Real Estate Ownership Transfer Registration Made Easier...Temporary Special Act Implemented

[Suwon Ilbo=Park No-hun Reporter] Gyeonggi Province announced on the 29th that it will implement the 'Special Measures Act on Real Estate Ownership Transfer Registration' for two years starting from the 5th of next month, which allows easy procedures for registering land or buildings where ownership rights are difficult to exercise.

This act is a special law that enables registration of unregistered land or real estate that does not match actual conditions through simplified procedures. It has been implemented three times in 1978, 1993, and 2006.

Applicable targets are real estate transferred or inherited through legal transactions such as sales, gifts, and exchanges before June 30, 1995, and land and buildings without ownership preservation registration. However, recovery zones (areas south of the Military Demarcation Line that were incorporated into the Republic of Korea according to the Armistice Agreement of the Korean War, located north of 38 degrees North latitude), real estate subject to litigation over ownership, and cases where ownership of farmland is prohibited under the Agricultural Land Act are excluded.

Applicants of the special measures act must submit an application to the competent city/county/district with a guarantee letter confirmed by five or more guarantors (including one lawyer or judicial scrivener) appointed by city/district/eup/myeon chiefs.

City/county/district offices, after confirming the purpose of guarantee letter issuance, conduct a two-month public announcement and on-site investigation to verify facts, and issue a confirmation letter to applicants if there are no objections.

Applicants can apply for ownership transfer (preservation) registration to the registration office by attaching the issued confirmation letter, and the real estate transfer (preservation) registration will be processed.

During the 2006 implementation, the province received 15,767 confirmation letter applications and issued 12,248 of them, thereby resolving inconveniences caused by the exercise of real estate property rights.

Kwon Kyung-hyun, director of the Land Information Division of Gyeonggi Province, said, "Since the Special Measures Act on Real Estate Ownership Transfer Registration is being temporarily implemented for the first time in 14 years, we will make full preparations for the implementation of the legislation so that inconveniences in many people's exercise of property rights can be resolved."