“We think that we can make this
whole process faster and more
efficient and bring costs down,
which can then ultimately be
passed down to the consumer.”
— David Howie, CEO, Tellus Title Company
has since been acquired by San Diego-based XYO
Network but has an office at the McClellan Center.
McBain is no longer with the company.)
“Because all that data is encrypted and it’s a
provable encryption, [the lender] can be assured
that that’s a real person and that’s real data,” says
McBain. “So it’s worth it for them to bid for your
business.”
Or consider real estate investment trusts, or
REITs — companies that own, operate, or finance
investment properties and let individuals buy
shares. REITS work something like mutual funds
for real estate. But those shares trade at less than
their real value because of the uncertainties as-
sociated with bundling different properties, says
Kevin Shtofman, national blockchain lead in the
real estate practice of Deloitte Consulting. Instead,
blockchain could let a property owner bypass a
REIT and sell micro-shares directly to investors
in the form of digital tokens, cutting out the inter-
mediary REIT. “We can sell each development in-
dividually to investors, therefore unlocking more
liquidity and hopefully increasing the value of the
underlying asset,” he says.
Shtofman’s company has also mapped out a way
that blockchain could speed up the existing title
management system. A Deloitte report highlights
a Ghanaian startup launching a land title registry
to get all private land registered on a blockchain.
When a property is being sold, a land surveyor uses
GPS equipment to report the property’s boundar-
ies. The title with those GPS coordinates and oth-
er details get recorded on the blockchain. As long
as the original title is clear of defects, those time-
stamped and unchangeable records remain secure
and transparent forever.
A system like that would cut the number of
errors in land titles — about 30 percent today, ac-
cording to Goldman Sachs. Each of those mistakes
requires a labor-intensive process to clear. Only ti-
tles that are clear of defects would get recorded on
the blockchain. With all subsequent changes to the
title recorded there, the amount of time that insur-
ance companies would need to check a title would
be cut significantly, says David Howie of Tellus Title
Company, who works out of Placer County. Howie
is out to create a kind of Dewey Decimal system for
property on a blockchain, similar to the one Deloitte
describes. “We think that we can make this whole
process faster and more efficient and bring costs
down, which can then ultimately be passed down to
the consumer,” he says.
Title insurance companies are trying some-
thing similar to speed the title search process it-
self. One task in a title search on a property is to
identify prior title insurance policies written for
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