How AI and blockchain just disrupted the most boring (and expensive) part of buying a home
While the home-closing process has historically been a manual, week-long bottleneck, the integration of AI and blockchain is finally enabling instant and automated title verification.
- Unlike flawed addresses or inconsistent parcel numbers, Cotality’s Integrated Property ID (CLIP) provides a persistent, unique identifier that ensures AI-driven tools pull 100% accurate records.
- By linking disparate records such as liens, permits, and taxes into a single source of truth, automated systems maintain 99.5% accuracy even when parcel boundaries shift or addresses change.
- The shift to automated and instant home titles reduces closing costs from thousands to hundreds of dollars.
In an era where you can secure a mortgage or buy a car from your smartphone in minutes, the final step of the American dream of buying a home remains stubbornly stuck in the analog age. For decades, the "title search" has been a week-long bottleneck, requiring manual labor to comb through paper-based or poorly digitized records across thousands of local jurisdictions.
But as of January 2026, the tide is turning. With Miami-based startup Titl recently closing a $2.5 million seed round to scale its AI and blockchain-driven registry, the industry is moving toward "instant and automated" title verification.1 However, for automation to truly scale nationwide, it needs a way to solve the property "identity crisis."
This is where Cotality’s Integrated Property ID (CLIP) enters the picture, serving as the master key that can connect the fragmented pieces of the real estate puzzle.
Why title verification still takes a week
The primary reason title fees are expensive, and turnaround times are slow is a lack of standardization. There are over 3,000 counties in the United States, each acting as its own independent "library" of property records. Issues related to fragmentation, human error, and cybercrime abound due to the fact that:
- Deeds, liens, and permits are scattered across disconnected systems.
- Names are often misspelled, addresses are recorded inconsistently (e.g., "123 Main St" vs. "123 Main Street"), and parcel boundaries shift.
- Manual, paper-based systems are far more vulnerable to deepfakes and identity fraud than digital ones.
Titl is addressing these issues by building a digital, unified land registry. Their suite, including TitlReport (comprehensive reports in four minutes) and TitlMonitoring (24/7 fraud alerts), uses AI to parse through these repositories. But to ensure that an AI isn't pulling data for the wrong "John Smith" or the wrong "123 Main St," it needs a persistent, unique identifier.
The CLIP solution
At Cotality, we recognized that the traditional way of identifying property, using addresses or Assessor’s Parcel Numbers (APNs), is fundamentally flawed. Addresses change, and APNs are often reused or formatted differently depending on the jurisdiction.
CLIP is a unique, persistent number assigned to every U.S. property. Powered by CoreAI, it serves as a universal identifier, much like a VIN for a car or a Social Security Number for a person.
When companies like Titl expand into new states, they encounter entirely new data silos. Cotality’s CLIP can help bridge these gaps by:
- Linking disparate records: CLIP connects every record related to a property (ownership history, liens, taxes, and permits) regardless of how the address is written or which county system it lives in.
- Maintaining persistence: Even if a parcel is split, a boundary is shifted, or a property is re-addressed, the CLIP ID remains constant. This creates a "single source of truth" that AI can rely on for 99.5% accuracy.
- Cross-jurisdictional clarity: By resolving discrepancies across different tax-rolls and geocodes, CLIP allows automated systems to "see" a property in 360 degrees, even if that property hasn't yet entered local government tax databases.
A new reality
The shift toward automated title processing is designed to enhance the security and affordability of the real estate ecosystem. By leveraging AI for data extraction and distributed ledger technology to maintain immutable records, companies like Titl aim to significantly reduce title-related costs and streamline traditional manual workflows.
When these technological advancements are paired with Cotality’s CLIP, the impact on the industry is transformative:
- Lenders can verify property status with greater speed and accuracy, potentially accelerating the mortgage approval timeline through instant data access.
- Real estate agents can utilize tools to identify "deal-killer" liens or encumbrances at the time of listing, preventing costly delays at the closing table.
- Homeowners receive enhanced protection from notifications flagging unauthorized ownership changes or title fraud attempts in real-time.
The future of property intelligence
The "identity crisis" in property data has been the single greatest hurdle to real estate automation. By assigning a persistent "master key" to every structure and parcel in America, Cotality is providing the infrastructure that allows proptech innovators like Titl to reimagine ownership for the digital age.
We aren't just digitizing yesterday’s slow, manual workflow; we are creating a future where property data is complete, connected, and ready to move at the speed of modern life.
