If you have problems with the titles of your property and need to have it changed, certified, or altered... well good luck to you.
You have to wrestle with one of the most corrupt, laziest, and inefficient government agencies here in Metro Manila. God help those poor souls who have to deal with the officers and employees of this agency.
I had the most unfortunate encounter with the QC RD and boy, it was like the worst kind of bureaucracy -- my papers have been in the process for over eight months already (and is still in the process).
The problem started when we had to fix one of our relatives' townhouse (who just left the country). To make the story short, the land was transferred to our family and we had to deal with snail-paced service of the Quezon City government. We should have ask for a real estate agent to do the work, but we thought it would be easier (quicker) to do it on our own... and we were so wrong.
Here is a step-by-step account of what happened:
(1) November 2007. Finished all the payments, tax declarations, and tranfer fees at QC City Hall. The second-to-the-last-step involved surrendering the old Transfer of Certificate Title (TCT) and getting a new one. To get a new certificate tile, you have to go to the Registery of Deeds.
(2) December 2007. Went to the Registry of Deeds (RD) to get certificate title. Apparently, the old office was burnt down, along with all the orginal documents in the department (stupid people don't even bother to get a vault to store these important documents). Rather than fix the problem themselves, the RD people decided to pass on the responsibility of reconstituting the missing certificate titles to the public.
In a nutshell, the process of re-constituting (recreating) a new title involves the following steps:
(A) get an affidavit to request for reconstitution.
(B) make sure to have all required documents ready and fixed.
(C) pay the reconstitution fee (Hell, we pay for their salaries and they still ask us to pay more for them to do their work).
(D) Wait till your application goes to the Surveyor's office (to survery the land in question) ... which takes around 4 or 5 months to do.
(E) Get the approved application and return to RD office.
(F) Pay another fee to have RD office process your approved application.
(G) Get the new certificate title.
(H) proceed back to Quezon City Hall.
(3) January to February 2008. Got stuck in Step B. I think the process would have been quicker if the RD employees were more accomodating and helpful. But they were total a-holes. Some of them were rude and condescending. Their office starts at 8am. They refuse to speak or answer to your queries before that time, cursing you for bothering them. Some of them (those in key positions) come to work around 9 or 930 am. Still others would vanish while in the middle of work. I waited 1.5 hours for one of the checkers and learned that she was out collecting her 5-6 "utang".
(4) February to June 2008. I thought my ordeal with RD was over as soon as my application went to the surveryor's office (step D). But the waiting game had just started. It took over 5 months for them to check the land title, survey/assess the land, and process the documents. I followed up every month but they always told me the documents were still being fixed. Our application was further delayed for two more months when I followed up and learned that it was "collecting dust" in one of the trays (apparently the clerks misfiled it or forgot about it totally).
(5) June to July 2008. Got the approval from the surveyor's office (Step E) and I was supposed to go back to RD to make the final processing (Step F). The whole process took another month. And I had to pay another amount of money. What annoyed me further was the indifference of the RD employees to the people they serve -- the way they rudely answer at queries and their attitudes.
(6) July 2008. Got the new CTC. I was estatic to be finally freed of RD. I rushed to QC City Hall for the final step H, only to realize that there were a couple of missing documents that the RD office failed to provide me.
I could have acquired these documents during the waiting period, but no one in RD told me or informed me. So I have to went back there again to get the missing documents.
As I was filing out the request forms for the documents, the clerk asked me if I was in a rush to get my documents done. I said yes. He told me he can help, but the people who would do the work were in another office. This means I have to bribe him and his contacts (and I still don't know how many they were). I got fed up, disgusted, and politely said no.
I could have accepted the clerk's offer, but I was at the end of the process. I'm fed with the agency and I don't want to spend another peso to feed on their laziness and corruption.
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