RESO Universal Property Identifier (UPI) Goes Global

RESO's well-known standard for a Universal Property Identifier (UPI) has picked up steam, not just in the U.S. but also internationally. The RESO UPI Workgroup's chair, Mark Bessett, traveled to Malaga, Spain last year to speak about the expansion of this standard, and the talk generated wide interest from a number of audiences.

The Convergence conference in Malaga brought together the technology community for an intense dialogue with regulators, policy makers, industry influencers and members of the social impact community. Bessett spoke at a number of workgroup meetings and roundtables where the broad range of attendees could learn more about how universal identifiers can benefit their organizations.

UPIs are of great interest to organizations looking for more accurate, more informative and more easily tracked information on properties across their nations. They allow a property, or even a subproperty component, to be identified through related property facts. The identifier and related facts ensure that organizations and systems can accurately rely upon the UPI for record keeping.

Unlike parcel numbers and other government records that can be duplicated across different territories, the UPI provides a single identifier with global reach.

RESO's UPI workgroup designed the identifier from the start to be internationally accessible, and that foresight has proven to be greatly beneficial in gaining global visibility.

The UPI is being adopted in countries like the U.S. and the Netherlands, and has generated interest from government agencies and academics in Canada, Spain, Italy, Germany and France, to name a few countries.

The Climate Chain Coalition would like to use the UPI model to track climate data related to properties.

Technology organizations are taking note as well. FIBREE, the Foundation for International Blockchain and Real Estate Expertise, voted to unify under the UPI standard at the event in Malaga, and RESO was honored to have Jo Bronckers, FIBREE's Cofounder, Board member and Co-Chair of FIBREE Netherlands as a guest presenter at our RESO Remote virtual technology summit in April 2020, where he spoke about FIBREE and its Unique Object Identification (UOI) project.

UPIs can provide value to a blockchain implementation, though it isn't necessary for organizations to use blockchain. Many new and traditional technologies can benefit from the efficiency and cost savings of tracking data with UPIs.

As interest in the UPI grows, membership in the UPI workgroup is growing as well. The workgroup continues to extend the standard in technical capabilities and into international organizations. Any professional or organization with an interest in understanding or working on the UPI should start by visiting the RESO Universal Property Identifier (UPI) Workgroup page. Contact RESO for more information.