Leads, Drive and Getting It Done In Real Estate

Whether you know it or not, anyone who works in the housing industry is likely impacted by the historical practice of redlining. Redlining is the discriminatory and systemic denial of services to those residing in communities associated with a certain racial or ethnic group. By hindering the economic development in neighborhoods populated by ethnic minorities, redlined areas become underdeveloped and undervalued while their residents become poorer.

The adoption of cryptocurrencies and the emergence of blockchain platforms have made real estate tokenization a potential capital-raising option. With tokenization, ownership interests in real estate assets can be more immediately bought and sold, but tokenization requires a thorough understanding of the technology, the offering process, and the regulatory issues involved. Investors typically invest in real estate through an LLC or limited partnership that owns an underlying property. With tokenization, LLC or LP interests are in the form of tokens that can be traded or used as collateral in smart contracts. The issuer must determine the number and type of tokens and select an exchange platform for trading. The issuer must also decide whether a security is being offered and registration is required. Offering documents may include operating agreements, subscription agreements, and a private placement memorandum. Offerings must also comply with KYC requirements and have appropriate protection of user data. Tokens should have built-in compliance features such as restrictions on transfers and secondary trading. Issuers will also need to determine how distributable cash will be paid (perhaps using stablecoins or other digital currency). Listen as our authoritative panel discusses these and other matters associated with commercial real estate tokenization.

In our Spring webinar with NREI, RCLCO outlined an approach to contrarian investing in real estate – a framework for identifying where long-term fundamentals and the current attention of capital are misaligned. The challenge, of course, is pricing the risk in this approach and understanding where you are getting paid for avoiding the herd mentality and where you are taking long bets with uncertain payoff. Almost 1,000 people watched the first webinar, and a majority expressed an interest in this approach to investing, but with the primary hesitations arising from the difficulties in underwriting this type of investment and in figuring out how these strategies fit within a broader real asset investment portfolio.

In today’s commercial real estate landscape, most markets are highly saturated and developers are attempting to “out-amenitize,” “out-incentivize” and “out-build” the building next door. Commercial real estate is highly commoditized, but it doesn’t need to be especially for those armed with the right insights.