America’s housing market may soon be facing its next bubble as home prices across the country continue to be fueled by demand, speculation and lavish spending that could result in a collapse. Moreover, many homeowners are opting to stay put due to climbing mortgage rates, creating a housing shortage.
Data from the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, found that 92% of homeowners think their current home is affordable. Yet, findings further show that 69% of the general population, consisting of both homeowners and renters, believe it’s becoming too difficult to find affordable housing. Web3 and the real-estate market
While the fate of the United States housing market remains unclear, the rise of Web3 business models based around nonfungible tokens (NFTs), blockchain technology and cryptocurrency aim to solve many of the problems currently plaguing America’s trillion-dollar real estate market.
Jerry Chu, CEO of tokenization platform Lofty AI, told Cointelegraph that although real estate is one of the best asset classes for wealth creation across the globe, most people can’t access it due to three main reasons: “Real estate, especially today, is expensive. Even if someone could get a mortgage, many times a down payment requires too much cash. The real estate process is also frustrating, as mortgages need to be approved and a title escrow process could take up to 60 days. Finally, there isn’t much liquidity in real estate, therefore sellers will likely lose money if they wish to quickly liquidate.” In order to make real estate attainable for the masses, Chu decided to create a platform that could fractionalize properties. Known as Lofty AI, Chu explained that the platform is built on the Algorand blockchain and consists of various turnkey rental properties that multiple investors can fractionally purchase for as little as $50. “You can think of every property as its own mini blockchain on the Algorand network. Assets, or unique tokens, are created for every property listed. The token supply is different depending on how expensive the properties are,” said Chu.
While the concept of tokenizing real estate has become rather common — for instance, Cointelegraph research recently found that the real estate sector makes up 89% of all traded security tokens — Chu pointed out that Lofty is an active investing platform. “Similar platforms invest in real estate and flip properties to customers, but we allow investors to manage these properties and continually earn rewards and income.” A property featured on Lofty AI. Source: Lofty AI Elaborating on this, Chu explained that Lofty is based on a co-ownership model where the deeds for each property listed on the marketplace are held and owned by a limited liability company, or LLC. When investors purchase tokens, they immediately become a member of that entity, meaning they own a percentage of that business.
Like other decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, Lofty has a governance system that allows token holders to vote on how to manage the properties they own. “Token holders need to reach a supermajority vote of 60% for decisions to be acted upon. The winning vote is then sent to the property manager to carry out. These decisions could include maintenance, rent changes, eviction decisions and more.”
Chu added that investors can also earn portions of rental income generated from tenants, which can either be withdrawn to a bank account or donated to Mercy Housing, an affordable housing organization. “Most Lofty users care about the appreciation of their tokens on the properties they buy into, and, therefore, donate their earned income to affordable housing programs,” Chu mentioned.
While this may be, Chu emphasized that the goal behind Lofty is to make real estate investing more accessible simply. “This seems to be the case, as the platform launched last year and already has close to 4,000 users,” he said. Takahito Torimoto, a solutions architect and Lofty user, further told Cointelegraph that he has been a real estate investor for a few years, but Lofty has been an ideal solution due to the platform’s liquidity and returns. “There are no fees for users, and given the current real estate market, Lofty appears much better for a very big part of my ‘early retirement’ strategy,” he remarked.
In addition to Lofty, mortgage lender LoanSnap launched a mortgage-backed stablecoin on their Bacon Protocol at the end of last year. Karl Jacob, CEO of LoanSnap and co-founder of Bacon Protocol, told Cointelegraph that while a mortgage-backed token solves many issues associated with stablecoins, these digital assets also benefit current homeowners and buyers.
Technically speaking, LoanSnap has minted […]
source Web3 solutions aim to make America’s real estate market more accessible
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