In recent weeks, a number of announcements related to blockchain-based real estate initiatives have been made in Northeast Asia. Some involve the participation of major companies and groups – including one with a Sony connection – though most of the activity centers around testing, development agreements and pilot projects.

In early September, SK Securities, a listed Korean brokerage until recently a member of the SK Group, and Kasa Korea agreed to form a venture for the creation of blockchain platform that will allow for the issuing and trading of fractional ownership in property assets, according to a report from Yonhap News.

Kasa Korea was in the first group of 18 companies chosen by the Financial Service Commission, Korea’s main financial regulator, for a so-called regulatory sandbox, whereby normal regulations are lifted in order to allow for innovation.

Also in early September, JLL Japan said that it would be working with a number of companies, including Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, to develop a digital platform for the recording and management of real estate data. In a pilot, the project will be testing whether the blockchain can be used to centralize income and expense information related to real estate property management.

Later in the month, SRE AI, a company controlled by Sony and partly owned by Yahoo Japan, said that it would be joining a Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank-led project that is working to create a blockchain platform for the facilitation of real estate transactions. The project began earlier in the year and has already moved from the first stage.

On Sept. 24, Tsubai Space, a Japanese real estate blockchain company, and Shinonome Advisors, a real estate firm specializing in law and tax and working with property securitization, said they would be jointly developing a token for the real estate market. The announcement was short on detail, with the companies saying only that the project had been privately discussed in Taiwan in July and would be formally announced in early October.

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