Doctoral theses of the School of Engineering at Aaltodoc (external link)
Doctoral theses of the School of Engineering are available in the open access repository maintained by Aalto, Aaltodoc.
Public defence in Real Estate Economics, M.Sc. (Tech.) Anniina Saari
How blockchain can drive digital transformation in real estate and enable significant improvements for industry stakeholders. Public defence from the Aalto University School of Engineering, Department of Built Environment.
When
–
Where
Floor 2, lecture hall 216
Event language(s)
English
Title of the thesis: Digital transformation in the real estate industry: The case of blockchain
Thesis defender: Anniina Saari
Opponent: Associate Professor Bertram Steininger, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden
Custos: Professor Seppo Junnila, Aalto University School of Engineering, Department of Built Environment
How blockchain can drive digital transformation in real estate and enable significant improvements for industry stakeholders
The real estate industry plays a significant economic, environmental, and societal role, yet it lags behind in digitalisation. This doctoral thesis explores how blockchain technology can drive digital transformation in real estate—specifically, how it can improve stakeholder value propositions and address key industry challenges such as manual processes, reliance on intermediaries, inefficiencies, and widespread issues of trust, fraud, and corruption.
The research combines two systematic literature reviews with a longitudinal case study. Based on these, the thesis demonstrates that blockchain technology holds significant potential for increasing trust, improving process efficiency, and enhancing transparency—even when applied as an add-on to existing systems. However, current blockchain applications in real estate remain narrow in scope, largely focused on land administration, and lack large-scale empirical evidence.
A key finding is that blockchain can serve as a platform for collaboration and business process improvement in the real estate sector. Its core features—decentralisation, peer-to-peer networking, immutability, and automatic verification—support fair collaboration without the need for a central authority, enabling new forms of stakeholder value creation.
Blockchain’s primary potential lies in supporting the early stages of digital transformation. However, its role may diminish over time as it becomes embedded within broader process innovation, and as the technology faces challenges such as scalability, specialised knowledge requirements, and increasing trends toward recentralisation.
This thesis provides new insights into how blockchain can be applied in real estate, emphasising that its full potential can only be realised through a fundamental change process, supported by sufficient resources and enabling regulation.
Keywords: digital transformation, blockchain, real estate, blockchain applications, innovation, transparency, efficiency
Thesis available for public display 10 days prior to the defence at Aaltodoc.
Contact information: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anniinasaari/; anniina.saari@aalto.fi
Doctoral theses of the School of Engineering
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