It's 2018... someone tell my why these are still thing

[James E.]

Can someone please explain to me how, in 2018, we haven't come up with a better process for:

1. The real estate title system

Between title searches and title insurance - the real estate title system is a $15 BILLION complete scam. How can we still not say who actually owns a property? When I buy or sell a car, there's a title transfer document and a bill of sale. End of story - no lawyers or title companies involved. I'm not saying buying real estate should be as simple as buying toothpaste, and I get the idea of title clouds, but there HAS to be a better system than the one we have in place. Is anyone getting close to improving this? For all of the hype around blockchain helping to fix this system, I haven't actually seen a functional project launched yet. Are places like Ubitquity making an impact?

2. Notaries

How are we still saying that "yea this document is super legit because this person who paid a $60 fee has a fancy stamp?" Shockingly, this is not the most secure system, and there are still cases of rampant fraud (like this one from a few years ago,  or this one). The notary system is so antiqued it's preposterous. I'll double down and say that the concept of a physical signature is just as ridiculous. 

3. The rest of my rant can be bucketed into just general technology enhancements, especially in the commercial lending industry. In my previous life, I was a consultant with a big accounting firm, and our projects were mostly around bringing these lenders from the stone age to at least 2010 with their tech. And that's not even the consumer facing stuff, it was the back end, loan accounting and reporting systems that were so mickey mouse it was terrifying. Bigger banks have the pockets to justify new system implementations, but many smaller banks and credit unions are running on decades old technology. My latest commercial loan was through a bank that can't even link an auto pay to my loan! Boston Sewer and Water doesn't accept auto pay either - when I asked, they said they are "working on implementing later this spring." I physically write checks every month. In 2018. 

So, that was a lot of whining without offering much in terms of solutions... sorry about that. 

Consumers are expecting more and more in terms of technology offerings from their lenders, brokers, property managers, the courts and other partners, and the real estate industry is letting us all down. These inefficiencies are costing us time, money, and creating massive barriers to entry for new investors and home owners. I fully realize there are some progressive companies out there, and CRE tech is starting to gain steam, but we are still 100 years behind other industries and it's up to us to drive institutional change and improvement.

Do you have anything to add to this list or anything I'm missing in my assessment?