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A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. Anyone who has bought or sold a home knows how long and tedious the closing process can be. It involves antiquated paperwork requiring multiple signatures from various parties, disclosures and a heap of compliance forms. Some of the process has been digitized, but mostly not. One remedy is emerging: put it all on the blockchain. Propy, a Miami-based blockchain technology company that launched in 2017, has been trying to modernize the closing process and recently got a big financial boost to do it. In late January, Propy announced it had secured a $100 million credit facility from Metropolitan Partners Group, a private investment firm. The money would be used, it said, to consolidate title and escrow companies into an artificial intelligence-powered, end-to-end closing platform. “We have this conviction that blockchain is the next phenomenon after the internet,” said Natalia Karayaneva, founder and CEO of Propy. “The internet moved information, blockchain will move value. It already is moving money. It’s moving Treasurys. However, the real estate industry is still behind.” That’s primarily because the industry doesn’t exactly understand blockchain, Karayaneva said. Blockchain is like a massive, shared, digital filing cabinet that no one person can control. Things that are recorded on the blockchain cannot be altered. “This technology allows us to record deeds and transactions, and it’s impossible to change this data,” Karayaneva said. “It allows us to be a fraudless system.” As of now Propy has purchased four established title companies, but the transition is not easy. Those title companies “have a very big fear of AI, and when we acquire them, we have this in-person training both on AI and blockchain and cryptocurrency. We have established courses and training for those escrow officers on how to do transactions, but once they understand, the transaction happens on its own,” Karayaneva said. She noted closings that once took weeks can now take just a few hours. When Propy receives a signed purchase agreement for a property, whether it’s from REITs, a real estate developer or a Realtor, its AI extracts the data – purchase agreement, address, all the contingencies, all the conditions – and then a smart contract on blockchain starts. “We do it through our fintech solutions, but then the blockchain immediately gets this data on the public blockchain,” Karayaneva said. Meet Avery Propy is also using its new funding to develop an AI agent to help facilitate deals. The agent, named Avery, responds directly to clients at any time, explaining how Propy works and what the AI does. Avery even has an Instagram account. Avery checks emails and transactions constantly, extracts all the data points, and then feeds it all into a smart contract platform. The agent can also make calls. “She is an escrow officer that never sleeps,” said Karayaneva, noting that some clients don’t even realize it’s not a human. “It’s an omnichannel communication where she can communicate with our buyers, sellers, with REITs, institutional clients, and with vendors, such as ordering mortgage payouts from vendors.” The GENIUS Act A major milestone for blockchain technology came last year with the passage of the GENIUS Act, which gave it what Karayaneva calls, “legitimacy.” It created rules for stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies tied to the U.S. dollar. It mandated that companies issuing these coins, which are transferred on the blockchain, must actually hold real dollars or safe assets behind them. “Real estate developers and REITs started to reach out to Propy, because we’ve established this brand for so many years with our strong conviction that there was a way to legally accept cryptocurrencies in real estate, to legally record these on blockchain and in the county, of course,” said Karayaneva. “It unlocked all this huge interest by real estate developers.” Miami, in particular, where Propy is based, sees huge demand from international buyers, many of whom prefer to use cryptocurrencies. Karayaneva, who grew up in the former Soviet Union and said she saw properties seized by the central government, said she believes deeply in the potential for this technology to protect consumers, especially in developing countries. The decentralized nature of the blockchain provides an immutable record of ownership. “Real estate is the most important and the largest asset class in the world. It’s the foundation of democracy and capitalism,” said Karayaneva. “It makes sense to move this asset class on chain. People have to own this record, and they have to own it in a decentralized way.”
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