Former NatWest Director launches world’s first real-time property network
A house in Kent has become the first real-time property deal to go live on Coadjute, a blockchain network led by Dan Salmons, ex-Director of Innovation for Natwest.
The former NatWest Director responsible for the bank’s rollout of contactless technology has officially launched Coadjute, with its first live deal on the real-time property network.
After two years piloting the concept with property market businesses, Dan Salmons and his team have finally reached a milestone, with the progress of a house sale in Kent being tracked live.
For the first time, all parties involved in a property deal – including the estate agent, conveyancer, mortgage lender and broker – will have complete visibility of the transaction from start to finish, from their existing software.
Salmons commented: “This is a huge moment for the UK property market. With so many different parties involved in a property transaction there’s been a desperate need for a way to connect them and speed up the process. Thanks to the leadership of HM Land Registry, and the support of some of many of the leading property software companies, that technology has now arrived.”
Halving property transaction times
With more than 25% of deals currently falling through and billions lost in efficiencies, Coadjute is introducing bank grade enterprise blockchain technology used for foreign trading and huge transactions to help solve this problem.
The firm has ambitions to cut the 5-month average process for buying and selling property in half by getting rid of those many small delays and gaps in the process caused by miscommunication or a disconnect.
Seven of the most respected software companies in the property industry – including Dezrez, MRI, VTUK and Reapit – have already signed up to the award-winning Coadjute network and it has the full backing of the Land Registry.
The Land Registry has hailed the innovation as a milestone in the digitisation and development of real-time property market.
Deputy Director, Eddie Davies (pictured), said: “HM Land Registry ran the Digital Street initiative in 2018 to encourage the industry to work together to improve the efficiency of the market. We’re delighted to see Coadjute take this work forward and are happy to be working with them now as they bring their network to market.”
At Muve, as a thoroughly tech-drive law firm, we are watching these developments with great interest. We have always been fans of the Australian PEXA e-conveyancing system, as a one stop national portal, but it is clear from Land Registry statements that the Land Registry is not going to go down that route. It is therefore more likely that the kind of integration layer, or blockchain, that Coadjute is building may be the way to bring the fragmented conveyancing system together. What is less clear to us is why the leading vendors of conveyancing case management systems cannot achieve the same thing by ensuring that they build integration with all the leding estate agent and lender systems. But we may be edging closer to a significant move forward after years of hype.