Real estate and blockchain: a synergistic relationship

Garzik, founder of Bloq, is a respected Bitcoin industry developer. In a recent speech at the International Blockchain Real Estate Association Conference, Garzik said that he believes that the Bitcoin blockchain and real estate have a mutually reinforcing relationship. Garzik introduced two key elements, the resilience of the Bitcoin blockchain network and its cryptographic integrity. This will enable all parties in the real estate industry to control the transfer and acquire property in a decentralized manner without the need for intermediaries. Paperwork, lawyers and third-party institutions that store data records on the blockchain network reduce the cost and time of traditional real estate transactions. Specifically, blockchain-based real estate platforms merge many of the complex processes and cases that real estate companies usually deal with. Garzik also believes that four effective applications of Bitcoin blockchain technology in the real estate industry will affect the industry: data rights, multi-signature custody, crowdfunding and asset liquidity. Bitcoin blockchain applications The first application Garzik described was data rights, which protects labels on the blockchain network for various use cases (including insurance). Once a title is recorded on a decentralized network, such as the Bitcoin website, it is irrefutable that the distributed ledger technology eliminates the possibility of modification and change, reducing the cost of joint due diligence (note: a comprehensive and in-depth review done by an intermediary with the cooperation of the company) related rights and title insurance. The second is the multi-signature escrow system provided by the built-in technology of the Bitcoin network, called multi-signature technology. Basically, multi-signature technology allows Bitcoin users to assign the rights of a single account to multiple users, essentially creating a shared Bitcoin wallet. In settling real estate transactions, this technology allows the buyer, seller, and arbitrator to participate in a representative participation to create a shared account to settle the transaction without having to deal with the issue of independent contractors, and the company also does not have to deal with financial and regulatory disputes. The third and fourth applications introduced by Garzik in his speech are crowdfunded and have asset liquidity, which many real estate companies based on blockchain technology, including Bloq, Rex, and Ubitquity, have already begun to implement. Bloq Ubitquity and Rex Although Bloq has not yet demonstrated applications built on their Bitcoin blockchain-based platform in the real estate industry, Garzik said in his speech that Bloq has partnered with some well-known companies, including Deloitte, Microsoft and IBM, to provide a universal platform for the real estate industry. Bloq is currently focused on providing decentralized infrastructure for real estate companies and plans to release their blockchain-based software platform to solve various real estate settlement problems including transactions and real estate data. Ubitquity, on the other hand, has established the world's first record in the real estate industry based on the Bitcoin blockchain. By using Colored Coins as a representation method and managing real-world assets on the Bitcoin network, Ubitquity successfully demonstrated the potential use of the Bitcoin blockchain network in the real estate industry. "We generally use the Bitcoin blockchain because it was the most secure and mature tool when we started building our platform six months ago," said Matt McKibbin, director of business development at Ubitquity LLC. "We use the Colu API built on Colored Coins and with good support, which has the ability to [use] the required metadata form fields, images and related property information to create an immutable record and clean title on the blockchain." Bloq, Ubitquity is confident in the security of the Bitcoin blockchain, and all information and records stored in the blockchain network are immutable. In addition, the transparency of the Bitcoin blockchain network reduces search costs and title insurance premiums for real estate companies, sellers, and buyers. McKibbon said, "If errors are discovered, these can be changed immediately, and the record of the changes will exist forever, thus reducing fraud. Finally, as more information about the property is added, future transfer costs can be reduced by referencing the underlying blockchain asset." Taking advantage of the Bitcoin blockchain network, on July 12, 2016, Ubitquity, in collaboration with Atlantic Sotheby's International Realty and Norfolk, Virginia real estate agent Marina Reznik, conducted the first real estate title transfer on the Bitcoin blockchain. "A lot of meticulous work goes into searching for title and ensuring that the title transfer is correct. Any title defects must be cleared as soon as they appear, and the sale is still recorded," said Reznik. "We have simply added an extra layer of security by ensuring that the transfer record on the Bitcoin blockchain is immutable, which is a major step forward for the blockchain and real estate industry." Unlike Bloq and Ubitquity, Rex has developed their real estate platform on the Ethereum protocol to connect to the process of buying and selling real estate without the intervention of some centralized company. The company is particularly focused on eliminating the use of inefficient multiple listing services (MLS). The current industry service level enables real estate agents to establish contract compensation for supply.