Tokenizing Real Estate: How Blockchain Technology Is Transforming the Real Estate Industry

By using blockchain technology to create digital tokens for property rights, the buying, selling, and transferring of real estate can be automated.

Elizabeth Sample and Brenda Powers of Sotheby’s International Realty in NYC told me in an interview that “in 2022, the global real estate market was valued at around $379.7 trillion. This makes it one of the largest markets in the world.” And they continued:

“We are all connected to the residential or commercial real estate world by owning or renting, etc. By using blockchain technology to create digital tokens for property rights, the buying, selling, and transferring of real estate can be automated. This approach allows investors to invest in real estate more efficiently and increases liquidity in this huge asset class.”

Already, there is a rapidly growing market for tokenized real-world assets representing one of the largest market opportunities in the blockchain industry, with a potential market size—according to a joint study by 21.co, BCG, and ADDX—projected to reach between $10 trillion and $16 trillion by 2030. According to Statista, by 2030, real estate is predicted to account for around one-third of the tokenized asset market, making it the most prevalent category.

Adding fuel to this growth is the US Federal Reserve’s continued efforts to restrain inflation through higher interest rates, which many experts believe will stay for a while. This has investors increasing their allocations in collateral-based cash flows backed by real estate assets that offer a compelling risk-adjusted yield that serves as a stabilizing income source in an investor’s diversified portfolio.

Historically, real estate has been a reliable hedge against inflation, allowing investors to invest in traditional real estate investment trusts, or REITs, and maybe even real estate tokens. Recent reports state that pro-digital asset President-elect real estate tycoon Donald Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr., are developing a new real estate token project tentatively called “World Liberty” to integrate real estate investments with decentralized finance using blockchain technology.

How can blockchain be used in real estate transactions?

Blockchain technology could serve as a transparent, reliable record-keeping system for real estate ownership and transfers at the city registry level. Smart contracts, programs that run on the blockchain, could be integrated with existing legal processes which govern property ownership, which could automate and record these transfers and ownership changes while the underlying legal processes for property ownership remain in place.

This could lower transaction costs by removing dependency on intermediaries and automating many steps.

For example, the Office of the City Register uses a software system called ACRIS to record and maintain New York City real property and certain personal property transfer records, such as mortgage documents for property in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. However, ACRIS is not a blockchain system; it is a software platform primarily used for managing and automating regulatory compliance processes that are not designed to operate on a decentralized blockchain network.

Blockchain technology can also be used in the tokenization of real estate assets to digitally represent a form of proof of fractional ownership of these assets, which also manages transferability and provides a medium of exchange. The Digital Asset Tokenization System designed by the UDPN team “simplifies the investment process by creating virtual tokens representing rights to assets and providing comprehensive lifecycle services from ideation to trading to asset servicing,” explained Tim Bailey, the vice president of global business and operations for Red Date Technology.

The primary services offered by an asset tokenization platform include the creation and management of digital tokens that represent ownership of physical assets. Other services include token creation tools, a storage wallet, and an exchange and payment gateway.

With tokenization, one real estate asset/investment may be represented by 1,000 or more tokens minted on a blockchain platform, each representing a fraction of the overall real estate asset/investment.

A real estate token can represent a variety of different fractional real estate interests—from a portion of a real estate deed, which could be in the form of a coop or a condo, or a standalone home or an office building built on land subject to a long term lease etc.; to an equity interest in a legal entity (such as an LLC or Trust as in the case of REITs); or ownership of collateralized debt that could be located in different geographic locations or subject to a variety of different laws and taxes.

A token for real estate could be the equivalent of a nonfungible token (a specific unique identifier). Still, it could also be considered a fungible token or a security token as well.

Through smart contracts (computer code that automatically implements and enforces agreements on a blockchain), these tokens can be programmed to make rent distributions to token holders. They can also be programmed to enforce legal compliance requirements, such as one-year lock-up periods in lease provisions, etc.

Other advantages of tokenizing real estate property on a blockchain ledger could include faster processing times for token buy-sell transactions that could be validated and recorded almost instantly without the need for lengthy manual back office processes.

While tokenization of real estate would not directly modify the legal concept of property ownership