Time has long been the enemy of those doing battle with Baltimore’s thousands of vacant properties.
In the past, it was not uncommon for two to three years to elapse as city officials waded through the legally arduous process of foreclosing on a vacant home. Today, officials hope they have shortened that window to four to five months with the help of expedited in rem foreclosures.
Still more time passes, however, as Baltimore awaits title searches, a process needed to make sure a property’s ownership history is clear and to satisfy title insurance companies. In the case of Baltimore’s thousands of vacant homes, multiple title searches are needed for every house — one for each step in the process of acquiring, rehabbing and selling.
The time consumed by those searches is something Baltimore’s residents can scarcely afford. Each passing day attracts more crime, vermin and hazardous conditions in vacant homes.
Now, however, Baltimore officials are hopeful that they have a solution to recuperate some of that time lost, too.
This month, the city’s spending board agreed to a $225,000 contract to kick off an effort to use blockchain technology to record the city’s vacant properties. Over the three-year pilot, Medici Land Governance will input records for the city’s roughly 13,600 vacant properties into a blockchain, building a database more secure than the system currently used by the city and also more efficient.
The system will contain an immutable record of the chain of custody for each property, eliminating the need for subsequent title searches, explained Ebony Thompson, Baltimore’s solicitor and self-appointed blockchain specialist. With fewer title searches needed, Baltimore’s most demanding properties can zip much more quickly through changes in ownership, getting into the hands of the developers needed to rehabilitate them and eventually the city’s residents.
“We could certify it much quicker,” Thompson said. “That’s music to my ears.”
Baltimore’s foray into blockchain began on Thompson’s first day on the job. It was Jan. 31, 2022, and days earlier, the city had been devastated by the loss of three firefighters. The three were killed when a vacant home that they entered to fight a fire collapsed violently inward. Scott held a news conference that day to announce Baltimore would undertake a review of efforts to mitigate the stubborn vacant problem.
Thompson, who had joined the city from private practice Venable, already had an idea in mind. During her time at the firm, she had taken a class at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the use of blockchain. The intersection of the technology with the world of real estate had piqued her interest, in particular the possibilities for speeding up and securing the transfer of properties.
“What I heard was the illiquidity of real estate is the biggest problem,” Thompson said. “Even if you’re good at it, it takes too long.”
Potential buyers of real estate face numerous barriers from intermediaries, Thompson said. People are shut out of purchasing because they don’t qualify for loans offered by banks. Baltimore has a notorious history of redlining, the racially motivated denial of loans and other services to communities considered less desirable. The city is routinely referred to as the birthplace of redlining.
“I started thinking about how blockchain could remove some of those intermediaries, make it more efficient, make it more liquid and make it more accessible to people who have been shut out,” Thompson said.
Other cities like New York City, where the demand for property is high, have experimented with blockchain as a means to prevent people from fraudulently claiming ownership of properties. Baltimore would be the first to use the technology to specifically target unwanted properties.
“What if as the birthplace of redlining, this could also be the birthplace for allowing the people that had to suffer through that, giving them the accessibility to actually revitalize and have a part of revitalizing their own neighborhoods?” Thompson added.
Synonymous with cryptocurrency, blockchain is a broader technology that can be used to decentralize data and allow secure transactions.
Here’s how Johns Hopkins University Magazine described it: Blockchain is a system of validation and encryption for a digital token (a block). Each block has its own unique fingerprint (a hash). Once someone makes a change to the information contained within the original block — say, to add the transaction of a sale — a new, unique block is created and receives its own hash. These blocks are linked to one another, forming a chain, allowing users to review how and by whom the information was edited along the way.
Because the information contained within the blockchain is decentralized, that makes it much more difficult to hack than traditional databases. Blockchains have multiple nodes. Even if a hacker gains access to the database via one of the nodes, it can’t be changed. Alterations would be immediately recognizable when compared to all other copies of the chain and rejected.
While the technology was designed to record financial transactions, its use has grown in other fields such as real estate where data storage and tracking assets are required. Baltimore’s pilot, led by contractor Medici Land Governance, will use blockchain to record the transaction histories of its vacant properties.
When any property is sold, a title search of public records is conducted to confirm its rightful owner. The searches reveal any claims or liens against a property that could impact its purchase. That information is provided to title insurance companies, that secure an owner’s rights to a property. While title insurance isn’t required, it’s best practice, and lenders like to see it to ensure they’re making secure investments.
For Baltimore, title searches have been time-consuming and, in some cases, take months, Thompson said. Worse, the search has to be repeated each time a property changes hands.
With the blockchain technology, however, the city will create an “immutable” ledger of each vacant property’s history. Based on conversations Medici has had with large title insurance companies, that record would be enough to satisfy the title search requirement moving forward, CEO Ali El Husseini told the Board of Estimates recently.
Insurance companies have also said the cost of title insurance could be lowered as a result, he said. Reduced costs will benefit not just the city but the eventual buyers of homes, making them more attractive to developers and people who will live in them.
“Blockchain is the first step,” El Husseini said. “The second step … is making the ability and the purpose of the blockchain to be useful.”
Katherine Pinkard, the president of Pinkard Properties, has studied the intersection of blockchain and real estate. Baltimore’s proposal has potential to increase transparency for the city and other users of the system. Plans call for Baltimore’s database to be public-facing, but it will have a private layer so that only the city can add to it.
“It creates a level of efficiency that we’ve not had before,” she said. “You would be able to pull up a piece of property and very clearly see through these blocks on the chain when it has changed hands and with whom and why and at what cost. All that data and information is there stored in one place.”
Still, Pinkard warned, blockchain is not a panacea. It’s only as strong as the data input into the system, she said.
Thompson said the city will continue to use traditional title searches to compile the information for the database. Information from those searches is already honored by title insurance companies, and it’s the most reliable option, she said.
The blockchain will run parallel to the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation’s digital SDAT system, which the city will continue to use, Thompson said.
The blockchain system offers the added benefit of improved security against a cybersecurity attack, a threat that is still fresh on the minds of Baltimore officials in the wake of a 2019 ransomware attack. Although the city’s property records were not damaged during the attack, property sales were completely halted for a period that year as the city struggled to regain access to its mainframe system. Other data was permanently lost.
Construction of the blockchain will begin early next year and is expected to take three years. If successful, the possibilities for expanding Baltimore’s use of blockchain are numerous. Thompson said she sees potential for a citywide property database, but also using the technology for smart contracts that would automatically award payments to subcontractors when primary vendors are paid.
Pinkard said there’s potential for the “tokenization” of real estate, allowing fractional ownership shares of properties. City residents who perhaps couldn’t qualify for a mortgage outright would have the potential to buy a fractional share of their home or apartment building. The system would allow owners to maintain their shares both when buying and selling.
“Having the city take the lead, I think is the lynchpin that’s going to help make that happen,” Pinkard said. “If the city creates a supportive environment around experimenting with blockchain, that I think is the first domino that needed to fall.”
