How Blockchain Can Reform The Real Estate Industry

Bitcoin has gotten a bad reputation this year after several high profile hacking attacks and scams saw investors lose huge sums of money. The cryptocurrency has also been painted as a tool for criminals after dark web sites like Silk Road revealed illegal transactions using the currency.

While the currency itself is unlikely to catch on as a mainstream form of payment in the coming year, many believe that blockchain, the ledger like technology that bitcoin runs on, could explode in 2016.

Blockchain Applications Across The Board

The potential for blockchain is wide reaching. The technology could benefit everyone from finance firms to the music industry by making transactions easier to follow and more difficult to forge. Several blockchain firms have emerged in order to help companies explore the possibility of using the technology within their industry.

Blockchain For Real Estate

One space that many believe could get a blockchain makeover in the coming year is real estate. Blockchain would make title transfers safer, faster and more efficient by automating the process and ensuring that legal battles over fraudulent titles were a thing of the past.

At the moment, it is relatively easy for a criminal to create false title documents and transfer ownership of a property to themselves. The estimated cost of fighting such crimes each year is around $1 billion, a sum that could be saved with a blockchain-run system.

Better Price Comparison

Using blockchain would also make comparing similar properties more straightforward for house hunters. At the moment owners can keep lease prices private, making it difficult to find comparable sales figures.

However, if all of that data was stored on blockchain, it would be easily searchable and available to both buyers and sellers.