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A form of Customary Land Law, which was at odds with the Imperial Land Law, was practiced in the New Territories. It was an oral system enforced by the villagers and was characterized by the tei pei and tei kwat relationship. The holder of the perpetual rights to the tei pei was allowed to till the land while the tei kwat holder has the right to receive rent-charge. Only the tei kwat holder could register his holding for the land tax. The land tax register was essential to proving a person's native county for the entry of Imperial Examinations. Families might therefore own tei kwat rights to tiny plots of land to ensure that their clan members would become eligible. Under the Customary Law, villagers have the right to use waste land. However, this was curbed by the new British colonial administration. By eradicating the tei pei and tei kwat relationship, the colonial administration reduced the power of the wealthy clans and introduced significant social changes.

Very little is known about the New Territories before 1899. It was with the foundation of the Great City of Hong Kong in 1841 that the villagers found themselves close to an urban centre. From 1899, the New Territories started to become a suburban area, and today, it's part of the great metropolis. The Customary Land Law tells us how the villagers lived, settled disputes, controlled land and its alienation without any formal legal structure. It was conducted orally and based on public opinion of the village. However, by 1950s, the Customary Land Law became part of history, as developers and outside purchasers started to buy up land. These outsiders are not willing to buy without the protection of land deeds under the Hong Kong legal system. As such, the land in the New Territories is valued like a commodity like any other.

According to customary land law, when someone wanted to sell his land, he must offer the right of first refusal to his nearest relatives, then other members of his clan before he could offer it to outsiders. Sales of inherited land can be seen as a breach of an informal trust and that selling to an outsider might upset the clan and the village community. Frauds and collusion were often checked by the village. The sale of the land among members of the clan was often conducted through an oral agreement, while selling to outsiders required a written deed. The deed often stated that immediate family members had been offered the land but had been unable to take up the offer. The deeds also show that the reason for the sale was either starvation or extreme poverty.

Under Imperial Land Law in traditional China all land belonged to the Emperor. No person could occupy arable land without an imperial grant. The imperial authorities acknowledged the existence of an imperial grant by accepting land tax from the grantee. Only the land tax-payer or his short-term tenant had the right to till the ground and no intermediate lordship is allowed between the cultivator and the emperor. Grants of land could be revoked if the land had changed significantly in its usage. Sometimes permissions were given to grantees to open land. The land has to be surveyed periodically to ensure that all arable were registered. However by the late nineteenth century, the surveys were done only very occasionally: coupled with the freezing of the tax quota in 1711, this meant that many people were evading land tax and a good deal of the Imperial Land Law was unenforced.

Arable land in the New Territories was in held in trusts either by the landholder or the trustee. Some of them lasted in perpetuity and others were temporary. These trusts restrained the current landholder if he or she wanted to sell the land. Since these trusts were established by oral agreements, it was often difficult for the village community to be sure that land being proposed for alienation by an individual villager was actually land held absolutely by him. In the colonial Block Crown Lease, the subtleties of the trusts and holdings were ignored and in the New Territories Ordinance of 1905, the managers of customary trusts were declared to be the sole owners of the trusts: the purpose was merely to make it easier for the trusts to go to courts, the ownership was still being vested in the members, not the manager.

A person registered as a land tax payer through a series of complicated procedures. The system assumed that when the head of household died, the registration would be cancelled and reissued in the names of the new heads of households. However, since re-establishing a registration was expensive, descendants usually kept the registered property in an ancestral trust in the original name. The collection of Land Tax was usually smooth as the Magistracy was staffed by locals, but the collection of rent by the tei kwat owner could lead to conflicts. After the takeover of the New Territories, the British colonial government conducted a Block Crown Lease Survey, brought the Registry closer to the people, made the establishment of an entry in the Crown Rent Roll free of charge and simplified the procedures.

The next heir had an absolute right to inherit an undiminished ancestral estate, the sons, the brothers and the paternal male cousins were normally seen as heirs, sometimes the wife or the mother were also heirs as their livelihood depended on the land after the husband or son died. The heir had a right to redeem the sale of land, if he or she wasn’t involved in the transaction. Therefore, to make the sale absolute, most deeds state clearly that the next heirs had consented to the transaction and include a clause which states that the vendor cannot re-open discussions or try to raise the price paid to him or reduce the area of land transferred or try to redeem the sale. Despite what was stated on the deeds, sometimes redemption was achieved by the heirs by giving back the original purchase price, causing the original purchaser to lose out.

The middleman represented the village community and was there to ensure the fairness of a land transaction. He verified that the close relatives had been offered first refusal, negotiated the purchase price between the vendor and the purchaser. Then he arranged a date for the transfer to take place. The transfer of land also required witnesses; one of them was the deed writer, a neutral party. Sometimes the middleman was the deed writer. Other formal witnesses included the deed checker and the village elders. On the day of the transfer, the middleman pointed out the exact plots to be transferred and negotiated the exact price the land was worth. The village community was present during the transfer so that they could take the opportunity and voice their opinions on the day if they have any. After the transfer, the purchaser might claim warranty from the middleman if the statements made during the transaction were found to be incorrect.

Deeds for temporary leases and mortgages seldom survived. Most of them were conducted through an oral agreement, and deeds were usually returned to the borrower to be destroyed so that the lender could not claim that there were any outstanding obligations once the debt was repaid. A loan that involved land as a collateral was often a private arrangement. Some borrowers worked on the mortgaged land and would give a percentage of their harvest to their lender as interest, and sometimes, a redeemable sale became absolute. The foreclosure of a mortgage was not legal under the Imperial Land Law, however, in practice, foreclosure was often possible. The whole village would witness the event like an absolute land sale, and redeemable sales were often worded similarly to an absolute sale. This lack of distinction made it easy for people to claim that a sale was redeemable or permanent at a later date.

Many sales took place during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong 1941-1945. The surviving land deeds reflected a traditional society breaking down as people sold their trust property. These transactions sometimes happened without a middleman or a family council. The deeds written during this period contained odd grammar and did not state the reason of alienation: perhaps starvation and extreme poverty were so widespread that there was no reason to state it. Deeds also reflect the Japanese presence in the different territories. In the areas where the Japanese presence was thin, like Sai Kung, the deeds stated sale prices in Hong Kong dollars, and dated the transaction by the year of the Republic. In areas under heavier control of the Japanese, such as Lok Ma Chau and Lantau, the deeds stated prices in Military Yen and were dated by the Showa year.