NatWest Bank, one of the UK’s biggest mortgage providers, has joined a blockchain pilot scheme designed to speed up the notoriously torturous process of buying a house. The bank has teamed up with Coadjute, a company dedicated to improving property workflow through decentralized technologies, and others to form a consortium who together hope to reduce the average UK home buying time from its current average of three months to a matter of weeks.
Blockchain to the Rescue?
Blockchain technology has been hyped as a cost- and time-saving technology, and home buying is famously intensive on both fronts – the amount of parties involved and the red tape that has to be waded through can be onerous. Streamlining such a time-honored system is something that many associated with it have been crying out for for some time, especially buyers and sellers, but until now there haven’t been many opportunities to achieve this goal. Now however, blockchain technology and smart contracts have the chance to be the twin catalysts to engineer real change.
Crack Team on the Case
For this trial, NatWest and Coadjute have teamed up with major software providers in the property industry, such as eTech Surveyor Software, Redbrick Solutions Conveyancing Software, and four others. By automating many of the processes involved in the complex world of property sale, in particular data sharing, the consortium hope that the lengthy process can be trimmed down to just three weeks, something that would be music to the ears of future buyers.
Following a purchase, homeowners could find their property registered on the Land Registry’s blockchain platform, which has been operating since 2017, as has a similar scheme in Wyoming County and also in Mexico. Should the trial prove successful, it could well represent the future of property ownership, which would be even more cause for celebration for beleaguered buyers and sellers.
