TOPS-LRA Seek to Simplify Land Registration, Titling

The tedious task of applying for property loans and the slow, laborious mortgage registration process may soon be a thing of the past if The Organization of Property Stakeholders, Inc. (TOPS), the Land Registration Authority (LRA) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) succeed in introducing a standard and simplified loan mortgage document and develop an automated registration of mortgages.

ULAMA or the Uniform Loan and Mortgage Agreement is a proposed shorter and more simplified document which will be used as an industry-standard agreement between borrower and lender for all housing loan borrowings in the country. The need for such a document arose in 2012 after the Chamber of Thrift Banks (CTB) expressed a desire to remove the challenges faced by housing lenders and borrowers who encountered problems such as vagueness and too much legalese in most of mortgage agreements. Several terms and conditions not essential to client’s housing loans were also pointed out.

The government and some property experts see ULAMA as a key instrument in the development of an online registration system for loan mortgages. This initiative will help speed up the mortgage registration process, promote transparency, ease of doing business and help stamp out corruption due to the absence of human intervention and discretion. The uniform document was initially patterned after the house lending forms of other countries and was adjusted to suit the banking sector situation in the Philippines. TOPS, LRA and BSP hope to implement a similar scheme on other loan mortgage arrangements to further boost competitiveness and promote consumer protection in the country.

Updates on ULAMA will be discussed in the TOPS-LRA Summit 2015 on July 28, 2015 at Fairmont Hotel in Makati City with the theme “Measuring Our Gains and Meeting the Challenges Ahead.”

TOPS is a broad-based group of organizations including real estate developers and brokers, banks and other financial institutions, and government agencies involved in the multi-billion peso property sector.TOPS aims to develop coordination, cooperation and collaboration among its member organizations and the government for improvement in property registration processes and other matters involving real estate, chattel and other property transactions.

Interested participants may register for a slot via topsinc.ph.  Alternatively, contact Ms. Pauline Nepomuceno at 0936-9516038 or email topsinc@yahoo.com.

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