GREP: A Blockchain-based System for Managing Real Estate Provenance and Ownership Certification

Abstract

Real estate management is hindered by numerous challenges, as existing systems are inefficient and complex, leading to issues such as fraud, tampering, and unclear ownership histories. Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize real estate management by ensuring traceable, secure, transparent, and immutable records of property ownership and provenance. Despite its potential, there is no global platform for managing and tracing real estate provenance, nor reliable methods for proving ownership and shared ownership. This thesis proposes the Global Real Estate Platform (GREP), a hybrid blockchain-based system designed to manage real estate provenance and ownership certification. Using blockchain technology, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and fractional non-fungible tokens (fractional NFTs), GREP addresses these critical gaps. A nine-step systematic literature review was conducted to explore the integration of blockchain technologies in managing real estate transactions and ownership certification. This process provided valuable observations, implications, and recommendations based on the analysis. Additionally, it identified gaps in the literature, which led to the formulation of research questions and objectives. Building on this foundation, we present the development of GREP. This hybrid blockchain solution is designed to achieve the research objectives as follows: • Developing a reliable and global real estate platform for managing real estate provenance, which manages provenance data and access rights, enhances data authenticity, and maintains a balance between transparency, privacy, and accountability. • Developing a reliable method to prove ownership of real estate property, which incorporates NFTs to address inefficiencies, security vulnerabilities, and the variability of real estate transaction costs and time. • Developing a reliable method to prove shared ownership of real estate property, which involves utilizing fractional NFTs to effectively manage the creation, division, and transfer of a property’s ownership record to multiple parties. • Validating and evaluating the system to ensure its robustness and reliability, and developing a prototype to demonstrate its feasibility and effectiveness. Each research objective is addressed in both conceptual and practical terms, with thorough implementation, validation, and use case demonstrations, followed by system evaluation using relevant metrics. In addition to these scientific advancements, this research contributes to addressing challenges such as preventing fraud, including forged documentation and double selling, as well as undocumented land, particularly in rural and underdeveloped regions. Furthermore, it reduces costs, shortens transaction times, improves efficiency, and boosts consumer confidence and public trust. The research also opens new possibilities for future directions, such as serving as a secondary identifier and aiding international investors without prior data.