As rent and lease agreements go digital, long-distance is in

Once the device and the laptop were in sync, his thumb impression was taken with the biometric device and as it matched his Aadhaar details, the agreement was considered signed, valid and authenticated. The e-process was launched in Maharashtra in 2014 and has gained popularity in the last few years. Overall, digitisation in real-estate is making processes easier, quicker and more transparent for consumers and developers. In December last year, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) started a facility for developers to apply online for construction permits to install new amenities. Even for the sale of property, while one still has to visit the revenue office to register the new deed, the details are now updated online. 'This has brought about a lot of transparency about the status of a property. The transparency and digital documentation is also improving ease of business,' says Gulam Zia, executive director for advisory, retail and hospitality at consultancy Knight Frank India. One of the biggest advantages of the online leave-and-licence agreement is that this format is flexible and scheduling can be altered to suit the requirements of the two parties, says Manju Yagnik, vice-chairperson of the Nahar Group and vice-president of the National Real Estate Development Council or NAREDCO in Maharashtra 'With many realty investors living in different cities, states and countries, this makes things convenient and transparent,' Yagnik says. FIXING THE BUGS When Ghosh tried to get his other property, in Mahim, registered for rent in April, the server was down for five days. 'The system is linked to Aadhaar, so both the Aadhaar server and the Inspector General of Registration servers need to be working at the same time. That didn't happen and we had to keep shifting the registration dates,' says an agent who provides online registration services. Even when the system does work, it's far from perfect. 'Complete digitisation is the way to go,' says Pankaj Kapoor, CEO of real-estate consultancy Liases Foras. 'There is still a big gap in this respect. The future is an Aadhaar-like system with unique ID number that would hold all the necessary details for a particular property. This would make it much easier to get a title insurance or mortgage, as in countries like the US and UK. Once a system like that is in place, probably you can monitor a land fraud sitting at home. But now you cannot track if the same property has been sold to two people, which is the kind of fraud that still happens.' Yagnik adds that emerging technology like blockchain should also be used. 'Blockchain has the potential to eliminate transactional risk from the registration system. If records are stored on blockchain, things could become more efficient, more accessible and more secure. Blockchain could replace local real-estate records as the primary channel of property information,' she says. DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: Hindustan Timeshttp://www.wysp.ws/shaikumar/