DP #37 Lotopia: Crowdsourcing real estate development

[EndymionJkb]

Name: Lotopia - crowdsourced real estate development

Purpose: Address urban blight and increase government/corporate transparency through disclosure of public real estate records and discussing/funding proposals to improve unused/underused property

Description: There is a growing trend (through efforts like OpenGov -- opengov.com/local-government) to promote transparency by releasing public records in a more accessible (and searchable) form. One big contributor to blight is vacant houses and lots. Deteriorating property increases crime, lowers property values -- and is just plain embarrassing.

Properties remain vacant for years on end for many reasons. Some are in legal limbo; perhaps the owner died with no heirs, or there is some sort of boundary dispute. Others were seized by the city for non-payment of taxes -- and then remain vacant because no one wants to pay the back taxes, or the bureaucratic red tape required to clear the title just isn't worth it.

But a big part of the problem is people simply don't know what's out there. Realtors can only sell properties with clear title and owners who can pay them, so no one is "advertising" any of these properties. There are "squatter laws" in some places that do some good; e.g., someone who occupies and materially improves a property has a mechanism to claim title, after which more extensive renovations make sense. Yet a vast majority of the properties remain vacant, slowly reclaimed by nature.

With Lotopia, local neighborhood districts will be seeded with vacant property data from public real estate records. Residents can then propose and vote on the highest and best use for a given vacant building or lot, allowing the best proposals to rise to the top.

One benefit of crowdsourcing real estate information is the potential to draw on the collective, distributed knowledge of the whole community. Say a group of young hipsters moving in wants the vacant building on the corner to be a pizza shop (probably gourmet or vegan or something, knowing hipsters). But maybe it was a pizza shop in 1973, and 1982, and 1998, all of which failed for some reason known to longterm residents -- but not to those proposing to do it again. Lotopia creates a mechanism for extracting this local knowledge from people who would probably never meet or interact in person.

Another use of the system would be what some might call "tax fairness." (Or "tax shaming" if you're less charitable.) Tax payments are also public record. Say a tax exempt organization (like the city, or a big hospital or university that gets tax breaks) owns a large swath of vacant land that is just sitting there doing nothing -- and also not generating tax revenue. Public pressure might build for the "squatter corporation" to sell the land off to developers who would make better use of it (and generate tax revenue for the city).

This could be done in a centralized fashion, as an "advisory" application (see below), but in District0x, using smart contracts, there could be real money behind the proposals. Housing projects could be directly monetized through what would essentially be crowd sales, and the contributors would then (for example), earn a share of the rent generated from the renovated building, or discounts at the hipster's vegan gourmet pizza shop if they build it anyway, etc. Funding could work a bit like ICOs, where the money would be returned if the city didn't green light the project. (Smart contract logic could require the city or other verified legal entity to sign a transaction authorizing release of funds; otherwise they'd be returned to donors.)

Alternatively, at least at first, district tokens could be used for voting/staking, as they are elsewhere in the system, so that it would be an information-gathering system, the results of which could be reported in the media or used to prove demand and justify projects to banks to get funding.

Other contracts could be used to automate whatever processes may be in place to claim city-owned vacant property. The city could hold smart-contract-mediated, provably fair auctions for properties (sealed or open bid), and perhaps eventually integrate these systems with deed registration and actually transfer property to new, more productive owners.

History of the idea I didn't just make this up now; our team won a trip to the White House at a Hackathon in 2013 for implementing a similar mobile app for Pittsburgh :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix16BSQwvZQ

[AlexDistill]

This is a great concept!

[AngeloAdam]

please send me a direct message on district slack regarding your proposal. @angelo