With Dave Conroy
Dave Conroy recently moved to Meridio as Technical Lead. Meridio (formerly Pangea) is a platform that creates, manages, and allows the trading of fractional ownership shares in real estate assets for real estate investors.
Formerly R&D Lab Engineer at CRT Labs, Dave was part of the research group operated by the National Association of REALTORS’® Center for REALTOR® Technology. CRT Labs tracks relevant emerging technologies, educates members, advocates for technology best practices, and even becomes an innovator when there’s a “gap between what is needed and what is available.”
While at CRT Labs, Dave investigated all emerging technologies to help determine which ones could potentially impact real estate. “One of the most exciting technologies is blockchain,” he says.
Here Conroy discusses the basics of blockchain, the history of blockchain, how it has grown way beyond its cryptocurrency, beginning to now being adopted and deployed by mainstream businesses and industries, now that it has evolved into what Conroy describes as blockchain 2.0.
Conroy notes that “One of the most important things to learn about blockchain is that it’s just a new way of storing information.” He points out that instead of using a spreadsheet or database to share information, blockchain uses the idea of “shared ledgers.” Conroy explains that while everyone has their copy of the data, so in one sense blockchain is decentralized, but blockchain also is highly centralized as everyone involved “has just one place to look for verifiable data.”
And that crucial phrase – verifiable data – is what makes blockchain such a hot technology and had drawn so much interest from the real estate industry and technology firms developing software and systems for the industry.
Because blockchain provides a “verifiable, trustworthy record of events,” Conroy explains how blockchain could be used in a real estate transaction. He also summarizes how it would help make that transaction more efficient.
Savings of time, Conroy explains, comes from having all the different parties – buyers, sellers, seller agents, buyer agents, closing agents or attorneys, title companies, mortgage firms – all having access to the same information instantly, and that would eliminate “duplicative diligence,” which slows down a real estate transaction.
RESO recently started a new effort that’s focused on the use of shared ledger technology, the recently Board-chartered Distributed Ledger Workgroup, which was recently featured here. To learn more, including how to join, go here. For information on the upcoming fall RESO conference in Milwaukee, event information, hotel discounts, and registration information are here.
