Data: Empirical Evidence on the Ownership and Liquidity of Real Estate Tokens

Empirical studies on the tokenization of real asset markets are necessary to better understand the potential and limitations of this radically new organization of financial markets. We examine the financial economic consequences of the tokenization of 58 residential rental properties in the United States, many of them located in Detroit. Consistent with the goal of tokenization, we find fragmentation as the  median residential property has 254 owners. Investors with more than USD 5,000 invested in real estate tokens diversify their real estate ownership across properties within and across cities. Property ownership changes on average about once per year, and significantly more for properties available on decentralized exchanges. We document that the prices of real estate tokens move in line with the house price index, suggesting that investing in real estate tokens gives economic exposure to residential house prices.  

This dataset contains the source data for the analyses carried out in the article. It contains blockchain data on the number of owners per residential property token, the number of trades per residential property token, and the prices of token trades on decentralized exchanges.