994 – 1997), into computerised data.
- In 1994, the LR introduced the Direct Access Services (DAS), enabling subscribers to make online search orders at their own offices through licensed network. It was revolutionary at the time to establish a new mode of Internet search of land registers, one further step towards the strategic goal of CRS.
- In January 1999 and October 2000, after completion of computerisation of land registers, the Cross District Search service was introduced in urban and New Territories districts respectively, enabling members of the public to conduct land searches across the whole territory in any search office. It is no longer required for them to visit the individual search office to conduct land search on properties located in that particular district.
1996 - 2002: Digitalisation of Land Documents
- Parallel efforts were also made to convert the paper-based and microfilm-based records of land documents into digital images. The introduction of Document Imaging System (DIS) in 1996 marked a new era for LR’s digital storage and retrieval system of land documents.
- Some 144 million pages of land documents were converted into electronic images and the mammoth project was completed in December 1998. Since then, search of land records could be provided in image form through DAS which was another big step forward.
- Under another project of Colour Imaging of Plans, approximately 3.5 million plans of registered documents were converted into electronic colour images in November 2002.
2005: Launch of CRS and Integrated Registration Information System (IRIS)
- After successful implementation of DAS and DIS, the LR restructured its organisation and introduced CRS with IRIS in February 2005. Nine registries were reorganised into one single registration office in Queensway. Land documents irrespective of the property locations can be delivered at the Customer Centre in Queensway for registration. The lodging parties no longer need to deliver land documents affecting different districts to the respective nine registries for registration. Meanwhile, the launch of IRIS enabled central registration of land documents and provided public search services via the IRIS Online Services (www.iris.gov.hk). These measures have significantly improved the efficiency of the registration and land search services.
- Today, IRIS contains over 3.2 million land registers covering over 27 million of imaged land documents. Searchers can conduct online search of all properties in Hong Kong with service hours of 20 hours a day, seven days a week.
2015-2017: Launch of E-notification Services
To better support the vibrancy of the property market and safeguarding the security of banking facilities, two pioneer services were provided to property owners and financial institutions.
Property Alert for Property Owners
To help property owners detect unexpected or suspicious documents delivered for registration against their properties early and so to take prompt appropriate action, the Property Alert was launched on 20 July 2015. A subscriber will receive an email alert when a document is delivered for registration against his/her property.
On-going value-added service options and more e-payment channels have been launched to further enhance the user-friendliness of the service. The fee for one-off subscription option has also been reduced to HK$380 to encourage more adoption.
E-Alert Service for Authorized Institutions
With collaboration of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, an e-Alert Service for Authorized Institutions (AIs) under the Banking Ordinance (Cap. 155) was launched on 1 February 2017 to help enhance AIs’ credit risk management. The service offers an effective tool to the AIs, with consent from the property owners concerned, to receive electronic notifications from the LR when further charge/mortgage documents in respect of the properties mortgaged to the AIs are lodged for registration.
