The necessity of informing third parties about the legal status of real property has led most legal systems to adopt the principle of mandatory registration for real estate transactions. Nevertheless, there are instances where ownership is transferred prior to official registration—such as in cases where judicial rulings confirm ownership. In these cases, full ownership is effectively transferred to the transferee before the property is officially registered. However, for the sake of maintaining a complete and accurate land registration system, registering such transfers remains essential.

Electronic plattforms alone do not fulfill the goal of preventing conflicting in transactions or suppling public trust in land registration. Solutions like establishing an online information-sharing platform between the judiciary and the registration authority may help facilitate data exchange, but they do not affect the legal requirement of registering ownership nor do they alter the legal status of such pre-registration transfers.

Therefore, as a first step, the legal effect of judicially ownership transfers prior to registration should be formally recognized. As a second step, the principle of relative effect of registration should be applied—acknowledging the transferee’s ownership while conditioning any subsequent transfer on official registration.

The acceleration of ownership registration, supported by the implementation of electronic systems, aligns with this two-step approach. This study, adopting a comparative legal perspective, examines the principle of mandatory registration in real estate transactions, first by assessing the legal reliability of informal documents, and subsequently by analyzing judicial transfers of ownership and their implications before official registration.