As the Philippine real estate market starts to perk up after the global slump, property buyers and investors are urged to take precautions against being misled or duped into investing in land parcels which may not even exist.

Dr. Jaime A. Cura, chief executive officer of CREBA Land Services & Title Warranty Corporation (CREBALAND) and immediate past president of CREBA, said that many land titles proliferating in the market are infested with material technical flaws which usually cannot be detected by those without technical savvy.

These flaws, Cura said, would not only adversely affect the value of the property, but may also pose serious implications as far as ownership is concerned.

In several cases that CREBALAND has examined, Cura said, these technical flaws turned out to be indications of title fraud or fakery.

One serious flaw is that the titled parcel, when accurately mapped, turns out to be located in an inalienable zone. Cura said that the Supreme Court has invariably ruled such titles to be void ab initio.

Some titled parcels happen to be situated in ravines or floating at sea, contrary to representations of the seller or mortgagor; while some parcels could not even be mapped or located, Cura said.

Still other parcels, which are supposed to be bounded by highways and thus would have higher market values, turn out to be situated far from the road networks; while other titles supposed to be covering large tracts of raw land turn out to be straddling fully developed subdivisions already covered by another title, Cura added.

Precisely to help protect unwary buyers and investors, CREBALAND has recently deployed in the internet the country’s first, fully-automated GIS parcellary mapping service, at www.mapsys.ph.

MapSys was officially launched during the CREBA membership meeting last 28 January.

As an alternative to the ordinary lot plan and vicinity map used in land transactions, Mapsys.Ph provides accurate parcel maps aesthetically laid-out and packed with multi-layers of spatial information, including a report on the technical accuracy of the parcel.

Thus, with just this single document, a potential buyer or investor could already make a well-informed initial assessment of the offered property.

A multi-million peso investment by the leaders of CREBA, MapSys.Ph not only resolves the most common problem of banks, appraisers, brokers, potential buyers and investors in locating a property offered for sale or as collateral, but also accurately detects technical errors in titles or survey plans. 

“The stability of economic enterprises hinges on the integrity of land transactions that fuel the engine of economic development and growth. MapSys.Ph is one of the ways by which we help ensure that integrity”, Cura said.