Unlocking the New Property Investment Paradigm with ColivingDAO

ColivingDAO Founders Daniel and Gareth explain in detail how the property market is evolving and share their major insights that will revolutionize the way you invest in real estate.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:12

Welcome everyone to Co Living Down Insights. This is your co-host Daniel and I'm joined today by my co-host Gareth as well. How are you doing Gareth?

SPEAKER_00: 0:21

I'm great, Daniel. Ready to get stuck in, really excited about this episode.

SPEAKER_01: 0:26

That's awesome, because today what we'll be talking about is uh first of all the challenges that property investors face in the markets nowadays. And uh first of all, we'll be discussing uh the dynamics uh nowadays that the market is presenting, uh why it's challenging for property investors uh to achieve their goals, and then we'll be uh discussing as well how we effectively solve all these problems here at Co-Living DAO. So, Gareth, do you want to start describing uh some of the challenges uh for property investors?

SPEAKER_00: 1:03

Yeah, sure. So, as we say at Co-Living Dow, if you look at the big picture in the property market for property investors, the problem is that the property market is based on outdated systems and dysfunctional power dynamics between operators, investors, and residents. So that's at a kind of macro scale for the property market. But if we zoom in to the simplest part of the property investment market, which is you know, a regular person who wants to become a property owner, how do you do that? For example, you're a young professional, you're living in London, how are you going to become a property investor? The simplest and most immediate way to do that is to save up some money from your job and save up enough of a deposit that you can get a mortgage to buy a flat, right? And so that is the very first entry point on the property investment ladder, saving up money to get a deposit to buy your own flat in a city or a town. And as we know, that property prices have really gone up hugely in recent years. And this is great if you already own a property because your value of the property and the assets gone up hugely, but it's not so great if you want to get on the property ladder as a young professional nowadays because the prices are so high, and especially in big cities like London, that you need a huge deposit. It can take you years to save up for a deposit. And in some cases, if you're not on a big salary, it it might be almost impossible to save up enough of a deposit to get on the property ladder. And that's the kind of starting point, right? The starting point for becoming a property investor.

SPEAKER_01: 2:56

Exactly. So that is an initial level of uh property investment, effectively, of becoming a homeowner. So effectively buying a property uh where um you plan to live in. Uh, this is uh for many a first step. Uh of course, it's not the only possible first step. Some people never own the place they live in, however, they actually decide to invest in properties in other ways, and we'll look at that too. But more often than not, what happens if people will own their own property and then later on potentially buy a second property. Now, this might be a holiday property, it might be a place where they actually plan to spend time in. Uh, at that point, we're talking about more of a dual purpose, partly uh being exposed to the value appreciation of the property, but partly also wanting to use it. However, if we look at the perspective of a pure property investor, we're looking at people that never really plan to do anything with the property other than uh earning from it, uh primarily through renting it out. So when we look at the challenges for investors in general, we see that yes, on one hand, we have this uh major initial investment that is required, uh be it a deposit, if uh you're buying through a mortgage, which means all of a sudden you're exposed to all sorts of uh additional risks, such as uh the chance of missing a repayment, which uh effectively is a risk in itself, um, increasing interest rates, uh, unless the mortgage is fixed for a long time, which usually doesn't happen in good conditions. Uh traditionally, to fix the mortgage rate, the interest rate for a very long period of time uh will give people a relatively uh bad deal in terms of actual rate, uh, because obviously the the mortgage provider, the lender, doesn't want to take too much risk, so they pass the risk on to the borrower. Or the alternative, as we as we said, is to to pay cash, and uh paying cash for a property um is not something everyone can afford. And this contributes to that problem that many people talk about in our society, like people that already have a lot of money they can make even more money, and people that just don't have enough money to get to that threshold, uh then they stuck not even being able to access any sort of exposure to the potentially rising uh in value of property market. What this means is uh that again, a lot of people are excluded. Uh, this creates even more social inequality. Um, but besides the uh global consequences, even from an individual perspective, we see how uh big of a problem this is when people want to own property but just don't have enough money. So that is um an issue, especially in a lot of big cities where a lot of people wouldn't live in, uh, and wages have not increased enough. So um having to pay a lot of money compared to the actual salary that people are earning uh is already a major, major barrier. Uh one of the key reasons, uh of course, is the fact that property uh traditionally is not really fractionalized. Uh, surely there's some now some new um opportunities. Uh there's we've we've seen some surrogates like timeshare and other systems uh trying uh to help people get exposure to a property without buying the whole property, but traditionally uh it hasn't really been the norm, so it's not really very available, uh widely available right now, this opportunity to buy a small piece of a property as opposed to buying the the whole property. So a big upfront cost is definitely one of the main issues nowadays. Another big problem is uh having low liquidity. So effectively, if an investor wants to buy property, let's compare these to other types of investors because a lot of investors they have capital and they say, okay, I have capital, so I don't have this problem of not being able to pay a deposit or even buying the full property up front. Let's talk about now an investor who does have a little bit of money to invest, uh like enough money to actually buy property. Um, so not being priced out uh doesn't mean that everything else is easy. There's still a lot of problems, still a lot of issues. Uh so low liquidity effectively means that selling a property uh it's not very fast. Uh it could be expensive, even. Uh, in in many cities, there's a very high uh sale cost in many jurisdictions as well. You have stamp duties, you have solicitor's fee, you have all sorts of different costs, uh let alone capital gain tax and so on. So effectively, um when you um add up all the costs, you have to look at the investment to see if it's still a good investment, even though the numbers look good in the beginning, but then you add all that. Um, then of course, other things to add like maintenance and so on, and not even getting there, just looking at the actual cost of sale. So when you look at that, it takes time to sell a property, it might take a few months, even especially if the buyer is is uh uh using a lender and um going through a mortgage process, uh, that could take quite a long time. So if I'm an investor and I have my cash tied up into property, uh then uh I face a big, big problem. Like my cash is not liquid. Uh, I'm not able to pull that out and use it elsewhere if I either see a better opportunity or if I just need the money for something else, maybe personal obligations, or I just want to do something different with that. So low liquidity in the property market is effectively a big issue. Uh, yes, there are some surrogates that people can use, and uh we see a lot of people decide to invest in REITs, real estate investment trusts. Uh what that means is that effectively, rather than buying property directly, uh they buy uh exchange traded products that are tied to the value of property in many ways. Uh, but even then, okay, there's more liquidity because they uh they they are effectively um shares that can be bought and sold. However, there's many issues as well. First of all, uh READs could be very expensive, there's a management cost on top of the property itself, which is uh potentially quite high in percentage. And there's other issues, especially lack of control. So if you buy property, you know what property you're buying, you have control over what tenants you're gonna have in that property, uh, you have control over um the maintenance, you have control over um potentially refurbishing the property, repurposing it, and so on. However, if you do decide to buy into a REIT, um what you're buying is um uh a small part of a trust, you're buying shares into a larger trust, uh, but you don't really have any control on uh what happens uh with with those properties. Uh so that is uh one of the downsides as well. So, all in all, uh REITs certainly not for every type of investors, including the the high cost as well. So um it's not surprising that a lot of investors decide to still go through the traditional wage buying property, potentially just renting it out. So buy to let or buy and hold, it's a very, very common strategy. Uh but that strategy is also um quite risky um right now. We can see that a lot of people simply buying property and renting it out. Uh the margins are getting thinner and thinner. Uh, the risk could be high because what if you rent out the property to a tenant and the tenant never leaves the property? Uh, effectively, that you could have the the tenant, let's say staying in a property without paying, uh, all of a sudden you you own the property, but you're not able to use it, and you're just not able to do anything with it. Uh you can't sell if there's a tenant that that wouldn't leave, uh, and the property still has the cost, so you still have to pay for maintenance and all that, but you're not receiving any more rent. And uh obviously eviction uh is a possibility in some cases, but not that easy, and even if it takes months to evict a tenant, uh still that's a lot of missed uh earnings while maintenance cost was still very, very high. So effectively, that's one risk. Uh, there's additional risk as well in holding a specific property, of course. That the usual risk, which is um um the risk that the property will be destroyed, let's say by a natural uh event like an earthquake or hurricane and so on. So these are risks, and effectively, um nowadays buying property just to let it, the market has realized that it's not that valuable. And although a lot of people still have this idea that landlords are making a lot of money off tenants that are working just to pay rent, the reality of it is that right now, um, because especially with interest rates that are so high, so the cost of capital being very high and uh risks still be present, uh the landlords are not really making a lot of money off a simple buy-to-let. Uh the margins are low. And uh unless the tenants uh I mean, unless the landlord does something such as converting the property into an HMO or repurposing, uh which we'll talk about that in a few moments, uh effectively the landlord is only earning money off the fact that the lender is taking uh certain risks, and that is not paid very, very well. So when you factor in the opportunity cost as well, and the fact that property alone without any added value historically is only appreciated uh much less than other instruments, such as the SP 500, for example, or many technology companies and so on, um, it's not a surprise that a lot of property investors are shying away from just the the traditional buy and hole or or or buy to let. Surely location matters, and uh, if you are lucky enough to own a property in um, say central London or uh a prime location in Manhattan, uh great, that property might keep appreciating. However, um if you're new to the game and you want to buy uh land in central London, uh first of all, it would be extremely expensive, but more likely than not, uh, will you even be able to buy it? I don't think anyone is selling uh uh prime land in uh London or Manhattan or any other uh major, major city. So you're not even able to participate in in that game, you're just uh um out of the game completely, uh regardless of uh whether you want to play the game or not, which means that uh the options are really, really limited for uh pure property investors, and that's why, Garth, we talk a lot about uh the importance of um investing where there can be a lot of added value as well. So before we get into how we actually solve this, Garth, let's talk a little bit more about uh property when it comes to uh HMO and even co-living, like that the the reason co-living exists in the first place is to look to add value to some property, uh, but still done traditionally, uh it's still uh quite risky and the margins not extremely high. So, Gareth, what can you say about HMO co-living and um repurposing property so that investors attempt to earn a little bit more, which works out in many cases, but still uh it's not a major game changer, right?

SPEAKER_00: 14:28

Yeah, that's right. And and I have some personal experience there as well because I was lucky enough to buy a property in the UK before the prices went sky high, and I lived in that property for a while to get the benefits of being a resident. Then when I moved away, I rented it out to earn a lot a rental income to cover some of the costs of that property, and it worked out really well. But then I realized uh in the last few years that because of the financial conditions around interest rates and paying interest on the mortgage, that the rental was um basically just covering costs, and I was lucky enough to get some capital appreciation in the asset. And so I realized actually the best thing for me to do is to sell that property and then use the proceeds to invest in a completely different vehicle or in a different investment strategy because the returns on rental alone were were not going to be um very attractive. And so if you scale that up to a more serious buy-to-let uh business person who is looking to make some money on the margins from renting property, what you really need to do is pack more people into the same space, which is kind of the HMO approach, right? So you can get um a property that's maybe a three-bedroom flat, you can put some capital investment into it and turn it into maybe a four, maybe a five-bedroom flat, but reduce the space available for each resident in order to boost your margins by increasing the rental revenue by packing more people into a smaller space. And this is just a play to utilize the physical space that's available to get more of a a margin, more of a return each month as a buy to let landlords. And and this has limitations obviously, because you then need to buy lots of properties to generate enough income to get enough margin and to scale up those revenues and and make it a viable business. And so new models have started to crop up, such as co-living, where you're going beyond uh an HMO of say four or five, or maybe up to ten people, ten residents, into much bigger buildings. But instead of just packing more people into a smaller space, they're adding extra value, right? So co-living businesses are offering all-in-one uh rental payments that covers all of your basic needs, like your energy bills, water bills, local council taxes, or whatever your equivalent is, and then adding value in the form of shared spaces, co-working spaces, social spaces, event spaces. So all of a sudden now you have an asset, a co-living physical space, but also now this is a business that has added value to it, right? You're getting these intangible benefits, social benefits by living there, and you get to meet people. And so what we're seeing in the property market is an evolution of uh simply you know using that space to the most efficient uh way possible, using purely financial and space metrics to more intangible things and more practical benefits and additional community benefits and so we're we're going away from owning property as an asset as an investor to property as a business, which enables these added values to start to come in, which is where the co-living model and new progressive living models are starting to emerge.

SPEAKER_01: 18:13

Exactly. So this is a very important distinction because uh as we've realized, uh holding property purely as an asset uh without really adding much value to it uh might be quite limiting. So once we start looking at property as a business, we realize a lot of doors open. Uh and again, we've got to be careful because there's still some pitfalls potentially out there. Uh, and we've seen that many traditional ways to invest in property still present some problems. Uh Gareth was mentioning the dysfunctional uh relationship between um um all the different parties involved. So, for example, between tenants and landlords, uh definitely uh very dysfunctional when you look at um what tenants think of landlords and the other way around. Like I see and hear a lot of stories saying, Oh, I hate all landlords, I hate my landlords, all landlords, uh, I hate I hate tenants, you know, and uh there's really no reason why um we should have this um uh sort of like uh adversarial relationship between the two parties because effectively they they all uh contributing uh to the the other person's goals in in some way, shape, or form. So there's uh definitely a lot of potential for them to see each other as part of the same team. Uh and this can happen once we um make some key changes to the system a little bit, uh, but uh just before we um tell exactly how we address all this co living DAO, uh just to complete the um the picture, even when uh you look at investing into property as a business, so for example, investing in a traditional co living business uh or investing uh in a property business in general. General, let's say could be any uh kind of business related to property. Uh, still, there can be there can be problems in terms of control where uh capital um holders or shareholders they actually have a lot of control over uh not just the property but the business itself, uh, and that can lead to issues. Uh, on top of that, it's clear that nowadays a lot of investors want to invest in line with their own personal values, uh, which uh very often um includes their ESG strategies as well. Uh and this uh has been uh a challenge historically. Like, how do you find property businesses to invest in? Uh, where first of all it's a good financial opportunity, because uh of course, as an investor, you want to make money, but also you don't want to make money off bad practices for the environment, for the people, and so on. Uh, you want to make money off something uh that is aligned with your ESG mentality. So, Gareth, what can we say about uh how to invest in a good ESG business and and especially the the challenge of finding one nowadays?

SPEAKER_00: 21:06

Yeah, exactly, Dan. So you're you're talking about the property investment opportunities that are available to the larger scale property investors, so those investors that have got enough capital that they want to invest in property businesses, and traditionally these are you know real estate funds and bigger players that have really not been looking at the environmental angle, they're simply looking at where can I put my money into property businesses that might be you know hotels, big apartment blocks, big commercial developments. They're not thinking about environmental aspects necessarily. This is more of a recent phenomena. And now we have a new breed of investors called impact investors, and they want to invest in businesses that are good for the environment. Now, buildings themselves are not particularly great for the environment, they require a lot of materials, they use a lot of energy for heating and cooling and lighting. And so these have not been the target property, and businesses have not traditionally been the target for these this new breed of impact investors. But now we're in an era where property tech businesses and new types of property businesses are emerging, such as Co-Living Dow, that enable uh an environmental benefit to be produced. And so impact investors can now invest in things like prop tech, prop tech companies and businesses that maybe uh are involved in renewable energy systems for buildings, more efficient energy management systems and buildings. These kinds of businesses are now a big focal point for impact investors looking for ESG opportunities. And so this is a new category of investor hungry and looking for new opportunities where sustainability and other emerging technologies are crossing over. And and the problem from their side is well, where are these businesses? How can how do I invest in them? What's the best way to find them and invest in them? Usually still require quite large capital, unless you're you know an amateur investor that wants amateur, say angel investor or a low low-scale investor. You have some small funds that you want to buy some shares in a business that you like the look of. Um, but again, how do you find those opportunities? Where are they? And how do I get access to them is a big problem.

SPEAKER_01: 23:47

Exactly. So, what we've done is effectively we've um shared exactly what the major challenges are right now for proper investors, starting from the the small investor who aspires to be a homeowner and has to find enough money to even be part of the game and just uh being able to put down a deposit all the way to larger scale investors, uh buy to let with shrinking margin, uh major lack of liquidity, uh, high cost of sale, uh very, very slow sale as well in many cases. Uh, and then talking about more of uh impact investors, uh, how do they align uh their values with uh what they're investing in, even if they're investing in businesses, even if they're investing in uh co-living or HMO, where margins can be a little bit higher, still very challenging to actually find and source the good opportunities, let alone the opportunities that are in line with their personal values as well. So, this is exactly why we step in here at Co-Living Dow. Uh so first of all, what we do is uh we use blockchain, so we use tokenization, and this is a massive game changer for a few reasons. Um, first of all, the fact that to even be part of the game, people need to spend a lot of money up front. This is no longer a necessity. Thanks to asset tokenization, real-world asset tokenization, what we're doing is we're taking real-world assets and we're making sure that the entry barrier is much lower because people can buy a fraction of it. So rather than having to pay a big deposit for a mortgage or even buying the whole property in cash, uh, it's possible without needing to find a lender, without needing to get any debt, without having to commit to a large repayment schedule to immediately get exposure to the value of an asset uh just by buying a fraction of it. And uh this is achieved through tokenization, and uh, that's one of the um obviously the main value propositions that we have here at Conliving Dow, allowing people to uh buy fractions of assets rather than the entire assets themselves. And on top of that, uh, we are not simply doing this uh for lowering the barriers, but this also increases liquidity because all of a sudden, when something is fractionalized, um it becomes more fungible, so uh less non-fungible, uh if you wish. So surely it's a property. Surely there's um buyers and sellers that need to want to buy or sell a certain property. But what this means is that because it's possible to buy just a tiny fraction or even sell just a tiny fraction, the whole process is a lot easier, uh, a lot more um um cost efficient, and it's uh uh overall just a much, much more liquid market. So um effectively, people that decide to invest through Co-Living Dow uh they are getting more liquidity and uh much lower barrier to entry. So that's already a big, big advantage. Um, and uh the other thing as well, uh Gareth, is uh the fact that uh effectively investing uh in a property through Co-Living DAO is more than investing in a property, it's investing in a business that adds major value to a property. So, Gareth, what would you like to add on this?

SPEAKER_00: 27:15

Yeah, that's right, Dan. And and just to zoom out to the solution that Co-Living DAO offers here is effectively we're a co-living community's launch pad that connects operators, property investors, and residents with that Web3 hub that you mentioned that enables residents to have shared ownership and governance alongside those other stakeholders. And so this really is amazing for a multi-solution for different types of property investors, so all the way down to the individual who is thinking about getting a mortgage and needs to save a big deposit. Now you have the opportunity for that individual to become a resident in a co-living Dow community, and they don't need a big deposit, they don't need that big capital requirement to become a property investor. Simply by paying their first rental payment, they become a property investor, and it's not just the building, they're actually becoming a property business investor, right? And unlocking those additional intangible benefits, the benefits that a community brings, and all the great things that come in addition to the physical building itself, which is just the base asset. So they're becoming property investors simply by becoming residents, which is amazing. And we'll talk about more about that in a future Co-Living Dow podcast. But from a property investor standpoint, now you can go up and scale up to those people who maybe were were thinking about investing a lot of money in HMOs or bigger buy-to-lets, they have a bit more capital to play with. They're not interested in becoming a co-living resident, they just want to invest in a property business. Well, they don't need to put all the capital into an HMO, they could take that capital and invest it into a co-living dial community, and that enables them to become a property business investor without all the hassles of the running costs and operating costs and management and so on. They simply buy some tokenized shares. And if they um choose to sell them in the future because they're liquid, they can sell them at any point in time that they choose based on the mechanism of when those shares can be bought and sold on the Co-Living Dow platform. And so you can then scale it up to impact investors as well. Impact investors that are looking for an opportunity to invest in a business, a prop tech business, perhaps, or simply a business that enables better sustainability and an efficiency of resources. Co-Living Dow is structured in such a way that uh buildings are run as efficiently as possible with renewable energy and as many circular materials as possible. So co-Living Dow communities will have a very high ESG investment rating. And so all of a sudden, you now have impact investors who have a bit of capital they want to invest all the way from angel impact investors to really big impact investment funds. They can also invest in Co-Living Dow and buy as many tokens as they wish. And this really unlocks a new opportunity for them because they have access to that opportunity, it will be eventually available to the public, and it has that higher liquidity availability and low low entry for capital, but they can put as much as they want in, they can put a huge investment in if they want to, and so co-living dial becomes an opportunity for all of these different classes of investors, Dan.

SPEAKER_01: 31:06

Exactly. So whether you're a homeowner or aspiring homeowner, whether you're a more seasoned, more experienced uh property investor, say buy to let or buy and hold investor, uh, whether you own a co-living, you're looking to own a co-living, uh, there's a plenty of opportunities uh to do all this uh through co-living DAO. And uh uh just to recap, because there's a lot more as well, which we'll share in a moment, but just to recap what we said so far, first of all, low barrier to entry. Uh it's a complete game changer, just allowing people that are usually completely priced out of the property market to be able to get exposure to the value of the property because we're talking about property business, uh, specifically, businesses that own property. So effectively, there is exposure to the value appreciation of the property itself, and on top of that, the added value that the business adds to the property. So, what this means is uh is a massive opportunity for people that otherwise uh all they could do is maybe just uh uh invest in a tiny, tiny fractions of REITs with very low um low or actually non-existent governance uh and management power, so no control whatsoever, uh, and uh high um management fees. So uh effectively this is already a big game changer. And on top of that, we mentioned uh increased liquidity thanks to tokenization, therefore, a lot easier to find buyers and sellers. What if you hold shares and you decide that you want to buy shares into something else and sell the shares, or maybe you just want to do something else with money, knowing that you can sell without a huge cost of sale uh is actually gonna make a big difference as well. Because remember, you're effectively transacting, uh buying or selling shares of a company. Uh, there's no um direct property transaction, which is an advantage because it means it doesn't trigger all sort of costs like stamp duties and and and all that. So this um has a big advantage too. And as we mentioned, uh the ability uh to invest in a property business with all the added value is also making sure that uh the margins are not potentially limited, so the potential of the uh the margin, the profit margin, is not limited uh as a ceiling by the fact that the property is just there, just like any other property. Anyone could buy a property and just rent it out uh and make that little percentage every year. Uh, and when you take the cost out, then it's not much left, if anything at all. Anyone can do that, and that's why that's uh that's not paying very well anymore. Uh but buying shares in a company that is adding value to a property means that property becomes unique, first of all. So once there is a specific type of co-living in a particular property, all of a sudden, let's say it's a themed co-living where uh people that live there they're well known for being part of a community, being a community of people that have shared principles, shared values, uh, they share some level of identity as well, altogether. Uh so people from all over the world may want to go and live there. If you imagine a lot of co-living spaces, digital nomads, they want to go to those places because they know that there's like-minded people there, even though uh the location maybe is uh off the beaten track. Maybe they never heard of a name of certain city anymore, but they say, hey, let's let's go there because it's gonna be like-minded people there. Uh and right now, the property itself, we actually had a conversation a few weeks ago with uh Tom Manuel from Conscious Go Living, and uh he's an architect, and we were discussing together as well on this podcast. If you're listening to this, you may want to uh check out the session as well, um, how we can even design the building in a way that uh the building itself fosters connections, fosters um community building, and so on. And this is critical because it means that effectively it's also the value of the property that becomes higher because it's designed a certain way. So the property can be repurposed, the property can be retrofitted, property can be built, or even just simply rearranged so that this community building is possible, which means yes, the business adds value to the property, to the value proposition of the property, but also uh the fact that the property is designed that way means even the property itself is effectively more valuable. And this means that in many cases it may well be a better investment. So, on top of all this that we mentioned so far, Gareth, there's uh something else that we'd like to talk about as well. Because once you invest in a co-living DAO community, not only are you getting exposure to the value of the property plus the added value that the company may give, but effectively all of a sudden you become part of a wider federation of communities. Gareth, what can we say on this?

SPEAKER_00: 36:05

Exactly, Dan, and this is where it gets really exciting as well, because as you said, being an investor in co-living DAO community, you're not just an investor in a property asset, you're an investor in that business, which unlocks all this extra value of the value in the community, the identity of the community, and all the intangible benefits from that. But not only that, it's not just one community. Co-Living DAO is a federation of co-living uh communities, and so each one of those communities is its own company in the model, and that means that you can invest in any one of those communities, you can invest an investor can invest in one co-living DAO co-living community, or they could invest in a different one, or they could invest in multiple uh co-living DAO communities. This gives them exposure to multiple businesses in different locations, and they're not limited to one place, but not only that, you can they can also invest in co-living DAO as the enabler company if they so choose. And it goes even beyond that, so not only can they invest in different co-living DAO communities or the co-Living DAO enabler company that connects them all together, they're actually intrinsically linked. So all of the co-Living Dow communities will own shares in Co-Living Dow as the enabler company, and vice versa. And so when you invest in one company, you're effectively investing in all of them at the same time. So if the value of the federation rises over time, which you would expect it to do with a thriving uh network of communities, then the value of your investment as a property investor and a property business investor more accurately is going up. You know, and and so this makes it a really unique investment proposition for property investors because not only are they investing in one business, they're investing in a federation of businesses that have interconnections and are able to share the gains when markets are going well. And this is an amazing proposition that you know. Tell me one other business opportunity that's like that. Could you name another business opportunity, investment opportunity like that? It'd be very hard to find something like this.

SPEAKER_01: 38:41

Absolutely, and since the introduction of the internet, I think we all know the advantage of a network economy where effectively adding more um nodes to the network, adding more um members to a community, uh, it's exponentially increasing the value of the network itself, the community itself. Uh, but for some reason this never really happened uh with property. So we've seen this happen in uh in many areas with social media and a lot of uh, let's say, natively web-based businesses, but we haven't seen that with property. But why not? So, one of the questions we asked ourselves here at Columbinda is why can't we take advantage of these network effects with property as well? Because after all, it's such a primal need having a roof over our head, making sure that we have a place to live and who we surround ourselves with. So, this is so critical, so important. Uh, it's by definition, uh, probably the most real of the real world assets that I can think of. Um, something that people will always need. And you can argue that uh with different technology, there'll be some things that people no longer need. And you'll see some businesses that were very successful in the past, all of a sudden society changed, uh, there were new technologies introduced, and people didn't need those things anymore. But with property, uh, right now I don't really envision. In a future where people uh don't need properties to live in anymore. I think we're very, very far away from that. If that will ever happen, I still see people needing a roof over their head for quite a long time. And we all know how important it is to surround ourselves with people that are not only like-minded, but uh people that can actually add value to our lives as well. So once we combine all this, uh introducing the network effects uh in terms of uh value add, uh potentially making investments uh a lot more rewarding than simply investing in an isolated property or even in an isolated community as well. So this is definitely uh something that uh adds a lot of value. Uh just before we wrap this up, Gareth, uh I think we can talk a little bit more about uh why uh investing through co-living DAO ensures that uh all the investments uh are effectively in line with the ESG.

SPEAKER_00: 40:58

Yeah, so not only is Co-Living DAO a federation of co-living communities, really it's a federation of regenerative communities, and this is exciting for people who are looking to redesign the way that society operates, right? From an environmental perspective, how can we redesign the way that we live and the way that we work and the way that we play to make all of human activities more environmentally friendly? And the great thing about the co-living dial fabric is that all of these communities will be legally incentivized and structured in a way to enable a regenerative win, which means not only are they working efficiently to reduce damage to the environment, but they're also going to be legally obliged to regenerate and add natural capital and improve nature. So, for example, improving green and blue spaces around those co-living communities and maybe beyond into the local area where those co-living communities are situated. And this is really part of the fabric of co-living DAO, it's deeply embedded into the legal DNA as far as having stewards who represent nature on the board as well, which is an added innovation. So think of B Cor, but think of B Cor as being even more deeply embedded in the legal fabric of co-Living DAO. And so now we have an investment opportunity for impact investors to not only invest in a high grade ESG sort of sustainability investment, but really they're investing in the future that goes beyond sustainability into the regenerative realm where we're generating a positive return on finance, positive return for human well-being, for all the people that are involved in the co-living dial communities, and a positive return for nature and the environment. So this really adds an extra dimension to the opportunity for property investors who want to be impact investors, building a regenerative society, and that's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 43:12

Exactly. So this uh really completes this uh beautiful picture of how we're addressing the challenges that property investors are facing nowadays and how exactly they can benefit from the solution that we're building here at CoLiving Dow. And we spoke about the actual solution a little bit more in uh the last few episodes as well. So feel free to uh download those too. Uh you'll uh definitely find them extremely interesting uh if uh you are considering taking part, or if everything you're hearing resonates with your personal values as well, because after all, it's all about contributing altogether, joining forces to transform our society in a way that is going to be more beneficial for everyone. We're not looking to take sides in in this case, we're not claiming uh tenants are better than lenders, lenders are better than tenants, uh, and and all sorts of things. We really understood that hey, we can all benefit together, we can all be better off. Uh, this is a non-zero sum game, and that's the type of game we like to play. Uh, we're not looking for dualistic solutions, we're looking to ensure that everyone is better off, and that's exactly what we've designed. Uh, it does take redesigning the system. That's exactly what we have done here at Coliving Dow. So we would love to have you as part of the journey. So thanks a lot for listening, Garth. Any final thoughts on what we discussed today?

SPEAKER_00: 44:43

I think we covered it all, Dan, but I would encourage anyone that our conversation resonated with, please reach out to us, and we'd be happy to talk about all the opportunities around the co-Living DAO concept and the co-living DAO communities. So please do reach out. You can find us at co-livingdow.io on the web where there's additional information. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01: 45:09

So thanks a lot for being here, Gareth, as well. And uh, as usual, we will be back next week with uh more content. And if you're enjoying this, make sure you subscribe to the channel because uh we are coming back regularly, and uh you definitely don't want to miss out. So great to be with you once again. And uh we're signing off right now. We'll be with you again next week.