OpenLand

Own & Trade Fractions of Land

OpenLand enables the digitization of physical properties, allowing multiple people to buy landed properties in fractions, and trade these fractions as commodities on the blockchain.

This way, we are lowering the barrier to entry in the real estate market, making property ownership more accessible to individuals, and generating economic value from landed properties, thereby allowing real estate owners earn passive returns on their properties through the concept of Herberger Tax.

On OpenLand, verified land owners can upload details of their properties for sale and set a floor price. After verification, the property ownership rights are encoded on the blockchain and minted as a digitised NFT. Based on the land’s total number of square meters, this NFT is split into an even number of fractions, where 1 fraction is equal to a number of square metres.

When each fraction is purchased, each buyer is automatically placed in a DAO that has decision making power on the property.

After purchasing the property at the floor price, Buyer A is allowed to value their property at any price they want, and set the price at that value. To prevent price fixing and hoarding, the “Harberger tax” principle is applied.

Firstly, when setting the new price, Buyer A is required to pay a 20% tax of the new price (80% goes to the property owner, and 20% goes to OpenLand). Secondly, the property can be bought by anyone else at the price set by Buyer A, thereby forcing a sale. This way, the property is in the most productive hands at every point in time, thus preventing hoarding.

In the event where someone is interested in buying off large fractions of the land, members of the DAO can vote to contribute their fractions to the bidder’s buying pool, until the fractions make up the full amount of square meters the bidder wants to purchase.

What We Built

OpenLand is a dapp that enables verified, tokenized ownership of physical real estate assets that are split and shared between multiple people.
The physical property is minted as an NFT, and ownership rights are encoded on the blockchain.
Generates passive income for real estate owners through the concept of “Harberger Tax”.
Harberger Tax also ensures there is no hoarding and unnecessary price fixing.
All owners of the land are automatically members of a DAO which can choose to sell their fractions to buyers who want to purchase in bulk.

Why We Built It

Fractionalization lowers the barrier to entry in the real estate market, and makes property ownership more accessible to individuals.
By allowing people trade fractions of land, landed properties (which are mostly illiquid assets) can generate economic value.
By encoding ownership rights on the blockchain, land disputes can be avoided, as transactions and ownership transfers are visible to all interested parties.