Seoul City is promoting the asset liquidity of public land with low utilization, such as closed police boxes, through a 'real estate fractional investment (security token offering, STO)' method. The plan is to allow citizens to invest directly in local development and benefit from it while increasing the value of public assets.
Seoul City announced on the 1st that it will begin a pilot project for STO targeting two closed police boxes with high utilization potential, based on their location.
STO is a method of asset liquidity that allows multiple investors to own real estate in a dispersed manner by securitizing specific properties. Once STO is introduced, investors can earn dividends from rental income generated by public assets and capital gains from the future sale of those public assets.
Additionally, the local community can improve aging facilities and provide various structures needed in the area.
The candidate sites under review are the Sangdo 5 Police Center (Sangdo-dong, Dongjak-gu) and the Sinsa 1 Police Center (Sinsa-dong, Eunpyeong-gu). Currently, these centers are vacant or being temporarily utilized in the area after their transfer.
Seoul City plans to identify projects that can utilize small spaces, such as urban mini-storage, and apply them to the target areas. It will also prepare a concrete business plan for implementing STO within this year and go through preliminary procedures for commercialization, with plans for an STO contest in the first half of next year.
Based on the results of the pilot project, Seoul City plans to expand the application of STO not only to closed police centers but also to other low or underutilized assets.
To implement this pilot project, Seoul City signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Lucent Block, which operates the real estate revenue security trading platform 'Soyeon,' on the 28th of last month.
The two organizations plan to collaborate on ▲ jointly promoting the tokenization of Seoul City public assets ▲ providing information and education on real estate tokenization to citizens ▲ proposing relevant regulations and policies, among others.
Im Chang-soo, the Director of Future Space Planning at Seoul City, said, 'We will create a 'citizen participation development model' that flexibly utilizes assets through a new concept called real estate fractional investment and shares the development profits with citizens.'