The comments below focus on Africa and the newly independent states - areas where I have some comparative advantage. Formalizing land markets. Most governments in the newly independent states have been reluctant to liberalize the land market both in terms of sales and rentals. This reluctance to allow or encourage land sales is also true in the former African socialist economies, and to a lesser extent in others. Even in instances where the reach of government intervention is short, there is a strong equity ethic in African land tenure systems that effectively limit or slow land sales in practice, although this ethic is breaking down in urban to peri-urban economies.
Contracts however are far from adequate to provide tenure security.
Based on work I have done in The Gambia, Mozambique, and Uganda, land holders are quite insecure in their willingness to rent out land for long periods of time out of fear that tenants or squatters will claim land. One might expect the prevalence and certainty of rental contracts to increase with a rise in land value, but my sense is that the pressures of urbanization, population growth, resource depletion and poverty are far outpacing the ability of local and state institutions to cope. There is great nervousness among policymakers about freeing up land and real estate sales for reasons of land concentration. Speculators grabbing up assets at fire sale prices in the context of privatization is a big concern in the newly independent states. Many African governments also remain reluctant to fully free up land sales.