A development site

As a way to increase the transparency of funds as used by developers, Relex is pioneering a blockchain-based custodianship system that will notify investors when developers withdraw RLX funds from their accounts.

Relex believes that added transparency is the key to success for foreign direct investment. According to Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc., a country’s transparency score has a direct correlative to the amount of foreign capital it receives for real estate development. Relex’s blockchain solutions are one step its taking to increase the transparency of developers in emerging markets.

According to Richard Bloxam, Global Head of Capital Markets at JLL, “The industry is increasingly in the spotlight and transparency is a significant factor in enabling us to create healthy real estate markets. New technologies could well enable some countries to leapfrog up the charts in coming years. Blockchain technology, which is being applied to land registers in a number of markets around the world, is one such example.”

When Relex met with JLL this September 7 in San Francisco, our shared interest in increasing transparency was a point of mutual agreement. Relex’s cryptocurrency solution offers one way for developers to achieve this added transparency, particularly with Relex’s pioneering system that will report to investors when their capital is accessed by developers. With major financial institutions instituting this solution, Relex Development would create a simple solution for developers in emerging markets to receive additional transparency points and climb the charts, opening up their borders to additional FDI.

In addition to this solution, Relex also requires additional transparency and accountability from its listed developers. They must undergo intense scrutiny and pass a number of due diligence checks before being listed as a partner. While blockchain is part of how we increase transparency, it is only part of the entire package our private equity firm offers.

Relex also tries to mitigate risk for its proxy developers. In order to do this, Relex wants to implement capital investment ‘phases’ universally across development projects, changing the way traditional investments have been done to protect proxy developers.

Investors often have to invest the lump sum all at once in real estate development projects, which leads to a lack of accountability for the developers and has led to investors losing their funds.

While there is always a risk in investment, by breaking it into capital-release phases, these investment blocks would protect the investor and call for a higher degree of accountability. One such example would be to have the first stage be the underground construction phase, and so forth.

Emphasis on increased transparency and accountability from its developers and innovative safety measures for its investors are all part of Relex Development’s groundbreaking solutions to real estate development FDI.