The Blockchain Revolution: Is Commercial Real Estate Next?

There’s probably no way you’ve been in Cleveland over the past 6 months and haven’t heard of Blockchain. Blockchain is a shared digital ledger of transactions recorded and verified across a network of participants in a tamper-proof and visible chain and has implications and potential for countless industries, including Commercial Real Estate.

The Blockland Solutions Conference made Cleveland the center of blockchain thought leadership for four days. In addition to the business and technology opportunities that blockchain can support, the conference showcased our city to new audiences and pushed our imaginations to embrace new applications for the emerging blockchain platform. Real estate is an industry ripe for evolution, with countless “proptech” initiatives underway to push the industry in new directions.

Blockchain has natural applications in real estate that may deliver transformation in ways similar to blockchain’s impacts in finance with cryptocurrencies to date.  The three inherent benefits of blockchain technology are efficiency, security and transparency.

We’ve been studying the opportunities with our colleagues at Cushman & Wakefield. We anticipate blockchain-based opportunities to disrupt many real estate related functions, many already underway, including:

• Property due diligence for transactions
• Asset management of large multi-tenanted properties/ portfolios
• Global property searches
• Title and Land Registries
• Smart contracts
• Tokenization of CRE
• Supply chain management

To learn more about this research and to download the report and infographic visit:

http://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/research-and-insight/2018/blockchain-bitcoin-realestate