Innovative Ohio Broker Sets His Sights on ShelterZoom’s Blockchain Technology

David Mussari, managing partner/broker at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Professional Realty, based in Dayton, Ohio, first entered the real estate game nearly 20 years ago, serving as a commercial real estate broker and investor.

After stints at Landmark Midwest Properties and Prudential Real Estate, Mussari was brought aboard Berkshire Hathaway as managing partner for the largest Prudential Real Estate affiliate in Ohio.

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“In 2010, I ventured into residential real estate with a couple of acquisitions, and I currently own and manage a 600-agent, full-service brokerage as a Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices affiliate that serves the entire state of Ohio and Northern Kentucky,” says Mussari. “We do residential, commercial, sales, leasing, property management, business brokerage and consulting.”

Last year, the company did just under 6,000 transactions and a little more than $1 billion in sales.

One of the ways Mussari has found continued success is by being on the ground floor of the latest innovations in the industry, all while keeping his eye on what might be coming down the pike.

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“We’re a company that’s very forward-thinking, and I’m constantly looking at where the industry is headed,” says Mussari. “For instance, we were paperless very early on—six or seven years ago—we did 3D property tours early, and we’re always looking at how to become an expert on something before it flushes on the industry.”

This philosophy led Mussari to seek out ShelterZoom, a next-gen real estate buying, selling and renting platform built on revolutionary blockchain technology.

“More broadly, we’re pretty convinced—and I would be surprised if we weren’t right—that blockchain technology is going to transform the way a real estate transaction is handled in the future,” says Mussari. “So we’re trying to get our own expertise in this now. It’s always a little painful when you’re the only one doing something like this, but eventually, everyone seems to catch up.”

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Mussari saw ShelterZoom as being in a similar model, trying to dial blockchain technology in, and felt it was a good company to explore the burgeoning technology platform with.

Founded in Feb. 2017, ShelterZoom’s industry-first blockchain Offer and Acceptance platform has already attracted hundreds of brokerage partnerships and won the company three global awards, including SIIA CODiE Best Emerging Technology 2018. The company is launching its second-generation blockchain platform to empower end-to-end real estate transactions, and will soon become the world’s first blockchain-based marketplace for real estate buying, selling and renting.

“We’re partnering with ShelterZoom as they create a second-generation platform, which includes other pieces of the transaction, specifically title and mortgage. We’re a good resource for their beta testing, and we can get ahead of the curve,” says Mussari.

Currently in the early adoption and implementation phase of using ShelterZoom, Mussari is confident that the results will come.

“Simply having our tentacles into blockchain is preparing us for the future and engaging our agents in what industry changes are looming,” says Mussari. “This will provide our clients with secure, simplified transactions that eliminate waste and chaos, which will ultimately lower the cost of a real estate transaction.”

For Mussari, security is a key component of ShelterZoom’s blockchain technology that will drive the higher end of the market to this technology. Mussari believes that ShelterZoom is a game changer.

“My advice to consumers is to seek out this technology for their real estate transactions, as it will be revolutionary,” concludes Mussari, who believes that the consumer can—and will—ultimately decide the speed of the real estate industry’s adoption of blockchain technology. “This is much more of a smart contract model with clear benefits that are beyond just exchanging paper in the cloud. It does more tracking of the transaction and it’s forever in the historical records in a much more structured, finalized way.”

For more information, please visit www.shelterzoom.com.

Keith Loria is a contributing editor to RISMedia.