Chat With UsChat With UsBy Nazish Shah • 15 January 2026
1. Tokenization and digital infrastructure are reshaping real estate globally. How do you see blockchain-enabled real estate evolving over the next few years, particularly in the U.S. market?
Blockchain is being applied across three major categories in real estate: ownership models, investment structures, and back-office workflows.
There have been multiple isolated projects that replicated property deed records on-chain or simply gave off-chain records a digital fingerprint using blockchain (technical term: a hash). The most recent was Bergen County, New Jersey, using blockchain to cryptographically prove title history for over 370,000 properties. These are promising—but haven’t scaled yet, either because the cryptographic proof is redundant, or the counties, who register the titles, have thick bureaucratic processes and are slow to adopt technology.
A step above the title level are investment entities, products, or structures that give holders only certain rights over a property. This could include the right to own a percentage of the property’s equity value. It could also entitle a holder to revenue the property generates. Even debt, if the property is being used as collateral, is a form of ownership. This is more promising for real estate because this process of investment is federally—not locally—regulated and standardized, in high demand, and is more fitting for blockchain’s robust capabilities.
Finally, real estate data and workflows are using blockchains to verify identities, provide provenance (history) of documents, and ensure multiple parties are looking at the exact same information. This is all possible because blockchains cannot be falsified—if it says Jane Smith, a licensed civil engineer, approved site plans on December 5, future parties don’t have to just hope that information is correct. The blockchain is cryptographic proof that the attestation happened.
2. As a board member at FIBREE, what role do you believe standards and interoperability play in driving mainstream adoption of tokenized real assets?
Blockchain promises to connect the world, but this can only happen if the technology is interoperable, data and files are readable across diverse systems, your real estate can be evaluated the same way as my real estate, and authorities (like regulators) are communicating—in the event that stakeholders from different jurisdictions must reconcile.
As of 2026, there is suboptimal standardization in how real estate is developed and maintained, how its health and performance are reported, how ownership or investment should be structured, the types of blockchains to be used, and what happens in the event of loss or fraud. Recognizing that this is holding back real estate tokenization, FIBREE and a consortium of industry leaders are designing a quality label and assessment process that will set requirements (e.g., attested property titles, frequent reporting, smart contract standards) for tokenized real estate. Our expectation is that this not only raises the bar for token issuances but also creates a natural market premium for higher-quality investment products.
3. Miami is emerging as a hub for digital assets and real estate innovation. Why is this market especially important for the future of blockchain-based real estate?
Real estate tokenization needs municipal buy-in. Strategic partnerships and adoption by Miami-Dade County and the City of Miami are precursors for innovation and indications of product-market fit. Projects like Magma, which is creating blockchain-verified digital twins of Miami real estate, are a great example of up-and-coming companies that were enabled by forward-thinking leadership.
In the grand scheme of things, it keeps the United States competitive. The Miami Metropolitan area includes 6.4 million residents (with 442,000 in Miami proper), the third-largest skyline in the U.S. with over 400 high-rise buildings, and an impressive GDP of $534 billion, which is greater than 85% of the world’s sovereign states.
All of this combined, Miami is a sublime environment for property technology and real estate tokenization.
4. What are the biggest misconceptions developers and investors still have about real estate tokenization, and how can the industry address them?
Both real estate developers and investors have been led to believe that tokenization creates fractional ownership or liquidity. The reality is that fractionalization simply depends on how many times you can divide an LLC—which is determined by the Securities and Exchange Commission—and liquidity is how willingly buyers will hand over cash for a stake in your property.
Blockchains are really about transparency, and transparency has downstream effects like lower risk and higher efficiency. The reason you’d want to use blockchain in real estate—in the title, investment, or back-office—is because you want cryptographic proof of people, transactions, or documents. Even in highly complex environments with many parties and moving parts, blockchains become a single source of truth. Data becomes more accessible and dependable, which means developers, investors, lenders, or regulators can act faster and with greater confidence.
A prime example would be using a blockchain to verify the inputs of a property appraisal. All sorts of qualitative (like HVAC condition) and quantitative (like monthly rent) inputs are used in appraising a property. It’s an arduous process to track, review, and verify information, especially in big properties; it only gets worse with big portfolios.
An appraisal company can complete their job substantially faster with prepared, verified documentation. And the final product can be verified, too. The insurance company, county clerk, local lender, or future buyer are looking at a chain of verified inputs and outputs. Decisions can be made—fast.
5. How can traditional real estate players, developers, brokers, and asset managers, begin integrating digital asset infrastructure without disrupting existing operations?
Because blockchains are only digital ledgers and immutable notaries, they are not here to replace design, project management, or maintenance software. Instead, they sit as a new and valuable layer above the tools that actually produce the data. Many developers and operators are under the impression that simply producing data makes their portfolio more valuable. This is incorrect—in fact, it becomes a liability.
After data is created, it must move downstream to a data platform that can consolidate, structure, and verify the data. After the data is processed, it becomes ready for whatever purpose the stakeholders have in mind: tracking maintenance to preserve property value, providing reliable, real-time insights to investors and lenders, or streamlining audits before quarterly reporting.
In the coming years, we are going to see a new destination for data: tokens. Trusted data will be used in valuations, and those valuations will be tokenized and tradable through platforms and exchanges. Despite historically being opaque and speculative, real estate will finally trade because the data will be available, recent, and trusted.
6. Regulation and trust remain critical topics. How do you see regulatory clarity influencing institutional participation in tokenized real estate?
Without government regulation and institutional support, blockchain-based verification and ownership remain conceptual rather than practical. If a government record takes precedence over a cryptographically proven record, nothing is accomplished by the technology being present. This is true whether we’re discussing the transaction of property deeds and settlement of financial instruments, or presenting blockchain hashes during litigation.
Once the regulation is clear and persistent—not coming with one administration and disappearing with the next—then institutions see ample reason to invest in the technology and begin integrating it into their technology stacks. Even then, this is a slow and expensive process. However, it marks an industry inflection point. Despite headlines where Larry Fink claims everything will be tokenized, he is a figurehead, not a regulator—we are a couple years away from having totally stable digital asset policy, let alone widespread adoption.
7. Looking ahead, what conversations should industry leaders be having now to prepare for a more digitized and finance-ready real estate ecosystem?
I love that real estate operators are excited for tokenization, but there’s an important step we can’t skip: the data. Whether you are interested in artificial intelligence running your portfolio, software streamlining your underwriting, or tokenizing equity in your properties, it all falls short without careful consideration of your real estate data.
Is the data being stored safely? Is it accessible to stakeholders—and can they inherently trust what they’re looking at? Is the data machine-readable? Answering these questions will determine if your data is really an asset, or still a liability (because handing auditors and accountants a messy stack of papers is an easy way to rack up excessive costs).
Data is your best asset! You wouldn’t let your real estate go years without upkeep, or fall out of compliance, or sit vacant—neither should your data.
8. What are you most looking forward to discussing or exploring at Future PropTech Miami, and why are events like this important for the ecosystem?
I’m very excited to bring a fresh perspective about real estate tokenization to the audience at Future PropTech Miami! This initiative has incredible potential across construction, operations, and capital markets. But until now, the thought process, technology, and regulation have not been sufficient for real use cases.
It’s events like these that enable inquisitive, academic, and professional conversations. Where people have a forum to discuss, they’re likely to go forth and conduct business. That means products being built, customers serviced, and skylines transformed .
Imagine that: a hundred years from now, Miami looks a little different because of a decision made by somebody who attended Future PropTech Miami. That’s powerful.