Distributed Ledger Technologies for the Real Estate Market

Abstract

Distributed ledger technologies such blockchain, crypto-currencies, tokenization and smart contracts have recently received a lot of attention. Despite this increase in attention, industries and governments around the world are not using such technologies to their full potential. Real estate is one of such industries who could greatly benefit from adopting such distributed ledger technologies, mainly due to their automated confirmation and transaction transparency nature. In this paper, we explore some of the main distributed ledger technologies and evaluate their potential impact on the real estate market. Our aim is to show how they could improve current methods such as title deed transfer or property valuation as well as point out any issues which might arise from digitising real estate methods. We also review any reasons for why the technologies have not been adopted already and evaluate what impact they could have if they were to be implemented.