STRATEGY
TITLES
The Abstract Side of Real Estate
DIFFERENT METHODS OF DOCUMENTING OWNERSHIP EXPLAINED
by Steve Streetman
hat does it even mean to invest in real estate? Historically, you buy a building. You develop. You occupy. You rent. You manage. Real estate has always been, literally, something real and tangible, some- thing you can touch. But over time, as with every other investment type, real estate has become virtual and abstract. You can own shares in a real estate investment trust (REIT) or membership in an LLC that owns real estate as part of a syndication. You can own part of an apartment com- plex without subdividing it. And you W
can acquire title to a property without ever holding the keys in your hand. Property title itself is changing. Gone, for the most part, are the dusty tomes archived in the courthouse (and ready to fuel the next fire). These records have been better preserved by digitizing them and are now stored in multiple copies at multiple loca- tions, safe from the localized acci- dent. But these records are, literally, pictures of books, often stored with some amount of metadata that lets you know what book and page they are from. Better systems include
the names of the parties and the addresses of the properties. These systems allow you to search title from the comfort of your computer. However, the data is not the title. It is still the words on the pages of the pictures that tell who owns a property and what rights they are granted. Over the next few years, this approach to owning real estate and having title will change. Two crypto- currency-based methods of docu- menting ownership are emerging that will radically restructure title systems. These latest approaches to owning
60 | think realty magazine :: december 2021
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