MARKET-BASED RULES: An apartment compound in Shijiazhuang, capital city of Hebei Province (XINHUA)

The long-awaited rules of property registration have finally come out. The provisional regulations were released by the State Council, China's cabinet, on December 22 last year. In accordance with China's Property Law, these rules mark the beginning of the country's real estate registration work.

It has been six years since the registration system was first mentioned. In early 2014, the State Council asked the Ministry of Land and Resources to propose a property registration system by the end of June 2014. Originally, the regulations were to have been announced in June, but they were delayed by a number of issues.

Apart from the registration of apartment property, buildings in rural areas will also be registered to protect farmers' rights and improve governments' administrative efficiency. In rural China, farmers do not own the land they plow or build their houses on, as it is collectively owned, but they have the right to use it. The government has been trying to set up a network which will collect property ownership information from different places.

Thus the regulations will cover collective ownership of land, ownership of buildings and forest, contracted land management rights, and rights to the use of construction land, homesteads and maritime areas. According to the regulations, land and resources authorities will establish a platform to manage registration information that can be shared in real time and will be strictly confidential.

This is the first joint notice ever issued by five departments to stress coordinated moves for property registration in both cities and villages, as the two have been divided in various administrative measures. The five departments are the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR), the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD), the Ministry of Agriculture and the State Forestry Administration.

The regulations, which include 35 articles and will take effect on March 1, state that all governments above the county level shall designate special departments for registration in their areas and follow instructions from higher governments.

"A unified information platform will be established and begin trial operations in July, and it will become fully operational by 2017," said Wang Guanghua, an official with the MLR who is in charge of the matter.

By that point, real estate approvals, transactions and registration information will be shared among different agencies, eliminating the previously "isolated information islands." Every government jurisdiction that is at or above the county level is supposed to establish a special agency to be responsible for real estate registration.

"Segregated registration by different government departments was inefficient, bringing disorder and risk. The unified system will confirm ownership and reduce overlap between government agencies," said Wei Lihua, a ministry official. "The system is in accord with the 2007 Property Law and ensures the security of transactions and protects owners."

Information from housing, agriculture, forestry, and maritime authorities will be shared and the State Council has urged all departments to contribute relevant information.

It would allow the government to access and copy relevant registration information during investigations, but such information would not be made public without the consent of property owners.