Eleven Questions from Landowners 🌲

Owning land opens up a world of new opportunities, and comes with its own set of challenges and responsibilities. On Fabrica, landowners can unlock significant value and unprecedented benefits—like quick access to capital through loans, the ability to build and connect with a broader community of prospective buyers, and the convenience of selling your land instantly online. As we explore innovative ways for people to manage and capitalize on their property, we often hear different questions from landowners who are looking to list their properties onchain for the very first time.

Here, we’re diving into the questions we receive most frequently from our community.

Fabrica is a new way to own real estate. At first glance, our website might look a lot like other real estate websites (think Zillow or Streeteasy), where you can browse listings online. These websites are excellent at allowing you to browse properties, but when the time comes to actually make a purchase, you’ll have to go through the traditional processes: paperwork, notaries and all sorts of intermediaries.

On Fabrica, when you see a property, you can make it yours within minutes. When you click the "buy" button, you’re charged to your bank account, crypto account—or even credit card—and you can become the owner of the property in just a few clicks. The seller also gets their proceeds instantly. It’s a win-win.

The same speed and convenience is true for all operations (like borrowing against your property). It all happens digitally, seamlessly, and without the slow and expensive paperwork. 

Bringing something onchain means creating a digital representation of the asset on a blockchain. Once it’s onchain, the asset benefits from instant, secure, and efficient operation. It’s supercharged, while retaining all the features and value of the underlying asset. 

On top of that, its digital representation allows for additional uses and flexibility, like fractional ownership—enabling investors to buy and sell portions of properties without the need for traditional, cumbersome processes. This is also commonly known as “Tokenized Real Estate,” since the ownership of the asset is controlled through a defined number of tokens, each representing one “piece” of ownership (similar to a share in a company). In some cases, token ownership can even unlock access to a share of the revenue generated by the property.

Fabrica makes it extremely easy to bring property onchain. In three easy steps, you can move from a traditional deed to fully digital ownership, and immediately benefit while you continue enjoying your property.

From a legal standpoint, your property title will be held in a trust, specifically designed to enable digital transfers. This arrangement means that while Fabrica facilitates the process, it does not control the trust. Instead, the owner of the property always has full control of the trust, which acts purely as a “Nameholder” at the local jurisdiction. This method provides an added layer of security and ensures that your interests are protected for all parties throughout the transaction and onchain operations. Learn more about our open source trust agreement.

The short answer is: no. We’re making Fabrica as easy to use as any other e-commerce site. Understanding blockchain technology is really not necessary for listing your property on Fabrica. Our platform is designed to be user-friendly, allowing landowners to list their properties instantly. The technical aspects of blockchain and tokenization are handled under the hood, so you can focus on the benefits of owning your land, or selling it online.

Fabrica’s setup is completely transparent from a tax perspective, so you’ll still be responsible for paying any taxes that are due. Still, we can help: we’re building tools to remind you when taxes are due, and eventually we’ll even facilitate payments themselves, so you won’t have to worry about delinquent taxes and mailing checks.

Typically, these are the taxes you’ll incur when buying and owning properties:

• Transfer taxes: These taxes and fees may apply when you buy or sell a property, digitally or traditionally. The specific rules vary by state and county, but Fabrica will guide you in paying these fees if and when they are due.

• Income and capital gain taxes: If you sell real property and make a profit, you may have federal and state tax obligations. It's your responsibility to understand and fulfill your tax obligations on gains from selling a property on Fabrica, similar to when you sell any other digital (cryptocurrencies) or traditional (stocks, real estate) asset.

• Property taxes: Property taxes are typically due biannually to the county. Property owners are responsible for paying these taxes. You will receive notifications and tax bills from the tax assessor directly to the email associated with your account. While Fabrica plans to offer automated tax payment tools in the future, for now, it remains the property owner's responsibility. Please note taxes are due even if for some reasons you don’t receive notifications from the tax assessor.
  
  Read more information on property taxes.

To enable fast transactions and safe operations, each property on Fabrica needs to be “on-ramped” onchain, creating a Trust that is recorded at the county. The operation takes a few minutes and is reversible.

Yes, you’ll be signing a deed to put the property in a trust and bring it onchain. This happens just once per property: after that initial operation, the property can be listed and traded freely amongst different people in a fully digital environment, without any need to sign an additional deed.

You can close a sale almost instantly on Fabrica.

One of the most significant advantages of using Fabrica is the speed of transactions. Once all conditions are met, closing a property sale takes under one minute. This rapid process is possible thanks to the trust framework that facilitates instant transfer of ownership recorded and secured onchain.

Once the sale is completed, the proceeds are immediately available in your account (also known as your wallet). You can move your funds instantly to any crypto wallet or crypto exchange (like Coinbase) or withdraw directly to your bank account (coming soon)!

Yes, you can leverage your property as collateral to access capital quickly across many lending protocols. We have a special integration with NFTfi for loan services, enabling landowners to unlock the value of their land without needing to sell it. This service can be especially useful for landowners needing immediate funds for various purposes. We are also exploring new relationships with prospective lending partners and protocols.

Note that ​​during the loan, the borrower retains ownership while the property token is secured in a Smart Contract. Repayment before the loan end date is crucial to regain the token.

Adding your property to the Fabrica ecosystem exposes it to a broader market of potential buyers and investors. Landowners choose the price that they’d like to sell for, and buyers can directly and instantly purchase the property at that price. For convenience, most properties have an estimated value that is determined by a third party. The estimated value is always shown to the owner, and it’s public for all properties that are not listed for sale.

Plus, buyers can make an offer on properties, even when they’re off market!

Fabrica offers a revolutionary approach to land ownership, making it easier and more efficient to own, sell, and leverage your property. By addressing these common questions, we hope to provide clarity and confidence to landowners who are considering leveraging our platform. Visit our help center at help.fabrica.land for our comprehensive FAQs, which are designed to provide you with all the information you need to navigate the Fabrica platform.

For more support, we are always open to having a conversation on discord.