A nice media piece on Prime-Ex Perpetual was published today at the Huffington Post. Feels good to get a little media exposure!
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5a0c98b8e4b006a16baf1eb9Ayodeji Onibalusi, Contributor
Entrepreneur and digital marketing expert, CEO at Effective Inbound Marketing
How it Can Pay to Buy Residential Real Estate With Blockchain Tokens11/15/2017 02:54 pm ET
Cryptocurrencies are huge right now, and they should by no means be underestimated. Research shows that some $4.9 billion worth of bitcoin is traded every 24 hours and usage of bitcoin is unrestricted in a whopping 96 countries. When you also consider the adoption of blockchain technology in established industries as well as emerging ones, it’s easy to see that cryptocurrencies are here to stay.
However, cryptocurrencies have a lot more potential than many would imagine.
Can you imagine buying a property without credit scores, without age restrictions, and including a guaranteed buy-back program at two-thirds of the original price outside of your home country? Companies like Prime-Ex Perpetual, a company catering to expats in the Republic of Panama, do exactly that by tokenizing their own real estate ecosystem using blockchain technology.
Prime-Ex Perpetual CEO John Gilbert believes that blockchain technology will change how real estate is approached, and that the improvements introduced to the existing real estate model will enhance the bottom line of the company as well as the owning experience of the homebuyers.
How Tokens Might Take Thousands of Dollars Off the Price of a HomeGilbert thinks blockchain can greatly reduce the effective cost of buying property by reducing monthly payments and by becoming token holders themselves.“When our homebuyers become our token holders, they win in three ways. First, they experience a cheaper monthly mortgage payment. Second, they will enjoy dividends derived from our company’s profits in their proportional share. Third, as the PEX-Token realizes ever-increasing demand against their permanent fixed supply, there is a chance that the underlying value of the PEX-Token may go up over time, which would effectively make the purchase price of their home cheaper with each future mortgage payment they make. Everybody wins. Most of all our homebuyers who become token holders.”
He credits the company’s “3 pillars” for making this possible:
3 Pillars of the Prime-Ex Perpetual Real Estate EcosystemTo understand what Prime-Ex Perpetual is doing you need to understand the 3 Pillars of the Prime-Ex Perpetual Real Estate Ecosystem. Prime-Ex Perpetual relies on a handful of improvements to the traditional real estate model to reinvent the way that residential real estate is experienced.
The hope at Prime-Ex is to be able to handle every step in the residential property development and sales process through its platform. Under Prime-Ex’s current plan, all the steps in the process including property selection, land development, home construction, advertising and sales, mortgage, rental, and maintenance would take place in the blockchain.
Prime-Ex is testing the model with luxury properties in the highlands and beach front areas of the Central American nation of Panama. The hope is to market the properties, it plans to finance with an initial cryptocurrency offering (ICO) called PEX-Token, to wealthy expatriates from Europe and North America.
Pillar 1: Controlling the Real Estate ProcessThe way that Prime-Ex Perpetual holds title to the individual properties ensures superior lien rights from beginning to end. This protects the interests of both Prime-Ex Perpetual and its token holders. The permanent mortgage for a future buyer is attached to the property at the very beginning of the process, and is only enjoined to a payment structure when a buyer purchases the home. This creates efficiencies in chain of title and eliminates the possibility of loss for both the buyer and Prime-Ex Perpetual.
Pillar 2: Improving the Borrower’s Financing ExperiencePrime-Ex Perpetual is introducing their proprietary Revolution Loan, which replaces interest rate risk experienced by borrowers with equity participation by the lender. The loan is meant to eliminate the negative reinforcements banks traditionally use to get the borrower to pay, and replaces them with a very big reward: after the borrower has participated in the Revolution Loan as agreed for three years, the borrower can execute a clause in the agreement whereas Prime-Ex Perpetual will buy back the house for two-thirds of the original purchase price, no questions asked. Borrowers are able to lock in a lower maximum risk exposure that allows them to experience living abroad without the full financial risk attached of buying a home outside of their home country.
Pillar 3: Leveraging Blockchain TechnologyPrime-Ex Perpetual has tokenized their own real estate ecosystem in a way that allows home buyers to pay their mortgage at a discounted payment by using PEX-Tokens, and allowing their token holders to enjoy dividends equaling 80% of the company’s profits. The free exchange of PEX-Token value within the Prime-Ex Perpetual ecosystem in a way that benefits all effectively creates a whole new asset class built on top of a traditional real estate investment trust. Homeowners enjoy lower monthly payments. Token holders enjoy dividends. Token holders enjoy a more direct and transparent way to sell their investment without the need of middlemen with very low transactional fees. When homebuyers decide to become token holders they become active participants in the very model that helped them to purchase a home in a new way.
Prime-Ex Perpetual believes that the improvements made to the real estate process puts their company in the conversation of every person considering purchasing a home in any market that they choose to operate in. “When you consider the quality of our homes, the easy monthly payments, the ecosystem that our homebuyers get with one of our homes, combined with a guaranteed buyback, there’s really no other choice,” says John Gilbert, CEO and Co-Founder of Prime-Ex Perpetual. ”People will choose our homes because it makes the most sense for their lifestyle experience and their bottom line.”
The Initial Coin Offering of Prime-Ex Perpetual’s PEX-Token begins on November 15, 2017. Prime-Ex Perpetual is offering 25,000,000 PEX-Tokens for sale at $1.00 USD-Equivalent. Token purchasers will take possession of their PEX-Tokens during the first few days of December. PEX-Tokens are a Waves-based token and will trade openly on the DEX Exchange. To hold the tokens you will have to use a Waves wallet. PEX tokens can be purchased with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Waves, US dollars, Euros or British pounds at
https://ico.prime-ex.com.
