The General Land Registry
Office was created and established in 1916, under Law Nš 70,with the purpose of creating a plan of
public highways, roads and streets, railroads and rivers, which would be used
for establishing boundaries of the different zones or regions of the national
territory. This entity was a part of the National Public Registry.
Law Nš 70 was amended in 1926,
and the General Land Registry was created (Law Nš 49), and the Land Registry
was integrated to the Promotion Secretariat, which is currently the Ministry
of Public Works and Transportation.
The National Geographic
Institute was created in 1944, and the Land Registry became a part of it.
However, when the Fiscal Land Registry began in 1965, financed by the
International Development Agency, whose fundamental purposes were fiscal and
economic, it was moved to the Tax Department of the Ministry of the Treasury.
The Technical Cooperation
Agreement with the German
Federal Republic
was signed in that same year, for the creation of a legal land registry to
support the work carried out by German technicians. This legal land registry
was established as a part of the Public Registry of the Ministry of the
Interior.
The three Land Registry
offices: Fiscal Land Registry, Legal Land Registry and the Land Registry
Department of the National Geographic Institute, were united in 1971 under an
Office that is part of the National Geographical Institute of the Ministry of
Public Works and Transportation.
When the Land and Colonization
Institute (ITCO) entitlement projects were carried out in 1977, the National
Land Registry was moved to the National Registry, which is a part of the
Ministry of Justice, thus becoming one of the Registries of that Institution.
On March 13, 1981 the
Legislative Assembly promulgated Law Nš 6545, called the National Cadastral
Law, which was ratified by the President of the Republic on March 25 of the
same year. This Law empowered the Executive Branch to promulgate
corresponding regulations, which was done through Executive Decree Nš
13607-J, of May 25, 1982, titled "Regulations of the National Cadastral Law".
This legal provision is the
cornerstone of the Costa Rican Land Registry, and contains the technical,
legal and administrative rules that must be complied with in cadastral
procedures, as well as various definitions, objectives and concepts which
frame the entity within the objective of creating a Multi-purpose Land
Registry. Another important activity of the National Land Registry is to collect
topographical information to establish and maintain cadastral maps at a
national level, together with information from the Real Estate Public
Registry.
Information on parcels of land
is kept based on the private practice of Topography, as well as on information
obtained from aerial photographs, as a way to guarantee rights related to
real estate properties, pursuant to the modernization and reform programs
implemented in the National Registry.
In 1990 the National Land
Registry was improved, creating the so-called Multi-purpose Land Registry,
through a technical-economical Cooperation Agreement between the Costa Rican
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, whose purpose was to
collect topographic information on the entire country, in five stages.
A Loan Agreement between the Republic of Costa Rica and the Inter-American
Development Bank (IADB) was signed in 2002, whose objective was to create a
Land Registry of all the lots that exist in the country, duly geo-referenced
and reconciled with information from the Real Estate Registry.
