A series of complaints after the latest land lottery has caused officials to change the rules for applicants to claim their residential lots.

Applicants will now be required to sign a statutory declaration stating they will abide by the lottery rules - meaning they are at least 19-years-old, they are purchasing the lot with the intent of building a house for their own residential living purposes and they are not in a current agreement that will see the sale of Yukon Housing Corp. property.

These changes come after last Wednesday's lottery which saw 26 successful applicants walk away with the opportunity to purchase their chosen lots in the North Star area of the Copper Ridge subdivision.

However, the lottery had barely finished when officials began to receive complaints about the results, Bryony McIntyre, manager in the lands client services office, said this morning.

In the Yukon, lots can be purchased through a lottery system which allows the public the first opportunity to acquire property to use to build a home for their own personal use. Other financial and building criteria also need to be met.

There were 39 lots available on Wednesday, with 45 applicants vying for them. McIntyre said that these particular lots were released early to try to give people the chance to begin digging their foundation before the winter sets in.

The lottery system follows regulations from 1983 and works on an honour system which assumes applicants will be using the land as required by the regulations.

'We've done the same thing for many, many years,' said McIntyre.

However, so far this lottery has seen four written complaints about the results.

This doesn't appear to be a case of sore losers, said McIntyre, as more and more people are trying to acquire land in a hot housing market. Just like any other lottery, people who did not receive a lot on Wednesday will have the opportunity to attempt to purchase one over the counter in the coming weeks.

The concerns that have been raised instead had to do with questions about if some of the applicants are truly trying to purchase the lot for their own residential purposes, said McIntyre.

'It's a glitch we've got to get over,' she added.

The lands branch is now working with the Department of Justice to create a document that this lottery winners will be required to sign before moving forward any further with the process.

'They will be required as part of the package to swear if they want to proceed any farther in acquiring a lot, or they will be given the opportunity to withdraw their applications,' she says.

In future lotteries individuals will be required to sign the document stating their intentions when they register. 'That way it's right up front,' she said.

The branch is not looking at the current controversy as a setback, added McIntyre. Instead, it is being approached as an opportunity to improve and modernize their processes.

Another issue the department will be exploring is how long an applicant would be required to live in the home they build for it to be considered having been built for their own residential use.

'Building a house is a big life decision,' she said. 'Most people buy or sell a house only once or twice in their life.'

No decision has been made yet on how that particular requirement will be defined.

There will be 69 more lots made available in the Copper Ridge development in October and the remaining 106 are expected to be made available in the fall of 2006.