Thousands of Detroit renters fall prey to crypto chaos and owners are being slammed as slumlords
Detroit renters are feeling trapped with nowhere to turn after ongoing problems at various buildings remain unanswered.The buildings are run by a cryptocurrency real estate venture.RealT, a Florida-based company, claims on its website that it’s “revolutionizing investment through tokenization, making real estate and other tangible assets accessible to everyone.” It’s been selling chunks of rental properties it owns in Detroit to thousands of foreign investors, leaving some tenants stranded in run-down homes.RealT’s novel approach to the business of real estate has come at a price, according to recent reporting by Outlier Media.
In Detroit, where the company claims to own about 1,200 housing units spread over 800 properties purchased since 2019, hundreds of them have reportedly fallen into disrepair. More recently, RealT also has gained a foothold in the markets of Chicago, St.Louis, and Cleveland, OH.Meanwhile, RealT’s tenants in Motor City have complained of not being offered leases, and being unable to contact a property management company to request urgent repairs, such as for mold on the walls or an overflowing toilet.
Others have been threatened with eviction, despite paying rent on time.Still, others don’t even know whom to pay rent to, as they are unfamiliar with RealT and the scores of its nameless token holders from around the world identified only as numbers and letters on a blockchain.RealT operates an online marketplace that sells so-called “fractional ownership” of the properties the firm owns to investors. A typical property has hundreds of “owners,” each holding on to a piece of its value in the form of a cryptocurrency token—a string of random symbols that shields sensitive data—and receiving dividends from rent paid by tenants.All an investor needs to own a piece of property is a minimum of $50 and a virtual wallet to hold the tokens, which can then be swiftly offloaded to someone else.On the other side of ...