The Emirati company SmartCrowd announced days ago signing a memorandum of understanding with the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) in Dubai, aimed at launching a blockchain-powered digital platform that will allow users to invest in Dubai’s real estate, public facilities, and infrastructure through public-private partnership agreements. Let’s explain what this means!
First, SmartCrowd is a fractional real estate investment platform in the UAE, meaning it allows users to buy shares of properties in Dubai and enjoy the same benefits of full investment. For example, if you buy 1% of an apartment in Dubai, you will receive 1% of the rental income and 1% of the sale price after the investment period is completed.
Through its partnership with the RTA, SmartCrowd aims to utilize blockchain and NFT technologies to issue private investment shares in Dubai’s public facilities, such as parks and metro stations, allowing investors to contribute to financing public facilities in exchange for a share of their revenues, such as ticket sales or metro fares.
This news coincides with the growing interest in the field of Real World Assets (RWA) tokenizing in the blockchain world, which involves converting investment assets like real estate, stocks, and bonds into crypto tokens, similar to cryptocurrencies, to facilitate wide-scale and fractional trading.
It’s worth noting that SmartCrowd recently announced the sale of the 25th property on its platform. The property, purchased in early 2021 for 765,000 Emirati dirhams by 84 different investors, was recently sold for 1.65 million dirhams, marking a 106% return on investment. In addition to the price appreciation, investors received 193,000 dirhams in rental income during the ownership period.
