As several real-life horror stories have shown, Realtors can put themselves in harm’s way if they show homes to strangers.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has taken another step toward addressing the problem by backing a startup, Trust Stamp, that provides identity verification to agents meeting new clients or strangers.
Industry demand is so high that Trust Stamp expects close to half of all NAR members will be using the service within a year.
NAR CEO Dale Stinton calls Trust Stamp “an easy-to-use online and mobile tool – that’s also powerful” and “ideal to improve [agents’] business and personal safety.”
NAR announced today that it made a “strategic investment” in Trust Stamp through its venture arm, Second Century Ventures. The startup is one of eight companies that enrolled in NAR’s startup accelerator, NAR REach, earlier this year.
Trust Stamp combines driver’s license analysis and “proof-of-liveness photographic identification techniques” with social media data and public records, including criminal and sex offender records, to verify a person’s identity and create a “trustworthiness score.”
Under a partnership between Trust Stamp and NAR, Realtors can use a real estate-specific website or mobile app powered by Trust Stamp to enter an individual’s email address or cell phone number and invite the person to make a Trust Stamp.
It takes only a few minutes for individuals to create a basic profile with a photo of their driver’s license, selfie and links to one or more social accounts. Agents receive a notification when a Trust Stamp is completed with an individual’s verified name, photo and “trustworthiness score.”
“As a result of that iterative discovery process, there is an overwhelming demand for Trust Stamp amongst the Realtor community and we estimate that over half a million Realtors will have installed the Trust Stamp application within 12 months of launch,” said Trust Stamp CEO Andrew Gowasack in a statement.
Trust Stamp says it also uses blockchain technology to store and access data that is immune to the distributed denial of service (DDos) attacks that plague many internet companies.
Email Teke Wiggin.