As urbanization sprawls to every corner of the city, many of those once unpromising rural lands in the New Territories have now became the goose that lays the golden eggs. But those lands are often poorly managed. Some may be subject to old mortgages recorded back in 1905. Some may have no readily-enforceable access to public road. And some may have been occupied by strangers for dozens of years or by descendents of the paper owner deceased decades ago.
The current occupier may like to claim an interest in the land by, e.g., time bar or succession. But the reality is often that the paper owner is simply nowhere to be found or the applicable succession laws simply not the Intestates’ Ordinance Cap 73 but the Ching Code of the distant past. Any of these predicaments may hold the current occupier back from a redevelopment plan that he may otherwise pursue.