Land markets, information, and a property registration system in Albania

Abstract

This article describes the creation of land markets in Albania within an overall strategy of converting from a centrally planned economy to a market based economy. The first major step is the privatization of rights to immovable property (land and dwelling units in particular). This process is well advanced, with some remaining problems: () the rights of family members to such property are ill-defined; (2) there are residual conflicts over the distributed ex-cooperative land; (3) buying and selling agricultural land is prohibited, but it is likely that informal transactions are occurring, leading to legal insecurities; (4) the recording of titles to immovable property is dispersed, being different for urban and agricultural properties; (5) condominium arrangements for urban apartment buildings are not in place; (6) land allocated to apartment buildings is not sufficient for access and owner use; (5) land invasions are common in urban areas; (6) legislation has not been consistent, creating overlapping rights to urban commercial properties and dwelling units. The effort to create a unified Property Registration System is urgently needed to overcome these problems and to move the country toward a socially and environmentally sustainable land market. Legislation and institutional arrangements for the PRS are in place, ready for the systematization of information about rights to real property.

A GIS-Based Web Approach for Serving Land Price Information

“…Although many information systems that aim at land monitoring and management have been built in recent years, only a few of them are specialized in providing urban land price information to the public. For example, the real estate information systems employed by local governments in many countries have been developed mainly to enhance information gathering and management [21][22][23]. Scholars in Germany have developed a GIS-based system that offers brokers information to support hotel room pricing [24].…”