Tokenized Real Estate: Small scale, Commercial, and Holiday

We're happy to have an event about tokenized real estate. First, Steve Waldman [1] will describe a business model for tokenizing the finance of small-scale (but multi-unit) residential, vacation, and commercial projects. Then Hendrik Tanjaya Tan will present Crowdvilla [2], platform for tokenized holiday property. Finally, Roland Pan [3] will present a model for tokenizing the non-fiduciary share of commercial real estate projects. See below for further details on their talks; this will be a great event; please join us!

Steve's abstract: "Most entrepreneurship is, and will continue to be, small businesses in the real world. So far, the blockchain revolution has expanded the access to capital for certain kinds of digital ventures, but if it is really going to 'decentralize the economy', it needs to reduce the burden of small-scale, local entrepreneurship. Real-estate micro development is straightforward form of entrepreneurship that tokenization could make more accessible to entrepreneurs. Tokenizing real estate could also increase the utilization of real-estate purchased for investment purposes, while allowing investors hand-pick individual projects to form diverse portfolios. Finally, tokenization might support riskier and less single-mindedly financial real-estate projects than traditional bank finance, perhaps restoring some creativity and aesthetic joy to a built environment that contemporary finance has rendered cookie-cutter and utilitarian except at the very high end."

Hendrik will speak on Crowdvilla, which "will use blockchain technology to create an open and transparent way of recording digital assets: crowd-owned holiday properties which can be utilized by all token holders. A CRV token sale will be held to form the initial crowd-owned properties under the Crowdvilla portfolio. Crowdvilla is a non-profit organisation based and regulated in Singapore."

Roland's abstract: "Today, direct investment in premium, big-ticket commercial real estate is undertaken mostly by large, institutional investors. As a class, these assets have performed well and are therefore in demand from investors large and small. Similarly, operators and funds are also motivated to seek smaller investors, but face several barriers. Among these are the time and effort to administer a fragmented investor base and concerns of unscrupulous behavior on the part of both investors and operators. This leads to a host of regulatory and market-driven access controls intended to protect the stakeholders which, while they may be well-intended and effective, also limit liquidity and opportunities afforded to smaller investors. We would like to motivate discussion of a blockchain-based system of fractional ownership as a means for unlocking this asset class to greater liquidity. At the core of the system is a set of rules that protect investor and fund alike implemented transparently in Ethereum, as well as mechanisms for reducing the overhead of managing a direct retail (and crypto-) investor base."

Please note that the meetup never endorses tokens or ICOs.

[1] https://twitter.com/interfluidity/
[2] https://crowdvilla.io/
[3] https://www.linkedin.com/in/roland-pan-825964/