I have two anecdotes to share today about the local housing market in the city of Birmingham.
Family friend has been trying to sell her house for the past year. She gets offers, the buyer provides paperwork etc to the Estate Agent (Realtor) ....then at the last minute they back-out. This has happened 6 times now & she's so frustrated by it. In what other market could this happen?! If I want to buy a car I say 'i'll take it' & give a deposit to secure it. Not in real estate apparently! Note: The house is large, well kept, in a good location. The people aren't backing-out because they uncover anything wrong with it.
A client told me his house-buying woes last week. He wanted a house & put in an offer, only for it to be sold to someone else. Coincidentally the new buyer came into his shop a few months later & told him he'd succeeded in buying a new house after bribing the estate agent £500! It turns out he put in the same offer as my client. This is fraud, the EA has a duty to get the best price for the seller, but you couldn't prove it. I suspect this is very widespread, and can only happen because the EA is acting as an opaque middleman.
So how could blockchain/smart contracts help with both these problems?
Transparency! And it could be used to hold deposits in escrow to stop the nonsense of putting offers on, the person thinks they've sold their house... then the buyer dropping out of the process after a few months.
Are their products in development to help with these problems?