cryptocurrency
Lofty AI Now Accepts Ethereum From Users Who Want To Buy Digital Real Estate
Lofty AI now allows users to buy real estate properties on the blockchain with Ethereum. This brings its number of acceptable currencies to 4, there’s Algo, USDCa, STBL, and ETH.
The blockchain real estate firm continues to make steady progress in simplifying the process of acquiring real estate.
In this article, we’ll present an overview of the Lofty AI company.
- What is Lofty AI?
- How does Lofty AI work?
- Are properties on its marketplace liquid?
- Is Lofty AI legit?
- Does Lofty AI have competitors?
- The future of Lofty AI
- Are there regulations guiding Lofty AI?
What Is Lofty AI?
Lofty AI is a decentralized real estate agency built on the Algorand blockchain. It was founded by Jerry Chu, Mark Keane, and Max Ball in 2018.
It is the first Web3 real estate marketplace with a DAO. DAO means Distributed Autonomous Organizations and they are usually formed for a particular project.
Its DAO structure allows token holders to share ownership and cooperate or vote on how they would like properties to be managed.
The idea for digital real estate was birthed by Jerry Chu after experiencing time wastage and futile efforts for over two months when he wanted to get his first rental property.
According to him, ‘The process was archaic and sucked up all of my time’ and after observing that his friends had similar experiences, he decided to build a platform real estate investing can be 10x easier.
Lofty Ai is one out of about six real estate projects built on Algorand blockchain. There are the likes of QuantmRE, Vesta Equity, Slicespace, and Backers also.
Lofty Ai is backed by several reputable firms including Y combinator, Barclays, J.P Morgan, and NVIDIA.
A report from Crunchbase, reveals that the firm has raised $5M in funding. Its last round was on June 14 last year.
How Does Lofty AI Work?
There are three categories to discuss here. There is the new user, the community of existing users, and the Lofty AI team.
For the new user, they’d have to go to the Lofty AI website, sign up, connect their wallet and verify themselves before being eligible to invest in any listed property.
The minimum investment capital for any category of users is $50. For every property listed, there is a unique token created and once users invest, they get these tokens as daily rental income.
The community of existing users is those who have verified their identity on the Lofty AI platform and have started investing in listed real estate properties.
These users own a fraction of the property they have invested in. Lofty ensures that no single user owns over 15% of any property. Users also get to vote on things like maintenance, rent changes, eviction decisions, etc.
A supermajority of 60% votes is paramount to approve a decision.
On the team’s end, the Lofty AI team starts to pay users daily rental income right from the first day of investment.
For every property that gets completely sold, the team takes 8% of the property amount.
How Liquid Are Properties On Its Marketplace?
Unlike the traditional real estate system where properties take weeks and sometimes months before getting sold, Lofty has a track record of completing property transactions speedy, sometimes in less than five minutes.
There was this time when a $125k property sold out in less than a minute. Here’s a video representation by the Lofty AI’s team showing how fast properties get sold out:
The issue of liquidity of physical real estate is being solved by Lofty seamlessly.
Also, tokens (rental income) issued to investors (owners of listed properties) can be readily sold at zero fees or penalties or be donated to a national affordable housing non-profit charity called Mercy Housing.
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How Legit Is Lofty AI?
On April 29th this year, Lofty AI tweeted that it just listed its 100th rental property from when it started the year before.
It has also gained the attention of Cointelegraph and NBCNews who have both done articles about them.
What we are seeing with Lofty AI is a steady transformation in how we can own properties.
With Lofty AI, users can receive rent without owning physical properties and enjoy increasing returns without changing investments.
This is because the token received as daily rental income is tied to the underlying physical asset value.
Real property valuations are done every month and as these properties increase in value, tokens also increase in value.
Does Lofty AI Have Competitors?
Yes, it has competitors. On the Algorand blockchain alone there are over four other projects (listed at the beginning of this article) in blockchain real estate.
There is also the popular Propy firm built on the Ethereum blockchain which offers the same service.
The competitive edge that Lofty has is the low capital requirement for investing. With $50, you may not be able to have a home for yourself but you can become one-fiftieth of a Landlord through Lofty.
The Future Of Lofty AI
In CEO, Jerry Chu’s words:
Our goal is to make real estate investing as simple as investing in stocks or crypto. Diversification is key to any investment strategy, but the barrier to entry for real estate investing has always been so high. We don’t believe that should be the case.
ceo, jErry chu
In today’s world, people would choose convenience over physical stress and exertion. Lofty AI offers anyone convenience both to own real estate properties and earn while at it.
All properties have a property manager in place and when there are property issues, all you need to do is vote, the property manager is responsible for getting the vote executed.
Every property listed on the Lofty marketplace has maintenance reserve funds to take care of them.
All investment transactions are recorded on the blockchain and can’t be falsified, denied, or duplicated. This means all transactions are transparent and there is no need to trust any third party before transacting.
Initially, Lofty allowed users to transact by buying tokens via credit cards or bank transfers but you can now transact with Algorand tokens, Algofi stablecoin ($STBL), Algorand USDC ($USDCa), or Ethereum ($ETH).
They also have plans to add more cryptocurrencies in the future.
Are There Any Regulations Guiding Lofty AI?
The firm has taken the position that its tokens do not meet the federal legal definition of a “security” and that its marketplace doesn’t meet the definition of an “exchange,” allowing it so far to avoid most regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Conclusion
While all markets are down, the rent checks keep rolling in. Buying digital real estate helps you make passive income from real properties but do your own research before investing. You can start here.
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