It’s been two years since Propy launched its utility token, the asset at the heart of our company’s digital infrastructure. Since then, we at Propy have witnessed numerous other real estate projects rise and fall, but our company has managed to hold its ground and achieve steady growth. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights related to Propy’s progress within the global real estate market.
Is Propy A Good Fit for Traditional Property Transactions?
The biggest challenge that Propy faced shortly after its launch had to do with our platform’s adoption. Puzzled with the inevitabilities of reality, we had to solve a challenging question: How do we shift from 0 to 1 and make our first transaction?
Back in the early days, no one knew Propy. Real estate agents were scared to use our product and advocate on its behalf. Additionally, with all the resonance around the buzzword “blockchain,” many traditional folks were not even sure if the technology was legal or legitimate.
Today, Propy is widely used by real estate agents to complete property deals with U.S. dollars and loan options in an entirely traditional manner. The infrastructure is invisible to our users and is powered by smart contracts, making us innovative and eventually disruptive.
There have been many articles related to blockchain and how it would disrupt the title industry. As a result, real estate professionals were afraid that title companies would reject the idea of completing transactions on Propy, out of fear of potential disruption.
Of course, the disruption will eventually occur, but the real estate industry is moving slowly. Thus, it is better for parties to collaborate. Today, realtors need title agents. Because of this, both parties have dashboards on Propy’s Transaction Management Platform to allow them to work together.
Besides our core product, the real estate Transaction Platform, we have also built our Land Registry or Title Registry, which is a tool used for the storage of land records and other public records on a blockchain. An important moment in the history of our company happened when we received the authorization to utilize our Land Registry on the blockchain in the United States.
Does Blockchain Technology Matter?
For the past two years, we’ve seen a transition from extreme interest for blockchain initiatives from the U.N., governments, and institutions to extreme skepticism due to some dishonest activities associated with blockchain initiatives and many failed projects in the field of distributed ledgers. Despite all of the negative buzz around the new technological trend, we at Propy have had reasons for implementing blockchain technology in the core of our business. History remembers a similar path that the Internet took thirty years ago, back in the 1980s; its adoption was slow and bumpy.
In the past, our company’s founders personally experienced pain while conducting real estate transactions. Their challenges sparked their interest in tackling the problem of making the real estate transaction management process more efficient, secure, and cost-effective. Our CEO, Natalia Karayaneva, along with the other co-founders, took action to dedicate resources toward building and developing an innovative solution that would help real estate professionals and consumers complete property transactions online. By integrating blockchain technology into the core of our business, we made it possible to solve the challenging difficulties in the real estate space. We also demonstrated that distributed ledgers have value and can be present in real-life applications.
The Wall Street Journal wisely noticed predictions that “there will come a time when major transactions like real estate sales will be done entirely online, down to the recording of property titles.” Indeed, our company has taken a step in that direction.
We have built a useful product that secures the property transaction process and makes it both time-efficient and safe to use. We have made progress in turning negative connotations associated with the term “blockchain” into positive ones.
What Was The Biggest Win?
When it comes to our achievements, our biggest win was completing our first transaction. Since the completion of our first historical transaction in Vermont in 2018, thousands of agents have signed up to use the Propy platform. Today, we have reached the point where we are selling our services to brokerages and real estate developers in the U.S.
Our Transaction Management Platform, which is powered by smart contracts, helped us firmly place ourselves in seven U.S. states, Asia, and the European Union within our first year of operation. Our tremendous success speaks for itself. The community of real estate professionals needs and loves our product, a solution that helps integrate all transaction participants into a new, seamless digital workflow.
In an email correspondence with Forbes, our CEO, Natalia Karayaneva, stated, “You cannot buy real estate online as you do with books on Amazon. The reason for that is the lack of tools for online macro payments and online ownership transfer for high-value assets. Propy built both.”
Indeed, our company has created something revolutionary that has never been offered before. Now, we are working with leading organizations such as the National Association of Realtors and teams from First American, Old Republic, Chicago Title, Coldwell Banker, Sotheby’s, and other brokerages.
What Matters More: Transaction Management Platform Or Land Registry?
Propy has two key products: 1) Transaction Management Platform and 2) Land Registry. Though both concepts are unique and revolutionary, their adoptions are different. We noticeably scale faster with Propy’s Transaction Management Platform, as it does not require working with governmental authorities. Moreover, we experience tremendous support from the National Association of Realtors, which helps us push our agenda and educate 1.3 million real estate industry members in the United States.
When it comes to Propy’s Land Registry, not everything depends on us; we still experience slowdowns tightly linked to governments. Nevertheless, the shift is happening – Vermont was the first state to adopt Propy’s technology.
In his public statement, Vermont Governor Phil Scott outlined, “This new [blockchain] legislation holds the promise of making government more efficient, cost-effective and ultimately saving Vermonters money. I thank South Burlington’s partner, Propy and its CEO Natalia for spearheading this project and for being here with us today.”
Use of PRO Token
Blockchain technology is essential to the back end of every single transaction on Propy. Whenever a financial transfer is made, a blockchain “gas” fee is paid in Propy’s native token. This process, which runs on the back end of our platform, is invisible on the front end.
Propy’s customers do not need to have extensive knowledge of distributed ledgers. Instead, they can enjoy the peace of knowing that Propy’s technology is backing their transactions in a secure, fast, and affordable manner.
What Do We Think About Data?
Data is expensive, as it is considered “new gold” in the modern historical era. With the potential to collect transaction data of $1.7 trillion worth of property sales annually, we feel highly responsible for treating this information fairly. Aside from being better than our traditional competitors (such as Dotloop, which Zillow owns, and SkySlope, which Fidelity owns), our company’s success is widely determined by our core principles. At Propy, we ensure the security and privacy of our users, no matter how difficult it might get for us. We do not share data with third parties; rather, we aim to decentralize it. We protect the sensitive information of our customers.
With ever-improving services and a strong technological core, our company will do its best to continue growing domestically and internationally over the coming years.
