The Problem Property Developers and brokers worldwide are facing multiple barriers when trying to sell properties overseas. International property investors face similar challenges:
Inefficient property search process due to fragmented listings data.
Lack of a standard protocol for international real estate transactions.
Lack of trust among entities.
Lack of real-time settlement of recorded transactions and efficient cross-border payments processing.
Ineffective property developer and project validation and customer KYC (Know Your Customer).[/li][/list]
In some cases, property buyers and investors have to go through multiple layers of intermediaries, making the property purchase time consuming, not to mention, adding more costs to the transaction. Buyers also rely on either money remittance centers or international bank transfers for their payments which are both inefficient and expensive.
The Market The Cross-Border Real Estate market has been on a growing trend over the last 20 years. In 2017, nearly $400 billion USD worth of properties was purchased by foreign buyers in both residential and commercial real estate. In the same year, $150 billion USD were spent by Chinese citizens buying properties in the US, Canada, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UAE, and Australia.
These reports reflect the positive outlook for overseas real estate investment.
Introducing AQWIRE A blockchain-powered real estate platform designed to handle cross-border transactions. AQWIRE enables property developers and brokers from all around the world to list their units and extend their reach to the global market. This gives property buyers access to a wide variety of units across the world, bypassing multiple levels of intermediaries and ultimately reducing the cost.
Blockchain and Smart ContractsAQWIRE fully utilizes Smart Contract technology to process cross-border real-estate transactions. The platform is engineered to remove many of the roadblocks endemic with international real-estate. Blockchain and Smart Contracts are uniquely helpful and provides the following benefits:
Efficient and reliable property search process through a blockchain-enabled international listing platform. This allows tracing of source to origin and prevent fraudulent listings.
An opportunity for disintermediation, as transactions can be independently verified and automatically reconciled.
Trustless environment, allowing any two parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.
Near real time settlement of recorded transaction and efficient booking and reservation of units, thus lowering transaction costs.
The key terms of the sales agreement are recorded on the blockchain and this becomes the smart contract.
Crypto economics built into the blockchain model that provides incentives to property developer and project validators, as well as with the KYC process.
Real-time data analysis using appropriate analytics tool helping property developers and buyers alike in important decision-making aspects.
The AQwire platform also utilizes the blockchain as an immutable inventory database and is coupled with cryptocurrencies and traditional payments gateways to enable payments to be facilitated directly on the platform. The payments layer API will enable off-chain transactions to update on-chain data’s states as they occur.
One of the most prominent problems our real estate partners have are double bookings. A property may be listed on multiple listing sites by different brokers. Often, when a property is sold or reserved, the sale isn’t communicated in real time to the property developer causing the same property to be sold by multiple parties. AQwire uses the blockchain to solve this issue by using timestamp and consensus mechanism to ensure only a single payment will be accepted. In addition, smart contracts can be utilized to ensure there is a que for the next qualifying buyers if the payment does not clear successfully.
Qwikwire Billing Systems
The AQWIRE platform is a project developed by Qwikwire, the leading cross-border payments solution in Southeast Asia. Qwikwire has been processing international payments for property developers and other local enterprises since 2015.
AQWIRE is designed to work perfectly well with Qwikwire’s payment facilities. Qwikwire can receive different types of property payments such as Reservation fee, Monthly Amortization, and Association dues. Qwikwire will enable AQWIRE to process E-checks, Debit/Credit card, and Crypto payments but will only accept fiat during the early stage of development.
AQWIRE’s token ‘QEY’
QEY (pronounced as “key”) are tokens built on the ERC-20 token standard, which gives QEY the ability to be transacted on the Ethereum blockchain. QEY is primarily designed to be a utility token to access specialized features on the AQWIRE platform.
The following are some of the auxiliary utilities for the QEY token:
Discounts to reservation fees and monthly property payments
Access to global and regional real estate market report
View live data and trends on real estate investments in a specific area
Access to properties, rentals, and vacation homes listed in the platform
For property developers, ability to list properties, rentals, vacation homes (supply side)
For property developers, the ability to conduct KYC (know your customer) via blockchain
Other service providers such as translators, legal, appraisers and more will also need to have QEY to be able to list their services in the platform[/li][/list]
There will be more utilization for the tokens as the AQWIRE platform grows and expands. The increase in property developer listing and buyer transactions would require an ever-increasing demand for QEY. The tokens will be necessary to utilize the AQWIRE platform regardless of whether it is accessed through the utilization of AQWIRE services or a third-party interface.
AQwire Token Sale EventAQwire is launching its token sale this June, with the goal of building a community of property developers, brokers, property buyers and investors and other real estate transaction service providers. Here are some of the details of the token sale:
Pre-sale date: May 15, 2018 - June 15, 2018
Pre-sale bonus: Up to 15%
Token Sale Main Round: TBA
Total token supply: 180M QEY tokens
Total token for sale: 90M QEY tokens
Hard cap: USD $9.9M
Price: USD $0.11 per token
Purchase method accepted: ETH
Token Symbol: QEY
Token Type: ERC-20
Why participate in AQwire Token Sale Event?The project has a profitable business model and financial plan
The team has the experience to execute the project and meet the roadmap
Qwikwire, the parent company, has already processed $15M USD worth of real estate payments to date and projects to process $30M USD more by the end of the year.
The business is expanding to emerging markets, Vietnam and Thailand, Q4 of 2018
A real use case for blockchain technology and smart contract
The AQwire platform is built from experience working with property developers and catering to foreign buyers[/li][/list]
AQwire’s Business ModelAQwire will earn a commission/percentage on all sales done or initiated in the platform.
AQwire real estate platform is a complementary product to Qwikwire’s billing system. AQwire brings revenue from all the cross border payments processed from property purchase transactions such as payments for reservation fees, monthly amortization, and association dues.
Foreign buyers will be able to utilize the QEY token to purchase discount coupons in buying properties listed in the AQwire platform.
Other service providers such as translators, legal, appraisers and more will also need to have QEY to be able to list their services in the platform.[/li][/list]
The Team
Ray Edison Refundo – CEO and Founder, Qwikwire
California State University, San Jose – Finance/Economics, Cum Laude. Founder Moneytran in 2005, one of the first online money-transfer service in the market. Has years of experience working with banks and well versed with local and international regulations in the payments/money-transfer industry. Worked in Corporate Finance for five years.
Scott Yu - Co-Founder and Blockchain DeveloperCalifornia State University, San Jose – Corporate Finance/ Sbona Honors. Scott spent his early career in Corporate Finance working as an auditor for Deloitte. A self-taught programmer, previously worked at CoinDash, a crypto assets portfolio management and social trading platform. He has been in the FinTech space for more than five years.
See AQwire’s Team and Advisor:
https://aqwire.io/#teamAQwire Social Media Channels:Telegram:
https://t.me/AQWIREFacebook:
https://www.facebook.com/AQwirePlatform/Twitter:
https://twitter.com/AQwireOfficialWebsite:
https://aqwire.io/Whitepaper:
https://aqwire.io/#whitepaper Pre-sale is ongoing, join the whitelist: https://aqwire.io/kyc[/list][/list]
