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Blockchain Technology

5.4  USAGE OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

IN LAND REGISTRATION

One of the most arduous aspects of the real estate sector is the registration of land,

which seems to be crucial for most people except for those who carry out the process

themselves(Banupriya S and Arunkumar S, 2020).It is one of the mundane admin­

istrative matters,involving amanual stamping process,when every person is excited

about getting the key for their new home. Also, the registration process cannot be

understood by many people. During 2018, it is calculated that real estate transaction­

sexceeded $1.7 trillion,4%higher than in 2017.

Also, there will be a land registration trial paper,which will vary both quantita­

tively and qualitatively.

5.4.1  Challenges of the Land Registration Process

Usually, the registries that are kept for entering the land details will record the own­

ership details in physical form, as happened in past decades.We might think that it is

a simple task, but it includes myriad challenges:Ifsafeguarding is too hard,the record

may be lost or destroyed, falsified or manipulated (Kaczorowska et​.a​l, 2019). In the

UK, the land registration process has become digital; however, if someone needs to

sell a property and doesn’t have the document,he needs to prove that he is the owner

through proper claims. This process can result in an unfortunate delay. Also, if a

disaster destroys the place where the physical documents are maintained, the com­

plete process will collapse. In 2010, a serious earthquake affected Haiti,resulting in

more than 1 million people losing their lives (Kamkar et​.a​l, 2019). In such cases,

they cannot prove their ownership of property. In these situations, we need to main­

tain a distributed digital ledger, which might help in solving these problems.

5.4.2  Blockchain on Land Registration

Blockchain technologyis a possible and effective solution for overcoming the chal­

lenges in the land registration process. The implementation of land registration

using blockchain will record the details of the land as well as the owner and will

be assigned to the particular owner’s account Krishnapriya et​.a​l, 2020). Any update

on the particular land can be updated in a timely way; for example, if a building is

built on the empty land, this can be updated in the particular owner’s account, or if

the property is sold,it can be transferred to the respective account, and so on. Thus,

each and every transaction can be traced with a proper timestamp and is indisputable

(Kshetri et​.a​l, 2018). This enables the blockchain technology to provide more safe­

tyfor records of ownership. Since the documents are not stored in a central registry,

disaster or any other failure will not affect the system, as the data will be dispersed

in a distributed manner. With the fingerprint of the particular user, we can replicate

it and avoid fake entries over the particular land.

Thus, the paper-based system will not be flexible, durable or resilient.