It was auditory whiplash. Onrushing house music jolted to a void, then the feeble IRL vibration of a phone against a desk.
He was somewhere in his fifth hour of bug bashing. Resolving a back log of errors in code is tedious and difficult work. It’s also infuriating. He had better things to do than pick up after bullshit coders who are lazy or incompetent or both. Bug bashing is the kind of work he preferred to do all at once, in a single, numb, hyper-experience. And he’d learned that it is better done before the weekend, leaving some time and space to decompress before seeing his coworkers again.
He swiped the phone. “Hello?”
His throat cracked. There was a can of La Croix next to him that had gone flat hours ago. He finished it.
“Hi, Jordan, this is Kristen. Sorry to call on a Friday evening. I have updates on the condo sale!”
She’s always cheerful, Jordan thought. It’s uncanny.
She went on. “Ok, well, good news and bad news. I cleared things up with the other real estate agent and got the P&S paperwork from Darren. You know, the lawyer. Anyway, he was reviewing the title and there seem to be inconsistencies in the recorded deed. Basically the city and county have two different records of ownership for your property, because the registry system shifted way back god-knows-when. It’s not clear that the title is legally sound. I’m going to have a phone call with Darren first thing on Monday to sort it out. But the good news is, you have title insurance!”
“Right, ya. I got that when I bought the place.”
“Perfect, yes. Most people don’t, so you were smart to do that. Without title insurance, you’d be at risk of losing the condo right now — or at least this buyer’s offer. But you’re covered. We’re just going to have to work things out with the lawyers and the buyer, to see if they accept the deed as it stands. No answers yet, but I wanted you to know that I’m on it, and hopefully we can hit our closing date. You don’t have anything to worry about, and I’ll give you a call as soon as I know more on Monday. So you can relax over the weekend! Do you have any fun plans?”
He replied automatically, vaguely, and the call was over in less than a minute. The critical information was simple: the system is a mess, but he was covered. He rubbed his eyes, lifted the La Croix again, tipping it past 90 degrees, and got nothing. He squeezed the headphones back over his ears and unlocked his computer.
“I’m sorry, can you go back to the second slide? How does this help us with our records software?” asked the city CTO.
This was the third time Jordan Ottli had answered a version of this question, each in a version of the same fluorescent-lit, carpeted meeting room, each in a version of the same shabby city planning department.
“That’s a good question.” It wasn’t. “You wouldn’t be using the same record keeping software. Strictly speaking, you wouldn’t be using software at all. See, PlacePotential Labs keeps every title deed record securely on the blockchain. That means there is a single, un-hackable, system for managing property information now and into the future.”
One of the younger staff members was doing her best to follow. “And how do we access that information, here at the planning depar...”
The city CTO interrupted, eager to pick up momentum, “Right, my point exactly.” It wasn’t. “How do we approve and control each real estate transaction? How much staff time does that take? You know, we get a lot of software folks coming around here who don’t understand how city hall really works.”
“PlacePotential Labs has an online portal that’s custom-fit for each city. So you and your team are able to see every parcel deed and every transaction.” Jordan clicked to the relevant slide, and a video raced through maps overlaid with data. “We provide built-in analytics — in real time, and as monthly reports — that answer the questions that are most important to you. PlacePotential gives you perfect visibility into local real estate. Over time, that information will help you make better land use planning decisions.”
“Right, so we use the portal to review each transaction.” The CTO interrupted, eager to demonstrate his business negotiation skills and technical savvy. Leaning over his belly and knocking his fist on the table to emphasize each word, “But I still need to know: how. is. it. cyber. secure?”
He leaned back again, straining the chair with self-satisfaction.
“The beauty of this system is that you don’t need to review every transaction. Anyone can make a legitimate real estate purchase and sale from anywhere, in real time. Conventional real estate transactions have fees for listing and registry, for brokers and lawyers. Everyone is taking a cut, so it’s expensive, slow, and error-prone, and of course there’s title insurance, in case the paper system has issues. But with PlacePotential, each transaction is lightweight and fast. The city pays a small platform fee, and sellers pay a transaction fee. And to answer your second question: it’s extremely secure. Every computer in the world holds an encrypted version of the data. It’s called a distributed ledger in the blockchain world.”
The CTO leaned back on an often-used strategy in the defensive playbook. “You still haven’t shown me how this pulls in more land transfer tax revenue.”
Jordan smiled.
“That, Mr... Stanfield, was it? That, is our bread and butter.”
For this month’s Emerging Techpreneurs feature, WIRED Magazine sits down with Jordan Ottli, the founder and CEO of PlacePotential Labs – the company that’s “bringing real estate into the 21st century” with a blockchain-based title registry system. Since 2020’s bizarre year of hot real estate markets, over twenty US cities have transitioned onto the platform, and a long waitlist of urban planning departments will soon join them. Ottli opens up to us about leapfrogging from a paper-based system to next-generation blockchain architecture, a new real estate developers portal that PlacePotential Labs is about to launch, and what it’s like to disrupt the public sector at only 28 years old.
During Wednesday beers at The NoMad, an analyst was slipping out of the practiced surliness he usually wore like cologne.
“... I mean, it’s insane. Each parcel is floating on a real-time market. It feels like stock trading man. Cities that have converted to blockchain are becoming super hot markets. You can manage your whole portfolio right on the platform, and bake-in risk models. And when you land a deal? Like, when it goes through? You’ve basically cut out a month of paperwork. Straight from the financing into feasibility study and project dev. It’s like two clicks dude.”
He gestured to the bar tender for another round.
“This one’s on me. Man, it’s almost too easy. We’re going to be plowing through commissions bro. You’ve got to help me convince Cohen to get us on this platform. We already spend a shit ton of money on CoStar data and stuff, this is way better.”
“Hmmm.” His colleague’s interest had piqued at commission. “You said it’s called Place Possible?”
“Potential. PlacePotential. You in?”
“Show it to me tomorrow.”
“My man! My man.” He whacked his colleague’s shoulder. “You’re gonna lose it, no joke. Here.”
He handed over one of the beers. They knocked glasses, tapped them down on the bar top, and raised them to drink.
This is a piece of short fiction about a near-future technology. I think fiction is a useful tool for exploring what and how technologies or systems might emerge — which helps us imagine how we want them to exist, and if we want them to at all. I plan to incorporate more alternative forms like this into Notes on Common Ground.