Real estate deals happen all the time, but not like this.
A building on the prestigious Banhofstrasse in Zurich, Switzerland was successfully tokenized and sold on the blockchain today.
The new owner of the building is Swiss real estate investment company BrickMarket. The company has issued bond-backed crypto tokens that figuratively represent “shares” of ownership in the building,. Those tokens are for sale to individuals who want to cut themselves in on earning some of the building’s rental income and benefit from any rise in the property’s value.
Here’s a Google Street View image of Banhofstrasse 52, the building in question. Located in the center of the city in a high-demand retail district, it’s home to private office space and a Swatch retail outlet:
The former owner is a company called RFR Holding, but it will still retain a version of ownership after this sale. The terms required that RFR receive 20% of BrickMarket’s total supply of tokens pertaining to the building, so the company will maintain significant interest there and collect passive income from it going forward.
Brickmark says this tech-driven real estate purchase is just the first step in a much bigger plan to build a big blockchain-powered real estate business that could be worth much more than $134 million.
But it all has to start somewhere.
