How Investment Fees and Lack of Transparency Will Drive Investors to the Blockchain RealtyReturns.io Follow Jul 31, 2018 · 4 min read

We live in the era of transparency where trust is absolutely essential for lasting success. You see the evidence of this as politics, businesses, and celebrities are brought down by insider information and accusations that come to light. Like it or not groups like Anonymous have become modern day superheroes for bringing confidential information to light. The current trend of transparency is disrupting hierarchies and offering opportunities to everyone. In the finance and real estate world select groups have controlled the dissemination of information to only a select few, that is all about to change.

There are two problems looming over finance today, the first is the fees that are associated with each investment, second the lack of transparency. For instance, when is the last time you looked at getting a whole life insurance policy? You probably remember the pitch and the promise that one day your policy would be paying for itself and you would have this nest egg you could depend on. Facts about how many years you would have to pay into the policy before it starts making money is generally an avoided part of the discussion, and that lack of transparency turns people off. The fact is people want to know how bad it really is, they want to know the facts of what they are getting themselves into, they don’t want to be fooled.

When it comes to International real estate investments it’s not much better. You might find it complicated with all of the different fees and commissions associated with the transaction, and it certainly doesn’t help that your only focused on your hand not cramping from signing so many different forms and agreements. Even if the brokers are honest about what fees they are charging in the transaction there is a good chance they don’t see the big picture, they may not know all of the different fees you will encounter through the process. Research from Capgemini reveals that the most important fee concerns for High Net worth Individuals in the Asia pacific region is first transparency of fees, second value delivered, third fees related to performance, and fourth is unexpected charges. The demand for transparency is going to flip the investment world upside down.

Investing in real estate internationally is going to cost you a lot of money in fee’s. A few that are worth mentioning are exchange fees, transfer fees, broker fees, attorney fees, taxes, and investment fees. It can be an expensive process that cuts into your bottom line, making it less appealing to invest abroad. Tokenization is the solution to excessive fees and middlemen. Tokenized assets don’t require expensive third-party intermediaries that increase your costs, it also cuts out much of the waste that is involved today in asset transactions. When an asset is tokenized, it becomes part of the blockchain, and the blockchain is an immutable ledger that permanently records history and pertinent facts associated with the asset. Because this digital ledger is immutable it doesn’t require third party verification.

By tokenizing real estate assets on the blockchain it’s easier for property owners to offer a fraction of their asset to the masses, and it’s easier for the masses to invest in real estate around the globe, a win-win. Each security token represents a stake or share of the asset that has been divided into small portions making it affordable to the recent college graduate, single parent household, and retiree. This digital ledger on the blockchain contains the history of each real estate transaction including any income generated.

Platforms like RealtyReturns embed compliances at the token level and allows for decentralized trading of across any platform that supports ERC-20 tokens. This significantly increases liquidity in comparison to confining trade to a single centralized exchange. Investors can find trust in the ERC-20 smart contract because it’s completely transparent on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s almost statistically impossible for forgery of fraud to take place on the blockchain. When a transaction takes place a block is created, each block contains encrypted data about each block before it. If a block is changed in anyway it makes the chain invalid, which means that each transaction relies on the next. Because there is a digital footprint with each transaction, if fraudulent behavior were to occur it would be detected immediately.

RealtyReturns is a transparent cross-border marketplace that is helping people around the globe access real estate and accumulate wealth through the blockchain. Through their online portal people from all over will be able to invest in fractional real estate and take advantage of income generation and capital appreciation.

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Democratizing global access to investment grade commercial real estate using the blockchain. Visit RealtyReturns.io and join our Telegram group https://t.me/realtyreturnsglobal

Trevor Whiting

VP, Investor Relations

RealtyReturns

Experienced Sales Leader of over 14 years and has started offices in London, Toronto, and the US. He was VP of Investor Relations of RealtyMogul where was responsible for revenue growth, sales operations, and growth initiatives. Under his leadership, he developed a sales playbook that resulted in 2x growth.