South Australia's world-leading land titles system is moving to electronic transactions

Every weekday on a corner of Grenfell St, a steady buzz builds around 11.30am as workers queue to swap millions of dollars in bricks and mortar.

Every weekday morning on a corner of Grenfell St, a steady buzz builds around 11.30am as city workers queue to swap millions and millions of dollars in bricks and mortar.

It's not quite the New York or London stock exchange but could readily pass as one of the more ordered and intriguing bartering houses of yore. Tradition and the familiar count for much in Adelaide and the SA Land Titles Registry is right near the head of the line here.

It all dates back to 1858 and another Adelaide standard, Sir Robert Torrens, who ushered in a simplified system to buy and sell land, one document only recorded at a single registry the key determinant in each transaction. The system worked so well that a century and a half later it's still going strong with variants of the Torrens title used in more than 100 countries worldwide.

What's more, Sir Robert introduced a new class of professional to speed up the process, specialist conveyancers, as opposed to the solicitors more usually used outside Australia.

It's these people in the queue outside the Settlements Office on 101 Grenfell St every morning, conveyancers waiting to swap paperwork with each other and then bank their proceeds, deal done, another house bought and sold.

"We're caretakers for the government," says Jennifer Punke of Blackwood and Belair Conveyancing, the private sector colluding to do the legwork for the state. Little has changed in her 20 years as a conveyancer she says and she remains proud of the heritage and certainty the Torrens title system brings.

"There is a moment in time when the moneys have changed hands and belong to no-one," but the surety and confidence of the process is absolute she says. She's here for eight transactions today and the third visit this week. The routine is straightforward but the action is full on. It all goes like this:

We know about the estate agent who conducts the sale and provides the contract between buyer and seller. Price confirmed, the conveyancer steps in and sifts through the paperwork and stamp duties, taxes and technicalities before agreeing the final stages of settlement with the banks that for the past three years, have been widely outsourced to Mumbai and the Philippines.

Deeds agreed, the conveyancers for both parties head down to a small, windowless ground floor room on Grenfell St on the appointed day.

It's some scene, the banks and their agents seated all around the diamond shaped enclave, A4 sized print outs on the walls above showing who's who. What space that's left is occupied by a thick wooden table around which a dozen conveyancers lean forward and pass papers to and fro. For the rest it's standing room only, names called and shouted out if you're fresh in or can't see through the throng.

Titles are handed over, cheques received and then banked on-site with the Westpac and ANZ reps and more, new ownership details lodged on-site and it's back in the queue for the next transaction.

Though maybe not for much longer. One hundred and fifty-six years after the first Torrens land transaction, South Australia is about to go online.

A recent successful, eastern states trial electronic process means that New South Wales and Victoria will become the first states to be able to operate electronically across all areas of conveyancing later this year, followed by South Australia and the remaining states later in 2015.

As the stock exchange did for the exchange of shares, the Property Exchange Australia (PEXA) process removes the manual handling and the paperwork by allowing land registries, financial institutions and practitioners to transact together and online, for the very first time.

"It's going well," says PEXA media and corporate affairs director Jo Waldon. "It's the first electronic system in the world. It came from the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in 2008. The government basically decided they needed to do something more efficient."

It has to be a national scheme to work she says, though South Australia will be an approach with caution.

"When PEXA launches in South Australia, the manual settlement option will still exist. Lawyers and conveyancers won't have to use the system if they choose not to."

A stance that may not last too long. PEXA expects 950,000 land transactions nationally in 2014 with 95,000 already this financial year to-date in South Australia. The electronic process has brought a good deal of international admiration says Ms Waldon, with New Zealand curiously adopting a half way approach with the facility to lodge documents electronically but not settle.

It's progress and unquestionably positions Australia as a world leader in online land transactions.

The third quarter of 2015 has been pencilled in for the South Australian e-debut, legalities are completed and the electronic interface will be part of a broader new infrastructure project within the new South Australian Integrated Land Information System (SAILIS) which is due to go live in December this year.

The quaint and quirky of the SA Land Titles Registry has much to commend it, living history and a vitality based on trust and routine but a framework that, sadly in many ways, has quite probably run its course.