Real estate investment in emerging markets or developing countries has always form part of the portfolio of most investors since these markets generally offers lucrative and high capital appreciation over a mid to long term horizon.

However, it can be daunting for the vast majority of investors with limited capital and is still keen on exploring these markets. A couple of reasons are the transparency and availability of data such as transactions history and information about the surrounding of the project itself. Other data such as property taxes, taxes on rental collections, legal fees, transaction fees are also not easily obtainable by the public.

Transaction History: In developed countries such as Singapore, the government tracks all transactions within its real estate market across all segments such as New Sale, Resale and Sub-sale. All these data are easily accessible online to the property buyer or real estate broker/agent for free or a small fee. However, in markets such as the Philippines, such data are not available easily and have proven to deter some property investors from entering the market.

Market Segmentation: In Singapore, the property market is also clearly defined and segmented to 28 districts which differentiate the high-end market to the lower end ones. However, in emerging markets such as the Philippines there are no such segmentations so having access to information about the area and surrounding projects are even more crucial for the investor.

Taxes and Fees: With emerging markets such as the Philippines where taxes and fees are relatively clear, it has also been noted that developers sometimes find ways of charging certain taxes and fees back to the property buyer. At times, such acts tend to put off investors from investing or expanding their portfolio within the market itself.

Therefore, the team at IATokens strongly believe that having a caveat system within the platform and making the information easily available will benefit the investor, the growth and maturity of the emerging markets. Rewards via tokens can be given out to those who provides the information such as homeowners or developers. Data collected will not only benefit the investor but also developers who are looking to launch their new project. The data would be able to help them identify possible locations, target market, buying trends etc.