Real Estate Registration Department (RERD) was established in 1967 with a manual system designed for the workload at that time. RERD is the only department authorized to maintain a land cadastre; other agencies that require cadastral data must refer to RERD. Due to the phenomenal growth in urban development during the last 20 years, there was a relatively large volume of land-related records. As urban development rapidly expanded, the total number of parcels multiplied. Meanwhile, the RERD working procedures adopted during the end of the 1960s are still being applied for the current large amount of transactions. The current RERD data had outgrown the manual system being used. This created problems for landowners, public planning, administration and civil service functions. Lately, more attention has been given to land recording and management functions in Qatar, especially from senior government planners. It became evident that the existing land registration system needs to be developed to be able to handle the current as well as the future workload. As a result, CGIS started the long awaited GIS Project in November 1994. The objective of the project is to develop a state-of-the-art real estate information system (REIS). The REIS will fully automate the land registration process in Qatar. It will also address the increasing problems such as duplicate/similar owners' names, ad hoc inquiry, nonstandard office procedures, redundant pieces of information, and many other issues. The REIS is expected to be launched by mid June 1999. The new system with the GIS technology will address the concerns related to RERD as well as other agencies dealing with RERD data. This paper discusses different activities of developing the REIS such as technology in terms of hardware/software, data sources, data conversion and data validations/quality control, new system development, etc. Experience gained through conversion activities is highlighted. The paper ends with some conclusions.