Authorities in Bergen County, New Jersey, signed a five-year agreement with Balcony to transfer property ownership documents, worth a total of $240 billion, onto a blockchain network.
Balcony, a U.S.-based blockchain company specializing in real estate tokenization, partnered with Bergen County, the most densely populated county in New Jersey. As part of the agreement, the parties plan to digitize and place property ownership documents from 70 municipalities onto a DLT network.
In total, over 370,000 documents verifying real estate ownership, with an estimated value of $240 billion, will be tokenized and stored on the Avalanche blockchain network.
According to Dan Silverman, CEO of Balcony, the initiative is expected to reduce property transaction processing times in the county by 90% while minimizing fraud risks and documentation errors. He also noted that blockchain technology will ensure the immutability and accessibility of records. County Clerk of Bergen County John Hogan added that distributed ledger technology will simplify property data management in the county and optimize the overall record-keeping system, making it more straightforward, transparent, and secure.
Previously, Balcony assisted the authorities of Orange, Texas, in uncovering and addressing a major issue in the local real estate market. Tokenization of property titles revealed that 63% of sold properties in the city lacked proper certificates of occupancy. Thanks to this process, the city was able to recover $1 million in municipal revenue.
Gregg Lester, President of Balcony, stated that the Bergen County initiative is intended to serve as a model for how blockchain can transform real estate record management. He expressed hope that the positive impact seen in the county will inspire other regions to boost efficiency and trust in the real estate sector.
The largest real estate tokenization project to date was the initiative by Blocksquare and Vera Capital, which agreed to tokenize $1 billion worth of commercial and multifamily real estate on a DLT network. According to Deloitte, the global real estate tokenization market has the potential to grow to $4 trillion by 2035.
