Will Blockchain Integration Disrupt the Real Estate Market Forever?
Despite the ongoing criticisms of cryptocurrency as a viable, long-term decentralized currency solution, coins are still finding their way into new markets as the value of blockchain technology is becoming more transparent.
Blockchain’s enormous capacity to act as a digital database for financial transactions helps create decentralized, publicly accessible networks that can be used to retain accountability for asset trading ranging from intellectual properties like patents all the way to physical properties such as housing.
To skeptics, the notion of accepting Bitcoin as the payment for a house might sound absurd, but these individuals often overlook the very real benefits cryptocurrencies can provide for large transactions. A handful of innovative companies have even shifted beyond currencies to incorporating blockchain and smart contracts in their solutions for a more streamlined and open global real-estate industry.
Countries like Sweden have already adopted a digital method for managing the purchases and sales of real estate properties, but despite the incredibly streamlined process created by digitizing these documents, transactions can still take anywhere from three to six months for the right approvals. With the integration of blockchain technology, many of the emails, calls, and meetings that would have had to initially occur to ensure the accuracy of the transaction can be bypassed completely. By reducing processes, escrow, and business logic into smart contract code, lead times can shrink from months to a few hours.
Sweden believes in the integration of blockchain technology enough that the country’s land-ownership authority, Lantmäteriet, has tested the property transaction potential of the technology for the last two years.
This period of exploration highlighted a very real advantage to using blockchain for real estate transactions, and in 2018, Lantmäteriet decided to choose a small group of participants to validate property transactions on their own blockchain platform.
Countries may be slowly adopting blockchain technology for real estate transactions, but private companies have been driving progress and growth in this sector for far longer.
One shining example of blockchain integration into property transactions comes in the form of a company called Propy, which acts as a global real estate marketplace coupled with a decentralized title registry. The DEN sat down with Propy CTO Alex Voloshyn on our (“State of the Industry”); Podcast to uncover how his company creates value in the market using the technology.
Our discussion uncovered a very interesting approach to streamlining real-estate transactions. Propy accomplishes this by breaking down the process into three distinct parts:
- Global Listing Platform: list properties on the Propy platform
- Transaction Platform: sign documents, make payments, and transfer the property deed through the Propy conveyance platform
- Registry: provide a decentralized real estate registry that allows nodes to be run for transaction verification
“Propy allows buyers, sellers, brokers, and escrow/title agents/notaries to come together through the utilization of a suite of smart contracts on blockchain to facilitate transactions.”
Using this robust, decentralized platform, individuals and entities can make transactions as a digital transfer of ownership using the Propy Registry.
Platforms like Propy not only improve the viability of cryptocurrencies as a mode of transaction within real estate, but also facilitate a level of efficiency, accuracy, and security that was previously unheard of for large financial transactions.
If you’re curious to dive deeper into the intersection of blockchain and real-estate, be sure to watch our “Panel.Night” discussion with upcoming companies Bitcasas.io, Slice.market, and Zeehaus here!
Do you see real estate as a prime candidate for disruption with blockchain technology? Or do you think there are better applications that should be explored further? In what other ways can the industry benefit beyond what I covered here?
If you enjoyed this article, please leave some claps and share it with your fellow Blockchain Enthusiasts! Join the conversation on our Telegram at https://t.me/dennexus. Keep up to date with The DEN on Facebook & Twitter @dennexus, and visit us at www.theden.io for blockchain development classes, resources, and more information about all things decentralized.
