Commercial Real Estate Tokenization: 9 Property Types Compared

Commercial real estate tokenization works for almost every property type: office, multifamily, industrial and logistics, retail, hotels, data centers, land, and portfolios run as REIT-like funds. It works because what is tokenized is not the building. The property sits in a company, usually a special purpose vehicle (SPV), and investors buy interests in that company, recorded as tokens on a blockchain register.

What changes from one property type to the next is everything around the token: where the cash flow comes from, how the asset is valued, what the lender can veto, which investors will buy it, and what makes the deal harder. A single home can be tokenized too, but the fixed legal cost rarely makes sense for one house.

This guide compares the nine property types side by side. For the step-by-step process, read the complete guide to real estate tokenization or the six-step playbook. Stobox is not a broker-dealer, investment adviser, custodian or law firm, and nothing here is legal, tax or investment advice.

Key takeaways

• Nine property types can be tokenized; in each one investors hold interests in the owning company, not the deed. The exceptions are registry-level programmes such as Dubai’s title-deed pilot, launched 19 March 2025.
• The legal route is the same for every type in the US: Reg D 506(c) for verified accredited investors, Reg CF up to $5,000,000 in 12 months, Reg A Tier 2 up to $75,000,000.
• The property type changes the evidence: a rent roll for offices and flats, operating statements for hotels, a permit and budget for land, a net asset value for a fund.
• Offering documents cost $50,000–$200,000+ with a mint-only platform; the token itself is $1,248 on Stobox Compass. That fixed cost is why one home rarely justifies an offering.
• Twenty of the fifty-five engagements in Stobox’s public register are property, including three hotels, two residential projects and a real estate fund.
• Tokenization does not change the rent, the lender’s rights or whether a buyer exists. Restricted securities still wait out a Rule 144 holding period of six months or one year.

What you tokenize: the company, not the bricks

A deed is a poor thing to split into a thousand tradable pieces. Shares in a company are not. So the property is transferred once into an SPV, and the SPV’s shares, membership units or notes become the tokens. Every later transfer moves a ledger entry, not a title. The SPV guide covers where to form the vehicle and what it costs.

Because investors buy interests in a company, the tokens are securities. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce put it in one line on 9 July 2025: “Tokenized securities are still securities” (SEC statement). The SEC staff repeated the point on 28 January 2026: the on-chain or off-chain format “does not affect application of the federal securities laws” (SEC staff statement).

That is why the property type matters less to the regulator than to the investor. The exemption depends on who buys. What they are buying, and how they judge it, depends on the building.

Nine property types compared

The table describes the usual shape of each deal, not a rule. A single-tenant office behaves more like industrial; a serviced-apartment block behaves more like a hotel. Your counsel decides the structure from the documents, not from the label.

Office buildings

An office investor is buying leases. The rent roll, each signed lease and the tenant payment history are the evidence, and a buyer’s lawyer will check that they agree with the accounts. The key question is what happens at lease expiry: who re-lets the space, at what cost, and how that is disclosed in the offering documents.

Most commercial loans carry a change-of-control clause, so selling interests in the owning company can need the lender’s consent. On a commercial building the lender is the first call, before the raise is designed. The real estate solutions page shows how Stobox records the loan, the leases and the appraisal against each answer.

Multifamily and residential rental

Apartment buildings have granular income: many units, many short leases, steady turnover. That makes the rent roll long and the reconciliation work real, but it also spreads the risk across tenants. If you want retail investors as well as accredited ones, the US routes are Reg CF (up to $5,000,000 in 12 months, 17 CFR 227.100) or Reg A Tier 2 (up to $75,000,000, 17 CFR 230.251).

Two Stobox engagements sit here. For Landshare in the United States we built the platform and the offering for a residential property product. For InPropInvest in Spain we built the funding structure for buying and refurbishing residential property. Deal sizes and returns are the clients’ to publish.

Industrial and logistics

Warehouses, distribution centres and light manufacturing buildings often have one tenant or a few. The lease and the tenant’s credit are most of the valuation, so investors read the lease term, break options and the tenant’s accounts closely. The simplicity helps: fewer documents to reconcile than a residential block.

The cost of that simplicity is concentration. If one tenant leaves, most of the income leaves with it, and the offering documents have to say so plainly. Ticket sizes also tend to be larger, which points the raise toward accredited and institutional investors under Reg D 506(c), where every purchaser must be accredited and the issuer must take “reasonable steps to verify” that status (17 CFR 230.506).

Retail

Retail property mixes rent with tenant performance. A lease can include a share of tenant sales, or let a tenant reduce rent if an anchor store closes. Both belong in the risk factors, because they move the income an investor is buying.

A tokenized shopping centre earns exactly what the untokenized one earns. The token can make distributions to many holders cheaper to run and transfers easier to police, but it does not fill empty units.

Hotels

A hotel is an operating business inside a building. Investors are buying room, food and event revenue after operating costs, not a fixed rent, so the evidence is operating statements, the management or franchise agreement, and a renovation budget. Income moves every night, which makes disclosure and reporting heavier than for a let building.

Three of Stobox’s named engagements are hotels. For Keystone Equities in the United States we structured a raise to buy and renovate a hotel with a defined exit for investors. For Los Patios Ibiza we structured renovation financing for a historic Spanish hotel under local property and heritage rules. For Candela in Mexico we delivered the platform for a hotel-focused offering.

Data centers

Data centers are specialised buildings whose value depends on tenant contracts, power supply and fit-out, more than on location alone. They need a specialised operator, and deals tend to be large, so the investor base is mostly institutional and accredited.

Tokenization changes the same things here as elsewhere: one register for many holders, transfer rules enforced by the token, distributions from the register. It does not reduce the technical due diligence, which is the hardest part of a data-center raise.

Land and development projects

Land and projects under construction have no income to distribute, sometimes for years. Investors are buying a future value, so the evidence is the plan: permits, a construction budget, a timeline and an appraisal against the finished scheme. Milestone reporting matters more than distribution mechanics.

This is the highest-risk type on the list, and the offering documents have to say what happens if a permit is refused or the budget overruns. It suits accredited investors who accept that risk. Stobox does not promise returns for any property type, and development is where that caution matters most.

Portfolios and REIT-like funds

Several buildings under one manager start to look like a fund, and fund rules come with that. In the US, a company that wants REIT tax treatment must, among other tests, hold at least 75 percent of its assets in real estate assets, cash and government securities, have 100 or more owners, and distribute at least 90 percent of its taxable income (26 U.S.C. 856, 26 U.S.C. 857). A pooled vehicle also has to check the Investment Company Act; one exclusion covers companies primarily “acquiring mortgages and other liens on and interests in real estate” (15 U.S.C. 80a-3(c)(5)).

A tokenized portfolio is not automatically a REIT; it is whatever its structure and tax elections make it. For Trade Estate in the Czech Republic, Stobox developed a phased rollout strategy for a real estate fund. The investment funds page covers what tokenization changes for a fund manager, from side letters to transfer consent.

Can I tokenize my house?

Yes, legally it is possible, but for one home it is rarely worth it. To sell pieces of a house to investors in the US, you would move the house into a company, sell interests in that company under a securities exemption, verify every investor and report to them for as long as they hold. The offering documents alone typically cost $50,000–$200,000+ with outside counsel (tokenization cost index), against a single asset.

Three more problems are specific to a home you live in:

1. The mortgage. A due-on-sale clause in a home loan lets the lender call the loan if “all or any part of the property, or an interest therein” is transferred without consent. Federal law protects some transfers, such as a transfer into a trust where the borrower stays a beneficiary, but a transfer into a company is not on that list (12 U.S.C. 1701j-3).
2. The tax exclusion. The US excludes up to $250,000 of gain ($500,000 for a qualifying joint return) on a home owned and used as your principal residence for 2 of the last 5 years (26 U.S.C. 121). Selling slices to outside investors through a company can put that at risk; ask a tax adviser before you start.
3. No income to share. If you live in the house, there is no rent to distribute. Investors would be buying only a share of a future sale price, with you in control of the asset.

A few land registries are changing this. Dubai Land Department launched a pilot on 19 March 2025 that tokenizes title deeds themselves, and projects the market at AED 60 billion by 2033, 7% of Dubai’s property transactions (DLD announcement). Its Director General, Marwan Ahmed Bin Ghalita, said tokenization “simplifies and enhances buying, selling, and investment processes.” Outside such registries, a home owner who wants capital usually gets it faster from a loan than from an offering.

What stays the same for every property type

The property type changes the evidence. It does not change the securities route, which is chosen by the investors you want. In the US the usual options are:

Securities bought in a private placement are restricted. Under Rule 144 a holder waits six months if the issuer is an SEC reporting company, or one year if it is not, before reselling publicly (17 CFR 230.144). A token that settles in minutes does not shorten that. The full comparison is in Reg D vs Reg S vs Reg CF vs Reg A, and the US rules in the US guide.

Liquidity is the other constant. Tokenized real-world assets held $38.54B of distributed value on 26 September 2026 (rwa.xyz), and real estate is a small, hard-to-measure part of it, estimated at $1–3B in July 2026 because most property deals are recorded as SPV interests (State of RWA 2026). A buyer for a property token has to be found; the token does not create one. The liquidity guide covers what makes secondary trading possible.

What it costs

The cost lines are the same for every property type. The figures below are from the Stobox tokenization cost index, updated 11 September 2026.

• Offering documents: $50,000–$200,000+ at a law firm when the platform only mints. It is the line that decides the bill.
• Independent appraisal: $5,000–$50,000+, expected by regulators and institutional investors.
• Entity formation: about $110 for a Delaware LLC to about $4,000 in Cayman.
• Investor verification: $2–$8 per investor, which adds up on a raise with many small investors.
• The token: $1,248 once on Stobox Compass ($499 asset passport plus $749 contract deployment). The first year for one building, platform included, is $7,236 before onboarding (from $4,950).

The index works through a $2M real estate raise on a single US SPV under Reg D 506(c): about $50,000–$120,000 with a mint-only platform plus counsel, about $10,000–$30,000 with Stobox, where the Raisable window fee ($1,499–$6,999) includes the offering documents. These are ballparks, not quotes. Stobox fees are flat and never a percentage of the raise; a licensed broker-dealer that runs a regulated sale charges its own fee.

How to tell whether your property is a fit

1. You control the property. A building you do not yet own or control cannot be offered.
2. The ownership can be transferred. The owning company’s documents, and the lender, allow new owners.
3. The income, or the plan, can be documented. A rent roll that agrees with the accounts, operating statements for a hotel, permits and a budget for land.
4. The value is independently appraised. A buyer counts the appraiser’s number, not the owner’s.
5. The investor base is known before the jurisdiction. Accredited US money, retail, or investors abroad each point to a different exemption.
6. The timeline allows three to six months. A raise that has to close in six weeks is not a fit.

The 8-phase Stobox Tokenization Framework, published at stobox.io/framework, runs these checks in order across 48 steps. Since 2018 Stobox has $305M+ in assets structured and supported, 100+ clients and 20+ jurisdictions.

Questions, answered

Can commercial real estate be tokenized?

Yes. Offices, multifamily, industrial and logistics buildings, retail, hotels and data centers can all be tokenized. In each case the property is held by a company, usually an SPV, and investors buy tokenized interests in that company under a securities exemption such as Reg D 506(c). Most commercial loans carry a change-of-control clause, so the lender’s consent is usually the first step.

Which type of real estate is easiest to tokenize?

A let building with a clean rent roll, an up-to-date independent appraisal, one owning company and a lender that consents. Single-tenant industrial and multifamily with reconciled leases are often the simplest to document. Hotels, development land and multi-property funds carry more disclosure because their income is less predictable or does not exist yet.

Can I tokenize my house?

It is legally possible, but rarely worth it for one home. You would move the house into a company, sell interests under a securities exemption, and pay $50,000–$200,000+ in offering documents with outside counsel. A transfer into a company can also trigger the mortgage’s due-on-sale clause (12 U.S.C. 1701j-3) and put the $250,000 principal-residence tax exclusion at risk. A loan is usually a cheaper way to raise money against a home.

How do you tokenize real estate?

In six steps: make the property record raise-ready, decide what the token represents (usually SPV interests), pick the jurisdiction and exemption for your investors, prepare the offering with a licensed broker-dealer where required, issue tokens with transfer rules on ERC-7943, and run distributions and reporting from the register. The how to tokenize real estate guide walks through each step.

Do token holders own the building?

In most structures, no. They own interests in the company that owns the building, and they rank behind secured lenders if that company fails. The exceptions are registry-level programmes, such as Dubai Land Department’s title-deed tokenization pilot launched in March 2025.

Can a tokenized portfolio be a REIT?

Only if it meets the REIT tests in the US tax code, including at least 75 percent of assets in real estate, cash and government securities, 100 or more owners, and distributing at least 90 percent of taxable income (26 U.S.C. 856 and 857). Tokenization does not make a portfolio a REIT, and it does not stop one from being a REIT. Fund and Investment Company Act questions apply either way.

Does tokenization make a property liquid?

No, not by itself. Private-placement tokens are restricted securities with a Rule 144 holding period of six months or one year, and secondary trading needs a licensed venue and a buyer. Tokenization makes a permitted transfer faster and cheaper once a buyer exists.

Conclusion

Every property type on this list can be tokenized, and the token is the cheap part. What differs is the evidence each type needs and the risks it has to disclose: leases for offices and flats, operating results for hotels, permits for land, fund rules for portfolios. A single home is possible but rarely economic.

To see where your own property stands, take the free Readiness Score: twenty-five questions, about eight minutes, and nobody calls you unless you ask.

Stobox Companies Group is not a registered broker-dealer, funding portal, underwriter, investment bank, investment adviser, investment manager, law firm, or accounting firm. Stobox does not provide legal, tax, accounting, investment, or financial advisory services of any kind, does not guarantee regulatory compliance, and at no time has custody of client or investor funds or securities. Clients remain solely responsible for compliance with the laws of their jurisdictions. Updated 26 September 2026.