Swedish land registry Lantmäteriet is soon going to conduct their first Blockchain property sale with volunteers after two years of testing.
Sweden’s land-ownership authority, the Lantmäteriet, is soon expected to conduct their first Blockchain technology property transaction after two years of testing, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Wendesday, Mar. 7.
Lantmäteriet is currently shortlisting volunteers to participate in buying and selling property on its own Blockchain-based platform. Mats Snäll, Lantmäteriet’s chief digital officer, told the WSJ that “from the technology point of view, we are quite ready.”
Lantmäteriet first started testing Blockchain technology in 2016, completing their second stage of trials in March 2017. By July 2017, the Swedish land registry was using Blockchain to register land and properties on the Swedish Blockchain startup ChromaWay’s private Blockchain network, albeit on a “small scale,” according to Snäll.
Besides ChromaWay, the Lantmäteriet has partnered with with telecom company Telia Co. AB and consulting firm Kairos Future for the Blockchain real estate development project, the WSJ reports.
Even though according to the WSJ the Lantmäteriet already functions in a “highly digitized and paperless” system, the time from signing a contract to registering a sale can take between three to six months.
With the Blockchain system, “it could be hours,” Jörgen Modin, chief solutions architect at ChromaWay, tells the WSJ. Modin added that the buyer and seller don’t even have to be located in the country for the deal to go through.
The WSJ reports that there are still obstacles to overcome in Sweden before Blockchain can be adopted on a wide scale for real estate dealings, namely that digital signatures for registering or purchasing properties are currently illegal under Swedish law.
In September of last year, the US Nasdaq and Swedish bank SEB began testing a Blockchain-based trading platform for mutual funds.
