Brand new startup, ShelterZoom, a blockchain-based online offer management app, could mean big changes for how real estate business is done.
ShelterZoom is billed as a comprehensive service, an app with a wide variety of functions serving various aspects of the RE game. When it properly lands – beta goes live November 27, 2017, right around the time I personally emerge from my Thanksgiving-induced calorie coma – it’s coming hard with two offers.
The first is Ethereum.
All of their services are built around Ethereum, the number two name in the blockchain game and rising quickly. Number one is bitcoin (which may hit 10k today). You may have heard of it. That said, bitcoin’s had bumps lately and, as we’ve written before, Ethereum aims high.
Above all, Ethereum works for scalability and versatility. It wants to put the offer – peer-to-peer processing with state of the art encryption, no security woes, no middleman expenses – to work in every field, not just finance. This would be a giant step in that direction.
The second is transparency.
In the simplest possible terms, ShelterZoom is a dashboard, a website widget, and a mobile app, all integrated to streamline the real estate buying process.
The website widget and mobile app, both called Offer NOW, provide a simple, standardized offer process that ShelterZoom claims is both auditable and cryptocurrency-level secure.
But ShelterZoom doesn’t stop at increasing transparency by simplifying the process. The platform also provides equal information to all users. Realtors, buyers, and sellers alike can sign up for the same push and text notifications, and can chat with one another through an onboard client.
Whether ShelterZoom can deliver on either offer remains to be seen.
But increased transparency can only be beneficial to the fraught real estate marketplace, and in a post-Equifax world, any transaction more sizable than a sandwich should have Ethereum-level tech backing it up. If ShelterZoom can move the market in that direction, it could be good news for everyone involved in the RE biz.
Matt Salter is a writer and former fundraising and communications officer for nonprofit organizations, including Volunteers of America and PICO National Network. He’s excited to put his knowledge of fundraising, marketing, and all things digital to work for your reading enjoyment. When not writing about himself in the third person, Matt enjoys horror movies and tabletop gaming, and can usually be found somewhere in the DFW Metroplex with WiFi and a good all-day breakfast.
