Blockchain plays a crucial role in the real estate sector by providing investors and sellers with unique competitive advantages. The cross-border transactions increase the overall investment opportunities in the global real estate market. Fractional ownership and increased security due to smart contracts are a few of the benefits a digital ledger brings to the real estate market by enabling investors and business owners to boost sales/rents and reduce paperwork. In this article, we explore nine blockchain real estate startups, determining their specializations and diving into the overall advantages that a digital ledger brings to the property market.
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Blockchain in real estate ensures data security due to smart contracts, reducing the need for third-party intermediaries integration.
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Blockchain real estate startups play a valuable role in reshaping the property market due to the integrated cryptocurrency and accelerated data processing.
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The real estate blockchain-based platforms ensure the security of data based on the smart contracts, which work if the involved parties meet the predefined conditions.
Source: Statista Research Department. (2024). Adoption of smarts contracts by real estate firms globally 2023. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1477717/smart-contracts-in-real-estate-2023/
What Benefits Blockchain Solutions Bring to the Real Estate Industry?
Let’s dive into defining and discussing the benefits blockchain brings to real estate platforms.
The Fractional Ownership
Fractional ownership refers to the process of real estate assets tokenization. To be more specific, tokenization enables the individual to convert the property items into tradable tokens via the blockchain. Dividing the asset into minute fractions enables the property owners to consider each as a single property piece, leading to an increase in investment scalability. Consequently, when transformed into the token, the investors and property owners can easily trade the real estate that grants full ownership over the asset.
Increased Investor Pool
Although this feature derives from the analyzed one above, increased investment pool implies the investors ability to intensify the pool of their buyers. The tokenization of real estate assets based on fractional ownership implies the division of building into separate pieces, which contributes to the enlargement of the clients who can rent or purchase a part of a building if they cannot afford the whole house. The identified blockchain benefit reshapes the real estate market by increasing the amount of housing making it financially accessible to people with different income ranges.
The Smart Contract Agreement
As a self-driven digital agreement, a smart contract is responsible for automating real estate transactions. Here are the following advantages of the blockchain-based smart contract:
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Each involved party gains access to the transaction history, which brings transparency to the contract terms that increases trustworthiness.
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Smart contract does not need the integration of intermediaries as when the specific conditions are met, it automatically carries out predefined actions itself.
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Smart contracts bring efficiency to data processing as by systematizing processes like transfers and document verification they minimize the overall operational costs.
Increased Security
Blockchain minimizes the risks of hacking attacks by providing a tamper-proof way to property operations. By recording the titles on the decentralized ledger the blockchain technology develops an immutable record considering ownership by alleviating its verification and access. Finally, encryption shields ensure the protection of sensitive data by preventing unauthorized access so that the stakeholders experience transparency over their asset operation and its safety.
Alleviated Real Estate Identity Verification
The decentralized ledger helps users verify their identity, excluding the involvement of third-party intermediaries. Additionally, the users can experience an alleviated process of controlling and sharing their personal data as the blockchain in real estate promotes decentralized identity management. This decentralized identity solution does not only impact verification of the potential tenant and property owner credentials but proves their credibility, which enhances trustworthiness in collaboration.
Optimized Property Search
The peer-to-peer network plays a central role in optimizing the search for property due to the transmission of real data. The brokers have access to the expanded data, which is cost-effective and time-preserving. The reason to highlight the P2P network as a blockchain advantage in real estate is that it serves as an alternative to Multiple Listing Services (MLS), which was an expensive yet insufficient strategy to look for property rent and housing-relevant specificities.
Boost in Returns
Blockchain real estate has a considerable financial advantage over the traditional real estate investments due the decrease in fees. The reason for that is the elimination of the high dependence on the intermediaries, while the liquidity in tokenization assets enhances the overall frequency in trading. Consequently, low fees and the recurrent selling lead to the boost in the overall returns.
Explore the blockchain myths and real facts.
Top 9 Blockchain Real Estate Startups Worth to Explore
Prior to developing the blockchain-powered real estate application, it is important to dive into discussing the relevant startups to determine their specialization and unique features to get further inspirations for the personal projects.
1. Owny (Previously RealtyBits)
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Founders: Umed Latifov and Ola Wiberg.
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Founded: 2018.
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Location: California (Palo Alto).
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Specialization: focus on real estate affordability for middle-income people.
Owny focuses on fractional ownership as due to the blockchain technology the investors can purchase the fractionalized real estate assets, making the separate pieces of housing affordable for the people of different incomes. The company ensures an alleviated process of account verification. Once the investor is verified, Owny provides the users with a dashboard, which assists them in maintaining their assets.
2. Figure
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Founders: Cynthia Chen, Alana Ackerson, Michael Cagney, Sara Priola, and June Ou.
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Founded: 2019.
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Location: California (San Francisco).
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Specialization: the company focuses on providing individuals and institutions with financial services in the real-estate context.
Blockchain technology helps Figure to provide services like loans on home improvement, home buy-lease back offerings, etc., by promoting the use of crypto as a payment method. For instance, Figure implements a blockchain-based investment platform. Figure Marketplace. Diving more into a cryptocurrency payment approach, Figure reinforces its real-estate financial services by providing clients with the ability to apply crypto for home mortgages.
3. Closinglock (Previously SafeWire)
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Founders: Tony Franco, Robert Zwink, and Chris Sauerzopf.
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Founded: 2017.
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Location: Ohio (Columbus).
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Specialization: the organization focuses on blockchain-based real estate fraud prevention.
Closinglock puts into perspective the elimination of the hackers' attacks by preventing their attempts to circumvent the protection mechanisms. In the real estate context, the company works with web-based wire fraud software that secures the overall transaction cycle from the time the client sends it to the moment the owner receives it. Based on the aforementioned anti-fraud software, it prevents and undermines fraud regarding payoff and seller misinterpretations attempts.
4. StreetWire
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Founders: Paul O’Halloran, Steven Meek, and Oliver Tickner.
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Founded: 2018.
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Location: New York (New York).
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Specialization: the startup aims to ensure real estate data security blockchain-based solutions.
StreetWire prioritizes the ensurance and maintenance of the reliability and credibility of the real-estate data to generate correct solutions for the financial sector. With a help of qualitative and quantitative scoring, the company checks and verifies the accuracy of product information it supplies to the financial sector. Today, the StreetWire network already helps power the analysis and risk management of billions of dollars of real estate financial services products.
5. PropertyClub
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Founder: Andrew Weinberger.
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Founded: 2018.
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Location: New York (New York).
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Specialization: the company focuses on selling the properties, focusing on the blockchain system.
As one of the real estate crypto projects, PropertyClub organizes its work via smart contracts by guaranteeing the safe transactions between the clients and the sellers. Bitcoin is the key crypto available to purchase assets. Nevertheless, this startup diversifies the blockchain-based real estate trade by implementing a PropertyClub Coin, an example of the crypto cutting-edge technologies that can be used only via the platform.
6. RealBlocks
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Founders: Perrin Quarshie and Naman Srivastava.
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Founded: 2017.
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Location: New York (New York).
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Specialization: the company reduces manual real estate-relevant paper processing, by ensuring the investors have a self-service platform where blockchain is helpful in buying/selling tokenized interest.
Using blockchain for real estate, the startup prioritizes promoting the investment into fractional assets instead of the entire buildings. As a cloud-based private fund operating platform, RealBlocks keeps transactions through tokenization. Consequently, fee minimization, enhanced efficiency, and improved security are the top results of the platform’s blockchain utilization.
7. Vairt
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Founders: Sabeen Ahmed and Jamil Ahmed Sukhera.
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Founded: 2019.
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Location: Ohio (Cincinnati).
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Specialization: the platform assists investors in crafting a diversified real estate investment portfolio.
Vairt is the real estate blockchain platform that focuses on fractional real estate investment. Unlike the aforementioned startup, this company focuses mainly on the essential tools and resources that can help investors reach the best possible outcomes when deciding to invest in fractional real estate. For this purpose, the blockchain-operant platform Vairt includes services like market analysis, property overviews, and neighborhood evaluation.
8. Ubitquity
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Founder: Nathan Wosnack.
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Founded In: 2018.
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Location: Delaware (Wilmington).
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Specialization: the startup aims to keep correct tracking and recording of all types of property titles.
Ubitquity is a unique example of a real estate blockchain startup as this open-source blockchain platform aims to alleviate the client’s process of purchasing tokenized assets. The startup’s products include the Non-Fungible Title platform and Ubitquity Pay. The latter aspect represents a form of digital payment processing, as it provides the clients with the ability to use crypto as currency for payments and real estate-relevant transactions.
9. SMARTReality
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Founders: DeWayne Smart and Ernie Wong.
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Founded: 2017.
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Location: Washington (Seattle).
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Specialization: the organization focuses on smart contract integration to alleviate the process of rental agreements.
As one of the blockchain companies in real estate, SMARTReality promotes mainly rental-relevant measures to ensure the correctness of the purchasing process between the client and the seller. The startup expedites contract processes by providing the sellers and renters with the ability to set protocols and conditions, which will simply not activate if they are not met. The scope of services the smart contracts embrace are purchasing a home, paying rent, etc.
Want to Create/Integrate a Blockchain Property App into Your Business?
Indisputably, the discussed above real-world examples of blockchain real estate companies give profound insights on the specializations they provide and how they reshape trading and renting processes via the market.
As you can see, a blockchain-based real estate app or site is worth developing. Creating a website like Zillow might be an appropriate example of a real estate platform. But what if developing a similar one, applying blockchain technology?
Let’s find out the actual steps of the blockchain-based real estate platform.
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Discovery Phase (Planning and Conceptualization)
The discovery phase includes identifying the target audience of the application, defining its core features, and determining the purpose. Then, the client chooses the blockchain platform that is appropriate to meet the requirements and digital ledger real estate app specifications.
The selection of platforms requires taking into account multiple factors, like transaction prices, productivity, or availability of instruments for developers. For instance, Ethereum might be applied for smart contracts, the same as Solana або Binance Smart Chain, which can better respond to the needs of the project’s scalability or speed.
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Development Phase
The identified phase includes front-end development regarding the app’s interface (web version and/or mobile platforms).
The stage involves back-end development as well, in order to integrate the server-side logic to streamline processes of blockchain interaction and operating the off-chain data.
The next aspect of the development phase implies the blockchain integration in the blockchain-based app concept. This means combining front-end and back-end, by promoting the correct flow of data via the transactions.
The development of smart contracts to automate smooth and secure property accomplishment of the defined conditions about transactions and payment procedures.
Finally, the development team will integrate security measures like encryption to protect client and seller data.
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Testing Phase
The analyzed phase incorporates multiple testing procedures like functional, security, usability testing, etc. in order to check the app’s correct tech functionality, easy operation, and secure transactions.
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Deployment
Deployment represents the launch of the app on the market.
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Maintenance
The maintenance phase implies providing the real-estate blockchain app with ongoing support and updating the new versions per altering legal considerations and security standards.
Choosing Agilie as a Reliable Partner
Real estate blockchain-based applications represent a promising business segment worthy of considering to work at. The alleviated process of paying and purchasing housing and the asset’s affordability, makes modernized real estate operations an inspirational sector to invest in. But prior to the real estate app development, the investor or business owners have to choose a reliable partner.
Agilie is a European outsourcing organization that promotes result-driven and customer-centered digital solutions. With 14+ years of professional experience, the company provides its from-scratch and customized apps and programs that circulate with the fintech, healthcare, real estate, marketing domains, etc.
Our development team can boost the real estate application’s functionality due to the following blockchain software development services:
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Blockchain Development
Our development team puts a decent amount of tech dedication into crafting decentralized products by ensuring data security and correctness of the financial operations. With this service, your blockchain real estate application will be facilitating real estate transactions in a smooth and fallacy-reduced manner.
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Cryptocurrency Integration
A vast number of real estate blockchain-based platforms work with existing cryptocurrency solutions. Agilie can help integrate the cryptocurrency payment to optimize the owner’s project or while developing a from scratch one.
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Smart Contract Development
Agilie offers end-to-end development services to ensure the safety and automation of the transactions processing. Incorporating smart contract enhances transparency, reduces costs, and saves time in rental agreements or housing purchase, by automating and securing financial operations.
You might be interested in the factors to consider when choosing a development partner.
Conclusion
To conclude, blockchain in real estate companies plays a valuable role in alleviating processes like financial operations, identity verification, and fraud elimination. The discussed 9 real estate blockchain startups share in common the process of improved financial transactions while possessing unique features that diversify their services from each other. Focus on anti-fraud support and establishment of the unique cryptocurrencies highlight the versatility of tech uniqueness, motivating you to build your own blockchain real estate app.
