Why Blockchain Could Eventually Totally Change Real Estate Investment !
Real estate is often considered to be one of the very best investment opportunities out there for a lot of people for several reasons. For one thing, it’s one of the more accessible investments out there purely in terms of how easy it is to understand.
Even if you have no idea what is going on on the floor of the stock market, the idea of buying a property and then using it to increase your income is something most people can understand very easily. Not only that but it’s also one of the most reliable investment methods as long as you make smart decisions.
Many of the things that make real estate such a popular choice for many investors is the fact that it’s stayed fairly consistent for such a long time. However, there have been a lot of changes in the realm of real estate investment over the last several years that look set to shake things up in a pretty significant way. Out of all of these things, few are ready to make more of a change to the way that things are done than the rise of cryptocurrency and blockchain.
Of course, for a lot of people, these are terms that they have heard but may not fully understand. With that in mind, here is something of a guide to the ways that blockchain could seriously impact the world of real estate investment.
What is blockchain?
Considering just how often many of us end up hearing and reading about blockchain in the news, often on a near-daily basis, it’s a little surprising how little most people seem to understand of what it actually is. That’s not really that surprising, after all, the idea of things like cryptocurrencies can be a strange and confusing idea for a lot of people right from the get-go.
However, if you want to understand how blockchain and cryptocurrencies are impacting real estate investment, you need to know what they are. Put in the simplest terms possible, blockchain is a record of new transactions. This means that it’s a record of where particular cryptocurrencies are being transferred to and from, medical data, and even things like voting records.
These records are held in “blocks” which are combined to for the blockchain. If you’re the owner of any cryptocurrency like bitcoin, you essentially own a password to a specific block within that chain which you can then access and withdraw funds from. For a lot of people, this means that blockchain acts as an alternative to traditional banking since the records of what funds have been transferred are public, and the middleman has essentially been removed from the equation.
How is it changing real estate investment?
Those who are familiar with blockchain almost all are aware of it because of bitcoin and to a lesser extent other cryptocurrencies. However, the truth is that there is a lot more to blockchain than that, particularly when it comes to investments. As reliable and well established as the traditional real estate model might be, there are plenty of ways in which it can be difficult for a lot of people to embrace fully.
Things, like being unable to afford a full mortgage or being rejected for the loan based on credit history, can end up excluding those who might otherwise be interested in getting their foot on the property ladder. Blockchain services like I-House allow people to invest in smaller amounts of property rather than finance the entire thing themselves, which makes it much easier for those who can’t afford full mortgages to purchase property.
With things like an I-house Token – IHT, the idea is that more and more people will have access to the world of property investment than ever before. Not only that but blockchain could well end up cutting out the middle-man from the transaction of purchasing real estate in the same way that it does for many other transactions. In the same way that it removes banks from the equations during many transactions, blockchain could end up removing the need for real estate agents and mortgage brokers entirely. It can allow people to verify the transaction through the blockchain system which, in an ideal situation, could actually result in the entire transaction taking place in an instant.
What can you do?
This is still very much a young process and method of investment, but it could spell some genuine changes in the future for a lot of people’s ability to purchase and invest in property. The best thing that you can do is to keep a weather eye on the horizon and try to figure out what the best way to respond to these changes is. Make sure that you don’t just write things like blockchain transactions off as a trend and that you give them the attention that they deserve. You could find that they make the whole process of property investment far faster, cheaper, and more accessible to everyday people. Whether or not you consider that to be a positive thing will entirely depend on your personal circumstances. However, the key is to remember that your ability to adapt is going to dictate whether or not you survive in an ever-changing financial landscape.
Now, there’s no telling exactly how blockchain and cryptocurrency will impact the financial world in the long run. It may end up being a flash in the pan, or it may have long-lasting consequences for the financial world as a whole. However, no matter what impact it will have over time, there’s no doubt that it’s incredibly important that you familiarise yourself with all of the ways in which the world of real estate investment could potentially change in the future. One of the biggest mistakes that less experienced investors tend to make is that they fail to understand that the world of investment is constantly changing and shifting and it’s your job to be able to change and shift alongside it. If you’re not able to do that then all that’s going to happen is that you’re going to end up getting left behind, struggling to understand what went wrong.