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No disagreement with any of your points; where decentralization/automation "helps"- for some definition of help- is liquidity. Real property is give or take the
by jonahbenton 5y ago
No disagreement with any of your points; where decentralization/automation "helps"- for some definition of help- is liquidity. Real property is give or take the largest global asset market and is also incredibly illiquid.
Not only illiquid, but mispurposed. Only a portion of the individual assets have humans living in them, many are really just holdings, suitable for Monopoly.
There are plenty of structures that convey portions of real property legal rights in more or less efficient ways, but overall I don't see how it isn't inevitable for value to flow to those mechanisms that enable more liquid and efficient trading, and those mechanisms I think are most likely blockchain based.
It will take a long time, to be sure, and all kinds of new law has to be developed, new kinds of disputes (rhyming with old disputes but in this new medium) have to be subjected to governance and resolution.
But assuming an increase in human movement, climate-driven property value change, nation-state resource volatility, will there be a jurisdiction that adopts an on-chain registry in the next n years? I think so.
Is it better? Does it align with the needs of many stakeholders in the current registry systems? Likely not. But seems still like it will happen.
- hakfoo 5y agoI think liquidity tends to trend with commodification, even more than a more efficient ledger. Real property is fairly hostile to commodification-- even if you have "100 square metres of grade-XYZ commercial space", the guy with a different hundred metres can say that his averages 4 minutes closer to where your workers live. It might be viable in some level of the market-- perhaps large commercial property owners disinterestedly trading bundles of bulk assets in between themselves-- but even there the time for the transaction to settle is secondary behind things like 'arranging funding', 'inspections', or 'finding a suitable property for needs.'