A Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, made a study of Egyptian real estate in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and estimated that it took six to 14 years to register a dwelling on desert land bought from the state, and that registering one built on agricultural land bordered on the impossible.

Because it was so difficult to register property, Mr de Soto argued, Egyptian real estate, among the country’s most valuable assets, was locked away, making it virtually dead capital. The lack of proper titles discouraged any notion of providing mortgages, a financial tool that would help to ease the country’s chronic housing shortage and act as a spur to its financial markets.

At the time, economic think tanks, media and the government itself grabbed on to the results of the study most enthusiastically.

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