Tokenization becomes more difficult when the underlying asset is difficult to standardize. Commercial real estate makes that visible quickly.
Representing an interest on a blockchain is only one part of the problem. A commercial property sits inside a legal jurisdiction, an ownership vehicle, a financing structure and an operating business. Its value changes with leases, occupancy, capital expenditure, interest rates, tenant quality and local market conditions. None of those disappear when the ownership interest becomes digital.
Standardized financial assets start from a different base
Much of the institutional tokenization work reaching production has focused on assets that already sit inside mature market infrastructure. DTC’s current tokenization authorization, for example, initially covers a defined set of highly liquid securities including Russell 1000 constituents, major-index ETFs and U.S. Treasury securities.
Those instruments still require careful controls, but their legal forms, settlement processes and market conventions are comparatively standardized. Commercial property is more asset-specific. Two office buildings in the same city can have different tenants, leases, financing, covenants, operating costs, legal structures and risk profiles.
Property has a geography
A token can move across a network. A building remains governed by the laws, registries and courts of the place where it exists. The entity holding the property has its own jurisdiction. Investors may be subject to different eligibility, marketing, tax or transfer rules.
This means the digital layer has to connect to an off-chain chain of rights that remains legally coherent. The question is not only who holds the token, but what the token represents, which documents create that right, who maintains the official records and how the claim would be enforced under stress.
The asset keeps changing after issuance
Commercial real estate is an operating asset. Tenants move in and out. Leases are renewed or broken. Rent is collected. Costs change. Debt is refinanced. Valuations move. Material events happen.
A credible tokenized structure therefore needs ongoing servicing and reporting, not just an issuance workflow. Investors need a reliable line of sight from the digital interest to the economic condition of the property throughout the life of the investment.
Transferability does not manufacture liquidity
Real estate also exposes one of tokenization’s most persistent misconceptions. Making an interest technically transferable does not guarantee that someone will be willing or eligible to buy it at a reliable price.
BIS research on U.S. tokenized real estate platforms found evidence that tokenization can support liquidity during periods of stress, but the effect depended on institutional features such as platform buybacks and came with additional solvency risk. The lesson is useful: liquidity is produced by market structure, balance-sheet capacity and demand, not by a token standard alone.
Valuation is harder between transactions
Listed securities continuously generate observable market prices. Direct commercial property does not. Formal real estate valuation relies on asset-level information and established appraisal methods, while any secondary-market token price reflects the conditions of that particular market at that moment.
If tokenized real estate markets deepen, those prices may add useful information. They do not eliminate the need for asset valuation, underwriting or skepticism about thin price discovery.
Why start with the harder asset class
For OneAsset, commercial real estate is a deliberate starting point because it forces the full lifecycle into view: asset quality, legal rights, eligibility, ownership controls, servicing, reporting, valuation, transfer and exit.
The difficulty is the point. If tokenization is going to become credible market infrastructure for real assets, it has to work when the asset cannot be reduced to a standardized balance on a ledger.
Commercial real estate is therefore a useful test of whether tokenization can move beyond issuance and support the operational reality of ownership.
