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Written by: Sandi Laufenberg-Deku

Governments worldwide are embracing real estate tokenization.  Here are some highlights.

The Dubai Land Department (DLD) announced a multibillion-dollar-tokenization project to enable fractional ownership of real property in March of this year. This initiative was publicly launched on May 25 and is designed to transform property ownership by 2033, with tokenized assets projected to be valued at around $16 billion. DLD will collaborate with the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), the Dubai Future Foundation and the UAE Central Bank. DLD’s platform (Prypco Mint) will be integrated with its traditional land-registry systems. As a result of this project, fractional ownership of real estate will be available to UAE residents and investments will start at around $540. International investors will have access in the future.

Bergen County, New Jersey, recently announced the largest blockchain-based-land-record-management project in the United States. It entered into a five-year agreement with Balcony, a blockchain-technology firm, in early June. Over 370,000 deeds, representing around $240 billion in real-property value, will be digitized and migrated onto the Avalanche-blockchain platform supporting decentralized applications, smart contracts and a wide range of use cases, including the tokenization of real-world assets. The project will cover all of the municipalities in the county and serve nearly one million residents. The county anticipates that the project will dramatically reduce deed processing times and streamline real estate transactions. The new system will also be designed to improve municipal revenue collection and enhance public trust in official land records.

Other governments include:

• Teton County, Wyoming was the first county to implement a blockchain-based system for recording land titles and property records with Medici Land Governance, a subsidiary of Overstock.com (MLG) in 2019. The system is accessible through the clerk’s office and online GIS-ownership maps. It does not currently support property transfers or other transactions.
• Baltimore, Maryland.  Baltimore’s blockchain land records pilot was launched in December 2023 and is focused on recording the city’s inventory of around 13,000 vacant properties. The pilot aims to streamline transactions, reduce title fraud and accelerate the rehabilitation of vacant homes. It was also developed in partnership with MLG, which is deploying similar systems globally, including in Tulum (Mexico), Liberia and Guyana.