Topographic Data and its importance.
Nicaragua's property title document registration system is rather unique in the sense that it is not controlled and managed in one single location and government department.
Several institutions have to provide documents in order to accomplish a successful registration. Here we will concern ourself with CATASTRO, the office ensuring that each property receiving a Catastral Certificate is in fact where it supposed to be and does not overlap other registered properties.
Think of each of the Departments of Nicaragua representing a large puzzle in which each property represents a game-piece. If just one property does not represent a perfect match to the neighboring properties a conflict arises and the potential for legal action between the property owners arises.
The current method used by the CATASTRO offices has not changed since its inception. This is basically a a manual process by which the employees of CATASTRO ensure that the coordinates of each property do not conflict with the coordinates of another property. Since this is a manual process it is potentially subject to human error.
The Nicaraguan government has initiated the process of computerizing the catastral registration and data storage process, but this will take many more years to be completed.
We have encountered several cases where the buyer of property received a CATASTRAL Certificate and later found discrepancies in the amount of area.
Some of the errors we encountered:
- The points marking the property boundary on the plot plan are correct but the total area calculated is incorrect. (This is the most common problem.)
- The geographic location description of the property is incorrect and therefore put the property or part thereof in an incorrect location. This could be very minor but eventually become an issue.)
- The actual shape oi the property does not match the data of the plot plan. (There could be a various reasons for this.)
