I’m 21, and I’m Investing in Real Estate: RealT Review
And nope, I’m not some super-rich 21 year-old.
Look, everyone knows what real estate is, and why it’s a desirable investment. And everyone also knows that real estate is expensive as hell.
But here I am. I’m 21, and I have some real estate in my portfolio. And it’s all thanks to RealT.
*I make a small commission from any purchases made on RealT using links in this article.
What is RealT?
RealT allows people to legally own a fraction of a property. To summarize their explanation, each property is put into its own legal company. Different people can’t split a property, but you can split an LLC.
This setup then allows for people to buy RealToken on their site, issued on the Ethereum blockchain. Since the tokens are handled on Ethereum, it allows the tokens to be delivered cheaply.
And since this is crypto, why stick to the old notions of monthly rent? With RealT, rent is sent to you every single day.
I was immediately interested when I found out about them. And I love how this democratizes real-estate! Again, I’m 21; I don’t have a lot of wealth, but the beauty of fractional real-estate is that you don’t need a lot of wealth.
I was even impressed even further when looking at their fee breakdown: there was management in place, there was a maintenance reserve in case of emergencies. This was a well thought-out operation.
I was interested to research even further. I looked at their blog articles and their Discord to see how people were feeling, and in the end, I took the plunge.
If you’re interested too, here’s how the process goes.
Getting started with RealT
Do your research: RealT’s website / RealT’s education page / RealT’s whitepaper / “RealT Due Diligence”
What you need: An Ethereum wallet (use Argent if you don’t have one yet) and a valid ID for the KYC (Know Your Customer)
Investment amount: At least $145.56, which is the price of their cheapest property at the time of this writing.
- Sign up for an account and fill out the KYC. You’ll also be submitting an Ethereum wallet address for receiving tokens. It can take a while to get approved, so ideally, do it before you even want to buy anything.
- Once you’ve been verified, you can purchase the tokens that you want on their website. You can currently only purchase with crypto, but they’re working on getting a credit card option. Take note that Coinbase had a 1-hour time limit for submitting the payment.
- Check your email for the contract. Read it over, sign it, and then wait for the RealT team to sign it as well.
- If you get an email saying that your RealTokens have arrived, check your wallet! If you’re using Metamask, make sure to add the token by adding the contract address. Congrats, fellow co-owner.😉
Daily rent
To test things, I purchased one token of their most recent offering, Schaefer. It was at $50, so why not test it, right?
But after I did the whole process, I started getting daily rent! It works as it should!
I was so impressed by the experience that I actually picked up another one.
I’ve been holding RealTokens for about two weeks now, and getting rent is a seamless experience. It can be late on some days because of the clogged Ethereum network, but the team’s quick to push the transaction once they’re able to.
Earning interest on rent
If earning daily rent wasn’t cool enough, there are options for earning interest!
Once a month, I intend to move my cumulative rent to the Celsius Network. They currently have an 8% annual interest-rate on stablecoins, which beats any DeFi lending option, so I am here for it.
Something that I didn’t get to try was Argent. They subsidize the fees for integrations to Compound, which should mean daily interest. Unfortunately, gas has just been too high for me to actually try it.
ROI on RealT
I purchased some Schaefer, and for each token, it will take about 7.9 years for me to get back what I invested. Maybe less, if I’m diligent about moving funds to get interest.
But with life expectancy at 72, any return after those 8 years is pure profit. I would just be 29 at the time, with a long way to go until 72, and it blows my mind how I could hold RealTokens for years to come.
There’s also still potential for the tokens to increase in value. At the moment, there’s a limitation for buying and selling tokens on Uniswap, the decentralized exchange. You need to have purchased a property on the RealT website before you can trade on Uniswap.
So at the moment, trading is limited. But, there are some trades, and the price for Schaefer is currently up by about $2. Once RealT gets a global whitelist going, I’m betting that the tokens are going to jump in value.
Final thoughts
I really appreciate how this opens the gates for so many people to invest in real estate. Who doesn’t love that combo of passive income from rent and asset appreciation?
And one cool thing about real estate on Ethereum is that it’s really attractive to people outside crypto! My uncle asked me to alert him of any new properties, and he actually set up a wallet. 😲
If you’re interested, make sure to do your research and check out their website and the education page, or ask your questions in their Discord.
Here’s to hacking our money.
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. Please always do your own research.
