Estati - Real Estate Investments

All-in-one Interface to facilitate real estate transactions (buy and sell) using smart contracts on Cardano Blockchain

Donatas Varnas - Entrepreneur, Real Estate, +6 years 
CTO - ex-2 startup CTO, +9 years
ClearContracts.io - Contract development partner

We are Fund 4 winners of a small amount to kick things off. Now applying for Fund 6 to initiate the smart contract development and build a solution we can all use for real estate transactions. 

So far we have established and signed a partnership with a blockchain company to process transactions and issued a "Manager's Cheque" in UAE including the commission share agreement and already closed one deal. New partnerships are upcoming. We have also published some content (SEO) and educate investors and worked on link-building mostly. 

Product vision:

Make it super easy and accessible for everyone to invest in global real estate assets with cryptocurrencies.

It is not only a buy-and-sell concept, but a full solution where you can invest in already rented out properties and collect running rents, lease out your new apartment for crypto, lend crypto for real estate developers to build new projects (equity investments and mezzanine lending). 

Milestones since Fund 4: 

1. Signed a partnership with a Blockchain company registered in Poland and UAE that is assisting with real estate transactions for Dubai real estate market (you need a business establishment with large fiat liquidity to issue so-called "Manager's Cheque")
2. Closed one property sale of 354.000 USD and got a small commission in crypto
3. In contact with a Swiss crypto broker to facilitate real estate transactions in the following currencies USD, EUR, CHF (will open more markets and contacts for the product growth)
4. Published a few articles on how to buy real estate with crypto:
4.1. English article - https://estati.ae/blog/buy-real-estate-with-crypto/ 
https://estati.ae/blog/%d0%bd%d0%b5%d0%b4%d0%b2%d0%b8%d0%b6%d0%b8%d0%bc%d0%be%d1%81%d1%82%d1%8c-%d0%b7%d0%b0-%d0%ba%d1%80%d0%b8%d0%bf%d1%82%d0%be%d0%b2%d0%b0%d0%bb%d1%8e%d1%82%d1%83/
5. Defined initial structure of the smart contract. A few versions are available with property details and without, as well as with arbitraging options. Smart Contract development will be taken care of by ClearContracts.io (https://clearcontracts.io/) and we already discussed the next steps
6. We can already legally process real estate transactions via the Blockchain partner company
7. Established communication with a white-label software company for Tokenization solutions (more for the future project vision)

Team:

Donatas Varnas - entrepreneur, product manager, product marketing. +5 years in product design and development primarily within recruitment and gaming industries. +2 years experience with real estate and PropTech solutions

CTO / Tech Infrastructure - ex-CTO of 2 startups, helping out with the infrastructure setup, no blockchain development yet. Does not want to share his name yet.

ClearContracts.io - specializing in smart contract development (financial transactions) on Cardano blockchain including automation and payment releases. 

Next steps and the use of new funds:

1. 80% of funds - Initiate a smart contract development (we are starting with a simplified version first, then build up with more property details and confirmations). Salaries for development.
2. 20% of funds - Marketing and backlink building (SEO), need to pay for guest posts and translations. To keep the marketing momentum and get more visibility. 

Financing required: 24000 USD

P.S. we are realistic. This fund I see a lot of projects asking for +70k USD which is a lot of, especially when the fund should be aiming to get more projects running on Cardano and sponsor multiple entrepreneurs. We are applying for smaller amounts and would rather apply again at Fund7 or Fund8 to keep on building our product and give a chance for other projects to kick-off (instead of asking for a 200k USD). 

MVP build:

Our smart contract development partners (ClearContracts.io) already have experience with financing and real estate transactions.

1. Stage 1 - MVP will be built to facilitate wallet-to-wallet transactions for real estate, including the deposit validation (normally 5% deposit first, then full amount).
2. Stage 2 - MVP to include arbitraging - in case of payment issues, documents, etc. 
3. Stage 3 (conditional) - smart contract to facilitate all the information about the property, location, address, land plot nr. etc.

Definition of success - have a working smart contract that can transfer funds wallet-to-wallet and contain real estate information. 

Expected launch date - January 1st, 2022. After Fund 6 is closed, we should have enough time to build an MVP and facilitate test transactions.

Metrics:

We are now looking at multiple metrics for product development and growth:
1. Processed transactions (closed real estate deals)
2. Marketing performance - SEO rankings, clicks, inquiries, etc. 

Upcoming tech metrics:
1. Smart contract initiations
2. Successful Smart contract verifications/transactions
3. Number of errors with contract execution

Real-life application:

If you are a real estate investor and would like to acquire a property - we can already help with the process. So far we have only closed deals in Dubai, UAE, but other locations are also possible. For individuals and institutional investors, we can also broker apartments, buildings, or land, primarily in the UAE. Yields are 5-7% for regular 12-months contracts, but for holiday homes (short-term rentals) yields are 10-20% (normally around 15%) that can be managed by our local partners here in Dubai and paid out in fiat or crypto. 

Market coverage:

1. UAE - with the EU/UAE blockchain company we now cover the United Arab Emirates. We can process transactions here already.
2. Europe and the US - haven't launched yet, but transactions and real estate contracts can be facilitated with EUR and USD currencies. Very thorough KYC/AML must be performed for investors

Additional information:
We are very happy to work with the community and with our users in mind. If you have more feedback and ideas on how we could improve the product - please do let us know in the comments or via private message. We 

Website: https://estati.ae/