Building, Inc announces waitlist for international Enterprise Tokenization and Smart City technology
Building, a technology startup incorporated in the United States and with incorporation beginning in Hong Kong, announced its flagship product for enterprise and institutional-grade tokenization of real estate and other financial assets. The announcement comes at a time when the tokenization of “real world assets” has recently caught the attention of many individual and institutional investors as a more efficient, and potentially liquid, means of investing into alternative assets like commercial real estate.
The company says it takes a unique and strategic approach to digitizing an asset’s ownership and data with blockchain, a process known as tokenization. “We believe that the digitization, securitization, and eventual tokenization of a real estate asset begins at the property’s ideation,” said Matthew Schneider, Building’s CEO. “Valuable real estate information is present in the very beginning, during pre-construction, through construction, going to market, and then needs to resurface during refinancing or the sale of the asset.”
Building sets itself apart with its immutable, perpetual collection of property data. “Using the blockchain to create what’s essentially a fingerprint for every digitized document, we can provide data provenance, a very important step in increasing trust and transparency in real estate investments. Stakeholders want to know where data is coming from, who it’s been handled by, and how recently it was updated. From there, we can use computation and experience to assess its accuracy.”
Infrastructure for a Tokenized Future
Institutional investors and asset managers are eager to tokenize their financial assets, with use cases spanning from artwork to luxury hotels. The interest stems from tokenization’s potential to increase liquidity, though there is some disagreement as to how quickly this can happen.
Matthew Schneider explains, “Tokenization does not truly bring liquidity. Some asset classes are illiquid, meaning it’s hard to receive a cash value equivalent for the asset. Just because a piece of real estate is digitized does not mean liquidity is present. Liquidity is created when there’s a buyer for every seller, and no one is buying if there isn’t sufficient or accurate data on the asset. This dilemma lays the foundation for everything we’ve built.”
Building’s collection and validation of real estate data provides insight into the health and performance of the underlying asset. Additionally, Building’s platform is able to procure market data, calculate financial projections, and integrate with service providers to provide a well-rounded assessment of the asset’s value. With the help of artificial intelligence, these processes can be done at scale.
A Path Towards Democratization
While many platforms have attempted to fractionalize real estate investments to make them more accessible, the industry has seen many of these platforms struggle with retaining users or delivering on their promises of liquidity. Building’s thesis suggests that these problems originate from the lack of price discovery, or an investor’s ability to properly assess the value of a financial instrument.
With Building’s data-driven tokenization process, price discovery can occur not only with greater accuracy but greater frequency. This gives investors the ability to perform due diligence and mitigate risk, as well as provide the correct reporting for institutions; Building emphasizes that its ability to maintain institutional reporting compliance is a key to driving more capital to projects.
In addition to institutional investors, properly vetted real estate assets can become a staple in the portfolios of retail, accredited, and non-U.S. investors.
Building’s International Expansion
Building is already beginning incorporation outside of the United States. The tokenization of real world assets has become popular globally and some governing bodies have quickly introduced legislation to encourage startups to pursue the opportunity.
Matthew, a recent finalist in an elevator pitch competition hosted by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, explains their strategy: “We have partners all over the world, predominantly Europe and Southeastern Asia, who are looking to utilize our cutting-edge infrastructure for compliant tokenization of real world assets. Our prioritization of data, community focus, and ability to operate compliantly across jurisdictions has made Building attractive to real estate developers and asset managers around the globe. This is exciting for us too, as we can potentially offer a wider selection of investment products on our proposed marketplace.”
Community Engagement
Building is the Presenting Sponsor of an event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the city of Building’s pilot tokenization project. The event, produced by Next Gen MKE, aims to bring together visionaries and luminaries in experiential, educational events centered around real estate, deep tech, and social impact.
This year, commercial real estate, blockchain, and artificial intelligence are the prominent topics of discussion by the event’s 25 reputable speaking panel participants. Building’s relationship with innovative technology and the real estate industry, as well as its leaderships’ subject matter expertise on topics like smart cities and software, made it a right choice for the primary sponsor.
Matthew, hosting the blockchain panel, says that “this is a really great opportunity to partner with universities, local tech organizations, and young professionals to discuss items changing our cities, tangibly and intangibly. I hope it sparks more venture capital activity and blockchain-related innovation.”
Other Commitments to Impact
Building’s website expresses four noteworthy commitments by the company to make the world a better place. These include the democratization of real estate to encourage wealth generation and community development, onboarding sustainable projects that utilize innovative construction methods and are conscientious about environmental impact, the expression of honest leadership, and the development of products that put the customer first.
About Building
Building is an internationally-compliant platform for the tokenization of real estate and other financial assets. Building combines full service tokenization with full lifecycle real estate analytics. This creates an investment experience that’s unrivaled in the industry, providing better transparency and enhanced return profiles, plus new possibilities like fractional ownership, liquidity opportunities, and international fundraising.
