Bergen County in New Jersey has initiated a major digital transformation by digitizing approximately $240 billion in real estate deeds through the Avalanche blockchain platform. In collaboration with Balcony Technology Group, the county signed a five-year agreement to migrate over 370,000 property records onto this blockchain infrastructure, leveraging AvaCloud technology.
This project represents a significant modernization effort aimed at simplifying property record management, increasing data security, and improving operational efficiency. The blockchain solution is designed to reduce fraud, shorten deed settlement times from months to a single day, and make records more searchable, verifiable, and resistant to tampering.
John Hogan, Bergen County Clerk, emphasized the intent to enhance resident experience by making property transactions faster, simpler, and more secure for homeowners, businesses, and future generations. Serving nearly one million residents across 70 municipalities, this initiative is poised to transform traditional paper-based record-keeping systems in the region.
The project aligns with a global trend toward tokenization of real-world assets. Similar blockchain implementations, such as the Dubai Land Department's platform on the XRP ledger, indicate a growing institutional acceptance of distributed ledger technology for property management.
Several nearby municipalities including Camden, Orange, Morristown, and Fort Lee are adopting similar blockchain-based recordkeeping systems, collectively covering over 460,000 properties and an estimated $290 billion in real estate assets. Notably, Orange’s implementation reportedly uncovered nearly $1 million in previously uncollected tax income, underscoring the efficiency benefits of blockchain technology.
The timing is critical, as many local governments have suffered from ransomware attacks impacting public services and data integrity. Blockchain's enhanced security and data resilience offer a robust alternative against such cyber vulnerabilities.
This Bergen County project thus stands as one of the largest public-sector blockchain deployments in the U.S., both technologically and economically, signifying growing confidence in blockchain to revolutionize public records and real estate markets.