A Southern European PropTech View with Eric Sanchez Galvez, Reental

Welcome to ‘A Southern European PropTech View, by Giulio Di Pietrantonio’ our Q&A focused on Southern European PropTech’s.

Our Q&A series is an opportunity for our Southern European team, headed by Giulio Di Pietrantonio to discuss all things PropTech, Start-ups, and Career with different founders from across the region. Each week we will ask PropTech innovators burning questions and quiz them about their product, we hope you find it insightful and enjoy getting to know the founders as much as we have.

This week we have been in touch with Eric Sanchez Galvez, Co-Founder and CEO at Reental.

Reental is a Spanish technology startup dedicated to the tokenization of financial assets backed by real estate. They were born in September 2020 with the purpose of democratizing investment in the real estate sector. Their goal is to facilitate access to any citizen interested in allocating their money to investment in real estate anywhere in the world with just two clicks and no entry barriers. They take care of the borders, minimum tickets, search, management and maintenance of assets for the investor and offer access to historically safer investment products. They propose investment opportunities with a great return/risk balance and a mechanism to provide liquidity to a traditionally illiquid real estate sector. In a nutshell: “Investing in real estate and receiving passive income every month is now within everyone’s reach”

 “1000 properties in your pockets “

• They democritize investment: They allow investors to enter the real estate sector from €100, so they eliminate the need to invest high tickets to access good real estate opportunities.

• They grant liquidity to their investors: They allow divestment with immediate liquidity thanks to liquidity pools,. That way, they do not block long-term capital in case of need.

• Global Market: They give access to invest in a global market with high returns. Thanks to crypto they can eliminate local investment barriers, so they give access to opportunities wherever they arise.

• They eliminate bureaucratic and real estate management processes: Reental takes care of all bureaucratic issues, paperwork, reform management, tenants, maintenance, community, etc.

• They improve yields: They apply crypto and DeFi power to improve financial products.

Their first tokenization was done on February 2021 and they currently have 25 properties tokenized with a value around 5M€.

How did you find yourself working in the PropTech sector?

I was a professional basketball player for more than 16 years, while I was studying computer engineering.

Prior to Reental’s constitution , I already  had some experience in the proptech sector since I was one of the founders of chekin, a technology company related to the real estate sector.

My passion to continue innovating within the sector together with the discovery of the possibilities offered by the crypto world, led me to the foundation of Reental.

At what point did you realise there was a gap in the market, and you had the product/service for it?

In Spain there is a big culture to invest on real estate but not everyone can afford to do it. Tokenization allow to change the rules and democratize the possibility to invest from 100€. 

Without a doubt, we can give access to a new way of generating income not only with our working time, but also by putting capital into production. This was only accessible for large capitals, now it is for any worker with an internet connection.

What are the challenges in the Spanish PropTech landscape for your company?

Our main challenge is to get all our stakeholders to understand Reental process. We need to educate investors in a new way to approach the Real Estate market.  For any investor the most important value is confidence. We need to be transparent, honest and confident. People needs to understand where they are investing and tokenization is quite a disruptive way to proceed.

We feel the sector is ready to listen about tokenization and it give lot of opportunities to all stakeholders. I’m thinking not only in investors but also in promotors, constructors, etc.

What are your expansion plans for the next year?

We are ambitious and want to have more than 100 properties tokenized by the end of 2023 and diversify into different categories within Real Estate (vacaional, residential, hotel, services, colivings, coworkings, etc.)

We want to reach more than 100.000 users and 100MM$ in next 18-24 months and we pretend to have a more international approach.  For this we are working very active on LATAM and we would like to tokenize not only in Spain.

As for us the most important value are the investors, we will have our own utility token in order to increase the value offered to them. There are so many benefits we will offer to the investors and the idea is they can grow together with us. 

Here are some examples about what we can offer to them:

• Increase the liquidity of the pools associated with the properties in a pool that encompasses the different properties.
• Empower community members by offering incentives to help improve and extend functionality within the platform.
• Give access to priority sales and exclusive offers.
• Benefit from the services and discounts offered by third parties based on different partnership agreements.
• Preferences for accommodation in tourist apartments, co-livings, hotels, co-working spaces owned by Reental.
• Facilitate collateralization of security tokens associated with real estate.

What are your thoughts about the Spanish Fundraising landscape?

Some months ago we were really optimistic about the fundraising as the market was open to innovation and there was lot of liquidity in the market.

The different macroeconomics events, I’m referring to Ukrainian war, inflation, energy cost, international transport etc… seems to put some investors on alert that maybe some changes on the economy cycle will arrive. Nevertheless in this situation, fundamentals are a must for the investors and Reental has already validated the business model in the market and that brings us some advantage.

Being linked with crypto ecosystem increase the opportunities, as not only traditional funds can be interested, but also international crypto funds can approach our business

As an example we have just raised in May 2022, 1 Million € inside our community, and considering what happened with Luna project in the crypto market. It seems lot of people wants to change the future.

What are your predictions for the Spanish PropTech market in the years to come?

AS many other traditional sectors , Real Estate market needs to be transformed. Banks will offer less money to new promotions, cost will increase and technology is everywhere, so no way to keep as we are.

We think we are in the right place at the right time and we want to be part of that change