Topic: How could you build a Real Estate cryptocurrency or blockchain ? (Read 111 times)
check out Aqwire project. they've got good backers and investors. the team is well structured with backgrounds related with real estate industry.
January 12, 2018, 12:57:55 PM
Professionally I work in commercial real estate. My team of 3 makes over $600 million in loans and maintains a portfolio of $3 billion of loans out to private developers, REITs, and private equity companies.
I'm trying to build conceptualize how real estate can be tokenized. I'll dive below into two disruption models. I think land registry is a legitimate use for blockchain technology, but I'm trying to think about this from a capital markets perspective.
Real Estate Equity:
This is essentially when you take the value of real estate equity (eg. you put a 20% downpayment on a house or you own a property with no mortgage) and tokenize that value. That token represents ownership of the physical property. Token holders will then be compensated for the income of the property and the value created when the property sold (if the value increases).
Real Estate Debt:
This is the other segment of the capital stack. This represents the lender who gave 80% of the value to the homeowner who put their 20% downpayment. The lender of capital is entitled to interest rate income and repayment of the original money loaned out. The catch here is that the borrower offers the real estate as collateral. In other words, you don't pay your mortgage, your house is taken away and sold to pay the money back.
These two segments of the real estate economy are worth trillions of dollars.
Now on the software side, I am not so familiar with how the implementation would happen. Here are my questions or concerns. I am trying to view this as a skeptic as well.
Why do you need a blockchain for real estate?
Skeptic:
- If you want fractional ownership of real estate, you can invest in private equity, publically traded REITs, or in real estate crowdfunding like fundrise.
- It is too complicated. There is too much legal paperwork that determines stuff relating to tenant-landlord laws, environmental laws, tax law, permitting, contracts with contractors, etc. etc. How in the world would you solve for that?
- If there's an expected return, then in the USA the token will be considered a security.
Counterpoint:
- There is a massive supply/demand imbalance of people willing to increase their exposure to real estate
- People have crypto gains which if they cash out, they will have to pay taxes on. There is not a productive use of crypto-capital that can generate additional return.
- The costs may be less than using a traditional REIT/PE legal/corporate structure.
- Publically traded REITs do not offer ownership. They offer shares of a corporation, which pays out dividend income (taxable event). By owning a real estate asset, you may benefit from tax advantages like depreciation and deductions reducing your taxable income.
- Stock certificates used to be traded paper-to-paper. Now they're traded electronically. A blockchain based real estate protocol with offer a way to digitally track real estate ownership.
- Real estate ownership requires A LOT of capital. You need a lot of money to make money in real estate. Like ICO's opening venture capital to the broader public, this could be the same thing here.
There is inherent centralization in real estate
Skeptic:
- Let's say a tenant doesn't pay rent. How would a 1,000 different token holders fix this issue? You would have to require a middleman (a property manager) to handle this, which means there are more fees. If you trust middlemen, then what's the point of using a blockchain if you rely on trusted third parties still?
- Relating to the issue above, companies already own and manage lots of buildings and have systems in place to act as the entity controlling all of the assets in the portfolio.
Counterpoint:
- I agree that you would need a central point of authority. There has someone who is responsible for fixing the roof, making sure the tenant that does not pay gets dealt with the appropriate legal action.
- I think that instead of tokenizing individual properties, you would rather invest in a Fund that owns say, 10,000 apartment units and manages everything for you. The value of all of the assets make up the value of the "Fund of 10,000 apartments" token.
What do you guys think? Hoping to generate some helpful discussion.
I'm trying to build conceptualize how real estate can be tokenized. I'll dive below into two disruption models. I think land registry is a legitimate use for blockchain technology, but I'm trying to think about this from a capital markets perspective.
Real Estate Equity:
This is essentially when you take the value of real estate equity (eg. you put a 20% downpayment on a house or you own a property with no mortgage) and tokenize that value. That token represents ownership of the physical property. Token holders will then be compensated for the income of the property and the value created when the property sold (if the value increases).
Real Estate Debt:
This is the other segment of the capital stack. This represents the lender who gave 80% of the value to the homeowner who put their 20% downpayment. The lender of capital is entitled to interest rate income and repayment of the original money loaned out. The catch here is that the borrower offers the real estate as collateral. In other words, you don't pay your mortgage, your house is taken away and sold to pay the money back.
These two segments of the real estate economy are worth trillions of dollars.
Now on the software side, I am not so familiar with how the implementation would happen. Here are my questions or concerns. I am trying to view this as a skeptic as well.
Why do you need a blockchain for real estate?
Skeptic:
- If you want fractional ownership of real estate, you can invest in private equity, publically traded REITs, or in real estate crowdfunding like fundrise.
- It is too complicated. There is too much legal paperwork that determines stuff relating to tenant-landlord laws, environmental laws, tax law, permitting, contracts with contractors, etc. etc. How in the world would you solve for that?
- If there's an expected return, then in the USA the token will be considered a security.
Counterpoint:
- There is a massive supply/demand imbalance of people willing to increase their exposure to real estate
- People have crypto gains which if they cash out, they will have to pay taxes on. There is not a productive use of crypto-capital that can generate additional return.
- The costs may be less than using a traditional REIT/PE legal/corporate structure.
- Publically traded REITs do not offer ownership. They offer shares of a corporation, which pays out dividend income (taxable event). By owning a real estate asset, you may benefit from tax advantages like depreciation and deductions reducing your taxable income.
- Stock certificates used to be traded paper-to-paper. Now they're traded electronically. A blockchain based real estate protocol with offer a way to digitally track real estate ownership.
- Real estate ownership requires A LOT of capital. You need a lot of money to make money in real estate. Like ICO's opening venture capital to the broader public, this could be the same thing here.
There is inherent centralization in real estate
Skeptic:
- Let's say a tenant doesn't pay rent. How would a 1,000 different token holders fix this issue? You would have to require a middleman (a property manager) to handle this, which means there are more fees. If you trust middlemen, then what's the point of using a blockchain if you rely on trusted third parties still?
- Relating to the issue above, companies already own and manage lots of buildings and have systems in place to act as the entity controlling all of the assets in the portfolio.
Counterpoint:
- I agree that you would need a central point of authority. There has someone who is responsible for fixing the roof, making sure the tenant that does not pay gets dealt with the appropriate legal action.
- I think that instead of tokenizing individual properties, you would rather invest in a Fund that owns say, 10,000 apartment units and manages everything for you. The value of all of the assets make up the value of the "Fund of 10,000 apartments" token.
What do you guys think? Hoping to generate some helpful discussion.
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