ORANGE — The city is set to see increased revenue and property owners will be able to access detailed information about their homes as new software is installed that connects real estate data that previously existed in silos due to independent record keeping within various departments.
“The goal is to get to a point where you can go to the website, type in your address and everything about your property comes up,” said Orange City Business Administrator Christopher Hartwyk.
The software, which is known as an asset registry platform, was developed by Hoboken-based Balcony Technology Group and it is being used by Orange, Morristown and other New Jersey municipalities to realize unrecognized revenue from real estate transactions.
“To simplify it, it eliminates a lot of paper and makes our life much easier,” Hartwyk said.
Municipalities have struggled over the years to streamline real estate data that existed in silos due to independent record keeping within various departments, from code enforcement and property sales to tax collection and zoning. As a result, challenges existed and in places, still do, when municipal officials needed to access critical information like confirmation of home ownership or compliance with certificate of habitability.
With its proprietary technology powered by blockchain and AI, Balcony has uncovered $1 million in unrealized revenue for the City of Orange, highlighting missed certificate of habitability fees on new home sales over the past four years, according to Balcony, which said that the key benefits of the platform include:
- Identifies unrecognized revenue sources;
- Improves accuracy of real estate records;
- Protects renters and homeowners from potential safety risks and fraud;
- Ensures data integrity and traceability;
- Optimizes data sharing across various departments;
- Delivers analytics to enhance government decision making.
The technology enhances the security of real estate transactions, preventing dubious records from falling into the wrong hands and is applicable to residential, commercial, and industrial properties, as well as agricultural land deals, according to Balcony.
“Most New Jersey towns have a lot of transactions, there is a lot of paperwork, a lot of compliance,” said Alexander McGee, co-founder of Balcony Technology Group.
Government technology is usually built on a legacy system so it is hard to get systems to work together, McGee said. When you buy a property, you close on it and paperwork goes to the registrar’s office, then the tax board but about two to three months can pass and during that time period, there is vulnerability.
McGree said about two thirds of the properties don’t follow the rules. For example, about two thirds of properties don’t have a certificate of habitability on file, which likely means they didn’t pay an application fee and didn’t get an inspector to come to the property, he said.
“We are trying to increase compliance and the city margins but also make sure people have a safe place to live,” McGee said. “Government often works in silos, we help the various systems work with each other.”
Balcony has been working in Orange since May and has found more than $100,000 in missed revenue. Application fees are often a problem because if they haven’t been paid and entered, then cities can’t track what they can’t trace, McGree said.
Orange Mayor Dwayne Warren said Balcony will help find missing funds and people who don’t play by the rules including scofflaws who transfer property without following the proper procedures.
“There are things we can miss if people don’t follow the rules,” he said. “Most people are compliant but everyone should be compliant to ease the burden on everyone.”
Hartwyk said the first thing Balcony did was build out a portal for code enforcement for certificates of habitability.
“They also built out access to our website with a property map where you can pull out anything from zoning, to if the water bill is paid, if they have open code violations,” Hartwyk said. “We are working on being able to see the tax bill.”
The goal is to get to a point where you can go to the website, type in your address and everything about your property comes up, Hartwyk said.
On the certificates of habitability alone, Balcony has identified close to a million dollars in missed fees, Hartwyk said, adding that those missed fees were over a four year period.
The city is having internal discussions about how to proceed with this information. Hartwyk said the city is considering sending out notices telling people in arrears that they have 30 days to pay the fee.
Balcony is working on portals for the Construction, Water and Public Works departments and should be done by next year, Hartwyk said. Eventually, a portal will be completed for the Building Department and that will make it easy to find people who haven’t paid for permits related to construction and renovation projects.
Residents will be getting easy access to all records about their property, including water bills, sewer fees, zoning regulations governing the property and information about redevelopment zones.
“If your property is in a redevelopment zone, you can click on it and find out exactly what you can build,” Hartwyk said. Residents will also be able to pay bills through the portal.
The software incorporates blockchain and AI to make the residents’ information more secure,” Hartwyk said. “If we had a ransomware intrusion that stole servers they would only be able to get so far because it’s locked in blockchain security.”
Orange is a pilot community for the program and is getting the service for free the first year. For the second year, it’s a flat fee of $40,000, which is cheaper than most of the software currently in use, Hartwyk said.
“It’s much more expensive to do it the other way with multiple software uses,” Hartwyk said.
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