Susana Lastarria-Cornhiel, Grenville Barnes (1995):
Assessment of the Praedial Property Registration System in Peru

E. Community Organizations

The most important non-government institutions involved in the formalization of property in Peru are urban and rural community organizations. It is no exaggeration to say that without the concerted participation of these organizations, property formalization would occur at a minuscule pace. The property formalization process that eventually terminates in property registration in the Registro Predial is limited to two types of property [FN 6], urban human settlements and rural properties. The great majority of property owners in these two categories are low-income families.

1. Urban Community Organizations

Housing developments for low-income families (usually located around the outskirts of cities) either have originated through the invasion of unused lands or have been built as low-income housing projects. In the former case, the resultant housing plots are informal properties in the sense that the occupants did not hold legal title to their plot of land at the time of the invasion. In the latter case, a housing organization (such as a Housing Cooperative) purchases an area of land, subdivides it into house lots, and sells it to individual families. In this case, there is legal title to the land prior to occupation.

In Peru, neighborhoods created by invasions (called Pueblos Jóvenes) are more numerous than official subdivisions, and the Registro Predial was first created to regularize/formalize the property rights of families in the Pueblos Jóvenes. Pueblos Jóvenes consist of families organized around the need to obtain affordable housing. A group of families identifies a piece of unused (usually public) land close to the city, maps it out, and divides it into house lots and communal areas (schools, markets, parks, etc.), deciding which families will occupy which lots. The group then invades the land (usually at night), traces out the streets, distributes the lots, and quickly constructs houses made of bamboo sheets. By the next morning, a neighborhood has been created and the occupants begin to consolidate their rights.

These community organizations are very active in obtaining services for their neighborhoods. Water, electricity, sewage, and other services are put in mostly through the families' own labor and savings, though sometimes with government or NGO assistance. This process takes many years. In addition, families slowly replace their bamboo huts with brick and concrete houses. At the same time, the community starts the long process of obtaining recognition as a community and of legalizing the property status of the individual families (see Section VI, A). This recognition and titling process through the provincial municipality is undertaken and financed by the communities themselves. In Pueblos Jóvenes, the initial title document from the municipality is free (título gratuito); there are, however, many expenses involved in creating and collecting the documentation necessary to obtain that title. There have been efforts in the last decade, particularly by the ILD, to accelerate this process and to include the registration of the title documents into the process.

2. Rural Community Organizations

The Registro Predial has also assumed within its jurisdiction the registration of property rights of rural properties. [FN 7] As a result of the agrarian reform process in Peru (1969-1991), a large number of small farms were created in the Peruvian countryside. During the 1980s, as the production cooperatives created by the agrarian reform parcelized their land into individual family farms, farmers became concerned with legalizing their ownership rights to the land. The production cooperatives became service cooperatives and, in theory, were to issue property title documents to their own farm families. While many cooperatives did regularize their ownership of cooperative land and issued titles to their members, many did not. Some farmers, and sometimes the cooperatives themselves, would register these titles in the Registro de Propiedad Inmueble.

Since the passing of Law 653 in 1991, which ended the implementation of the 1969 Agrarian Reform and lifted restrictions on market transactions for most agricultural land, there has been a surge in efforts to regularize agrarian reform land that is not titled and registered. Once again, it is the farmers and cooperatives themselves that have taken the initiative and assumed the costs of titling their lands. For a period of time, the cooperatives received on-site assistance from Registro Predial staff for regularizing and subsequently registering these title deeds. [FN 8] The Registro Predial has now assumed geographical jurisdiction in most agricultural valleys in the Lima region.