Billions of dollars are spent each year on a huge array of activities related to titling and registering property in developing countries, ranging from aerial photography through ground surveying to the introduction of sophisticated computer technology. However, these efforts have largely failed to address the fundamental problems associated with the formalization of property. Indeed the problems are getting worse - eg, it is estimated that as much as 90% of rural and 50% of urban property rights in Latin America are not protected by formal property titles. The Instituto Libertad y Democracia in Peru has developed a radically new approach to addressing these problems. Based upon ten years research on understanding the nature and function of informal societies, it has designed a unique property formalization methodology (PROFORM) for (i) titling and registering property to land and (ii) establishing the institutional framework for the evolution of a market in land. This methodology has been successfully tested in a series of pilot projects in Peru and El Salvador. -Authors