Ep. 68: Teresa Grobecker on the intersection of real estate and the blockchain.

Watch our interview with Teresa on Youtube.

Teresa Grobecker is the CEO of Real Estate Corsortia and today she is trying to put real estate, America's largest asset class, on the blockchain.

Related

• "Ep. 63: Radhika Iyengar-Emens on enterprise blockchain and deeptech."
• "Ep. 56: Joel Comm on blockchain, NFTs, and cryptoassets."
• "Ep. 42: Philip Rosedale on Second Life, virtual worlds, and economic systems."

Show notes

• Teresa has a long history of bringing real estate into the modern age, having started the first online real estate brokerage in San Francisco nearly a decade ago.
• Today, she wants to help put real estate data on the blockchain.
• Along the way Teresa has faced continuous opposition, as realtors don't have a reputation to being open to radically new ways of doing things. By her estimation, the industry tends to reliably be about two decades behind the adoption curve.
• Thomas asked whether Teresa believes technology will ever progress to the point that realtors are automated out of existence. She thinks that automation will tend towards making realtors more and more like consultants who are helping homeowners make good choices, but that there will always be a role for realtors and real estate experts.
• There's a natural fit between the #metaverse and real estate, and this is actually something Teresa and her colleagues have been thinking about. There are various interesting ways realtors might offer titling and registration services for businesses operating in the metaverse, for example.
• Trent asked Teresa to give the basic pitch for why real estate is the sort of problem that is well-solved by blockchain technologies.
• She first began thinking about this possibility while reading the Dodd-Frank act, which contains a line specifying that every asset held by a bank (which could include real estate) has to be documented by a ledger.
• Over the subsequent few years the technology underlying blockchain matured, and #[[non-fungible tokens (NFTs)]] began to gain popularity.
• Today, most #[[non-fungible tokens (NFTs)]] are used for art, but it occurred to Teresa that they could also be used in various places in real estate.
• Take, for example, certifying that important repairs have taken place when a home is being appraised. If a dishwasher breaks then the repair person could mint an NFT of the relevant paperwork. This, then, could be used as part of the appraisal process, making the evaluation of a home much easier.
• This matters because everyone involved--including the aspiring homeowner, the lender, the banks--want to know the real value of the property.
• Teresa's company, Real Estate Consortia, is aiming to be the plumbing that facilitates the minting and movement of these NFTs.