Housing contracts can now be registered electronically

With this new addition, it will be possible to buy real estate without having to sign a stack of sales documents on paper, but instead use electronic IDs to sign with an electronic signature and then register the document electronically as well. As more real estate agents take advantage of this solution, trips with signed stacks of papers to the district commissioner's office will become a thing of the past.

Anticipation has been high and the first real estate agency has already started testing the new addition on their systems and aims to be the first to register a purchase agreement electronically for its customers early next year. Earlier this year, a service was issued for title assignment, which is generally the last step in real estate transactions after a previously undergone purchase agreement. Since that service was made available, 30 real estate agencies have connected to the solution and have started registering title assignments electronically.

In the beginning of the project, an assessment was made of the macroeconomic benefits of electronic registrations. With the manual work contribution of real estate agents, lenders and district commissioners that will be unnecessary with the new solution, the estimated benefit from its use is estimated to be between ISK 1.2-1.7 billion per year. On top of that, there is the indirect benefit of fewer trips between service providers and increased speed of transactions for lenders and real estate agents.