Ethereum blockchain meets the real estate market

ShelterZoom has announced that its blockchain-based online offer and acceptance platform for the real estate industry has gone live in the U.S. Other major international markets - including Canada, Australia, Europe, and countries in the Middle East - are set to go live in the first quarter of 2018.

Built to be Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) data dictionary-compliant, ShelterZoom significantly refines and streamlines the process of making real estate offers, thereby reducing paperwork and bringing greater openness to what has traditionally been a fragmented and opaque process. The complete ShelterZoom Online Offer and Acceptance platform includes a dashboard, the Offer NOW widget and a mobile app (available on iTunes and Google Play) that enables buyers and buyer agents to instantly submit offers from online real estate listings with just a few clicks or screen taps.

“As blockchain enters the mainstream, ShelterZoom is well positioned to bring the entire real estate industry onto it. The easy adoption of ShelterZoom's Offer NOW and Rent NOW widgets by any real estate website means that the industry can truly become innovative. And our highly experienced international team is committed to this journey,' commented Chao Cheng-Shorland, co-founder and director of ShelterZoom, referring to the multinational team led by herself and Amir Allen Alishahi, ShelterZoom’s other co-founder and director. “Standardized, interoperable, transparent, and secure offers are the future of the business. That’s why we are so excited about rolling out to early adopters ranging from small to large brokerage firms, multi-listing services, as well as our first WordPress real estate theme affiliate, Estatik, and our first Australian company, Arena Property Agents”

Using ShelterZoom, users can track and aggregate - as well as accept, reject or counter - offers in real time, while buyers and buyer agents can track offer statuses through their own dashboards. In addition, all parties in a transaction can receive push or text notifications throughout the offer process and instantly chat with one another according to established protocols via a modern, user-friendly interface.

ShelterZoom’s second platform, Rent NOW, shares a similar architecture with Offer NOW. It has a widget that can be installed on any real estate rental website. The widget enables a prospective tenant to instantly submit a secure rental application on a property, which then generates an Ethereum smart contract. ShelterZoom’s complete Online Renting and Leasing solution also comes with dashboards for landlords, agents and tenants, as well as an online chat function for all parties involved.