Expert Review of the Land Registration Framework in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

1. Introduction

The land registry is a system for keeping track of records to prove the ownership of property. Governments create legal frameworks responsible for keeping and archiving these records physically so that they can be used as needed. Physical records are not only cumbersome to maintain but also are subject to forgery and natural disasters. Therefore, digitisation of these records is needed to address the vulnerabilities in the physical systems. These records are kept in centralised systems so that they can be protected and retrieved faster but, might be subject to internal or external attacks (Szabo, 1998).

However, Digitising the land registry systems is not only a solution to address the issues in the physical land registry. Investigating the issues in many countries such as India (Thakur et al., 2019), Indonesia (Rizal Batubara et al., 2019), Honduras (Benbunan-Fich & Castellanos, 2018), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Alasmari, 2019) revealed challenges despite the technology used. The technology factor is not the only way to address the challenges, but it should be looked at other factors. The fact that the system is centralised, and failed of providing secured ownership, are the reasons for the emergence of challenges in the land registry systems, such as double sales, lack of clear rights ownership, and fraud (Themistocleous, 2018).

The land registration systems are complex and comprised of many stakeholders. Investigation of the land registration systems should be undertaken according to a framework. A framework provides a structured method to explore and understand the context and suggest appropriate actions. The framework should not only focus on technical factors, but it should consider other factors such as organisation, legal, and provenance of the land registry record.

This study aims to understand the challenges in the land registration system in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, focusing on the process of purchasing properties by interviewing real estate investors and experts in land registration. The conjecture of this study was that through the appropriate use of technology such as smart contracts and blockchain, it is possible to enhance stockholders’ trust in the land registry systems.

The research question answered by this study were:

• 1.

  RQ: What is an appropriate framework for investigating the registration of land in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? This question is divided into two sub-questions:

  • (a)

    SRQ1: What other challenges in purchasing property in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia lead to untrusted land registry systems?

  • (b)

    SRQ2: What are the factors that help to mitigate the challenges in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia lead to trusted land registry systems?

2. Background

As the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been used in a case study to investigate the land registry, the review of developing countries is firstly discussed. The review mainly focuses on identifying the challenges of the land registry and the factors that led to these challenges.