Selling vacant lands without official deeds from the appropriate authorities has become a big problem in Madinah.

Those who claim ownership of these lands say they acquired ownership through inheritance and don’t hold any official deed to the property.

Such encroachments occur during specific periods and the operation as a whole is done in three stages. The first involves taking control of the land by marking its borders with trees or fences, mostly at night and with the help of trained labor in exchange for a large amount of money.

The second stage involves division of the plot into a number of smaller parcels through any city survey office. In most cases the plans do not bear the name of the officer.

The third stage begins immediately after the plans are made and involves selling the parcels of land through unlicensed real estate brokers. These brokers depend mostly on marketing the land through irregular methods, such as social networking sites or a real estate office not authorized by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

In the end, the three stages lead to the widespread encroachment of land without possessing official deeds.

The phenomenon has reached alarming proportions in Madinah, a local publication reported.

These practices have prompted regulatory authorities to take extensive efforts to put a curb on the spread of the phenomenon, which has resulted in the discovery of a number of these fake transactions in some areas of Madinah, mostly the suburbs. The matter becomes more complicated when such fake transactions are turned overnight into a rest house or popular residential units.

Authorities have taken a number of measures to curb this phenomenon, including such measures as cutting electricity to these locations until the involved party submits documents issued by the municipality verifying the correct legal status of the location, in hope that such a measure might reduce the trend to buy such lands.

The Madinah governorate, municipality and the Ministry of Justice are closely monitoring the phenomenon by conducting secret inspection tours on a number of such locations.

Yahya Saif, official spokesman of Madinah municipality, said the secretariat is a member of the encroachment committee in the region, and there are supervisory field teams which continuously work to prevent any encroachment attempts on vacant land.

“The body also immediately deals with any report received by the municipality concerning these illegal practices,” he said, adding that technical reports are developed on the spot and submitted to the encroachment committee to take the necessary actions.

Madinah Gov. Prince Faisal bin Salman has given directions to impose severe punishment on the city survey offices that illegally draft plans and blueprints for government lands. The directions involve giving support to the committees to remove encroachments in the regions and governorates.

Madinah municipality earlier confirmed that selling vacant lands without official documents is a violation of regulations, and any promotion to sell such lands is also in violation of the law.