Intro to Parcl: Your Global Real Estate Portfolio

Rethinking Real Estate

You know how the pandemic sparked your interest in moving to a different location? You know how we all spent lockdowns looking at new houses and fantasizing about living in different cities?

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to invest in or gain exposure to real estate without buying the physical property. But if you can take a financial position in physical commodities such as oil, wheat, and even orange juice without ever touching the physical asset, why not real estate too?

We have entered a period of heightened real estate volatility, which is not only likely to persist, but also likely to become the new normal. The pandemic exposed how limited the options are to invest, hedge, and gain exposure to real estate in a liquid, low- cost way.

While there are a variety of fractional ownership opportunities, most offer a scarce selection of investments, large minimum investments, and limited liquidity. Similarly, tokenized real estate on the blockchain has yet to reach critical mass given scale, liquidity, and property management constraints.

We believe these conditions have created an opportunity to rethink the fundamental nature of how the entire real estate market operates.‍

The birth of Parcl

Two of the co-founders of Parcl's Development Company worked within the technology and payments sectors at several hedge funds, where the focus was identifying relative value trades (the winners vs. the losers). During COVID, these types of relative trades were abundant in real estate, but there was no practical way to capture any value from these price movements.

For example, Manhattan was down 30% during the depths of the pandemic while the suburbs had appreciated by up to 30%. That represents a 60% spread in what is, for the vast majority of people, their single largest holding.

While the opportunity seemed obvious, there was no viable solution. So we asked: ”Why can’t I trade the value of general areas like neighborhoods, zip codes, towns or cities? Why couldn’t an investor be offered exposure to a neighborhood or region instead of having to choose an exact house or building?” Is there a way to avoid a hyper-specific investment that requires so much cash?”

Concomitantly, as the entire DeFi (Decentralized Finance) sector started to explode, new and innovative capital formation opportunities began to emerge.

And these innovations in DeFi helped to substantially inform thinking on how to address this market, ultimately letting us merge exposure to real estate price movements with DeFi — giving birth to Parcl.‍

What is Parcl?

Parcl is a digital real estate protocol built on Solana, a blockchain specifically designed to host decentralized and scalable applications.

The Parcl Protocol allows users to invest in and trade - long or short with up to 10x leverage - specific geographical markets, which can be used for directional investment and hedging strategies in a traditionally opaque and walled-off asset class.

How it’s done - starting with price feeds

Parcl's thesis is that every real estate market has a price. And that price is denominated in price per square foot (or meter) for relative purposes. As such, Parcl Labs has created the Parcl Price Feed to capture the price per square foot/meter of any given neighborhood or city, and it moves dynamically in real-time.

The inputs include but aren’t limited to: real estate transaction data, property tax record data, real estate listings data, and geospatial data (boundary files, points of interest such as restaurants and bars, etc.), making the Parcl Price Index highly-responsive, accurate, and secure.

Over time, Parcl Labs will continue to refine the fidelity of the Parcl Price Index, increasing its responsiveness and coverage (both locally and internationally) by continuing to expand our geospatial and machine learning capabilities.

Parcl Market selection

For the initial rollout, Parcl markets will be available for key metropolitan areas such as Manhattan, Brooklyn, Miami, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Parcl will continue to initiate new Parcl markets, potentially at the request of the community. Parcl also plans to expand to international markets in the coming months.

It’s the right time, for the first time; capitalizing on a convergence of Megatrends.

Everyone has a relationship with real estate, and we strongly believe some form of digital real estate assets should be in every well-managed portfolio or wallet.

Structurally, we see several tailwinds which include: heightened real estate inflation and volatility, accelerating DeFi TVL, and the rapid mainstream adoption of digital assets.

We also have several idiosyncratic advantages that will help us capture this opportunity, including: first mover in defining a new primitive, a seasoned and experienced team (14 FTEs and growing), Solana’s low cost and scalable infrastructure, and world-class investors advising us on strategic decisions.

Social Impact

Real estate has long been a cornerstone of the “American Dream,” yet participation demands large amounts of capital as well as exceptional credit.

Additionally, the recent housing shortages, partially led by banks and private investment firms gobbling up inventory, have put homeownership further out of reach. The homeownership rate in the US is approximately 65%, near 20-year lows, and appears to be continuing to decline.

Parcl’s mission is to give everyone access to real estate investment. We believe broadening the stakeholder base of real estate investors can align community members toward creating collective value.

As individuals, we are all more likely to clean up, improve, and invest indirectly in our neighborhoods if we are and feel directly invested in them.

‍Team

At Parcl, we are focused on building a culture of growth toward our mission of delivering real estate investing for everyone.

The Parcl Development Company team possesses an extremely diverse experience and expertise set ranging from Wall Street to Big Tech to Ph.D. level research.

Companies our team members have worked for include: Microsoft, Millennium, Pudgy Penguins Project, NetJets, Nomura, Data Robot, Billion Dollar Boy, Afito, and Capital One.

Why Solana

‍With its faster transaction speeds, lower transaction costs, ease of scalability, and its new Proof of History (PoH) technology, Solana is — in our estimation — what every blockchain aspires to be.

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