Why Real Estate Development Remains Locked to Most Investors and How Tokenization Could Change That

Written by:

Steve Marcinuk

Date:

15 Feb 2026

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Real estate development has long been out of reach for all but the largest institutional investors, primarily due to a single structural constraint: illiquidity. When an institution commits capital to a multi-year development project, the funds are tied up until the building is completed and sold, often for four years or more. During this period, there is no option to withdraw funds or reallocate capital if market conditions change or new opportunities arise.

This lack of liquidity means only institutions with deep reserves and long investment horizons can afford to participate. However, according to Thomas Gaffney, Chief Operating Officer of OFA Group, a NASDAQ-listed company developing tokenization infrastructure for real estate, this very limitation is now driving institutional interest in blockchain-based tokenization as a means to create new exit options for investors.

“Investors have to wait four years to get their money back,” Gaffney says. “If you’re doing a Reg D filing, you would only wait a year, and then you can put these tokens on an exchange and create a secondary market for trading. These investors can then liquidate their position if they want their capital back or want to move into something else.”

Tokenization: Adding Liquidity, Not Shortening Timelines

Tokenization does not speed up the development process itself. Projects still require years of planning, construction, and eventual sale. However, it offers an optionality: instead of holding illiquid equity for the entire cycle, investors can sell their tokens on a secondary market after a year, rather than waiting for the project to be completed and monetized.

This shift fundamentally alters the risk-return profile of development investing. Traditionally, equity in a project is locked from start to finish. With tokenization, it becomes possible to exit early, even if the trade comes at a discount.

Why Traditional Structures Lock In Capital

The rigidity of traditional development finance is intentional. Developers raise capital through limited partnership agreements, which require investors to commit to the entire development timeline. Only after the building is finished and sold are returns distributed. There is no built-in mechanism for early exit, as the structure assumes investors will remain patient throughout.

This model is suitable for large institutions with diversified portfolios and the capacity to weather multi-year cycles. A pension fund with $50 billion in assets can commit $100 million for four years with minimal impact on its overall liquidity. For smaller institutions, family offices, or high-net-worth individuals, this lack of flexibility can be a significant deterrent.

“Previously, only high-stakes, big commercial investors would get access to this,” Gaffney says. High minimum commitments and severe illiquidity mean that even attractive returns are inaccessible to most investors.

Gaffney argues that tokenization can change this equation. “If you have a token that has a secondary trading market, someone who invested expecting a return four years down the road can now trade and liquidate the token immediately, instead of waiting four years to see the return of their capital,” he says.

Pricing and the Cost of Liquidity

The introduction of secondary markets for development equity raises questions about pricing. In a traditional structure, capital is committed at a fixed valuation, and returns depend on the project’s final sale price. With tokenization, tokens are likely to trade at a discount to their expected end value, reflecting the cost of liquidity and the uncertainty of the outcome.

Gaffney acknowledges that investors seeking early exit will likely accept lower returns than those who hold tokens through completion. This is standard across secondary markets—liquidity comes at a price. For many institutions, the trade-off is acceptable: a modest discount for the option to rebalance portfolios or respond to changing market conditions without waiting four years.

“If you can double or triple your money over a three- or four-year period, that’s a strong investment,” Gaffney says. “It’s faster than the S&P 500, and still attractive even with a liquidity discount.” For investors, the ability to access their capital sooner may outweigh the reduction in returns from early sale.

Who Is Buying Tokenized Development Equity?

According to Gaffney, the primary buyers for tokenized real estate equity are not crypto-native investors but traditional real estate investors, including family offices and pension funds. These institutions have long deployed capital into real estate but are now exploring tokenized structures to achieve better liquidity terms than conventional limited partnership agreements.

This suggests tokenization is not about attracting an entirely new class of investors, but about offering existing capital pools a more flexible structure. The same institutions that would invest in a standard development fund are now considering tokenized alternatives because of the liquidity optionality.

Gaffney also points to retail investors as a potential new source of capital. “We’re trying to bring this to the masses and retail investors so they can get opportunities to invest in projects they previously wouldn’t have been able to,” he says. By using Regulation A filings with the SEC, tokenization platforms can offer securities to non-accredited investors, expanding the investor base beyond institutions and high-net-worth individuals.

The combination of institutional investors seeking liquidity and retail investors seeking access could create substantial demand for tokenized offerings. However, Gaffney acknowledges that adoption remains in its early stages. “It’s just an emerging technology, and it’s slowly being adopted more,” he says.

Developers Face New Opportunities and New Challenges

For developers, tokenization may enable access to a broader investor base and lower their cost of capital if liquidity attracts more participants. But it also introduces complexity, requiring developers to navigate new regulatory and technological landscapes to issue tokenized securities.

“Fundraising opportunities like real-world assets (RWAs) are a very hot topic, and people want to get in,” Gaffney says. Developers who successfully tokenize projects may find it easier to raise capital, as institutional investors seek exposure to this new structure.

Yet each tokenized offering is unique. “Each RWA is going to be unique in terms of structure, governance rights, and economic terms,” Gaffney notes. There is no standard template for tokenizing a development project, so developers and their legal advisors must build each structure from the ground up.

What Will Drive Mainstream Adoption?

According to Gaffney, three factors will determine how quickly tokenization becomes a standard in development finance: time, user education, and regulatory clarity. “Tokenization is a much more efficient model,” he says, but efficiency alone is not enough. Investors and developers need to understand how the technology works and why it is preferable to existing options.

Regulatory clarity is the biggest hurdle. Gaffney argues that Congress must enact legislation to establish clear rules governing the tokenization of real-world assets. “If Congress can pass a bill that says, ‘Here’s exactly how you do an RWA tokenization for a real-world asset. Here are the rules, here are the filings you need to do—go for it,’ then institutions will become more comfortable with it. There’s less liability if they do it incorrectly.”

Until such a regulation is in place, tokenization will remain experimental. Most institutions are unwilling to assume the legal uncertainty associated with pioneering new structures in the absence of clear guidelines. For now, tokenized development equity is being tested primarily by a small number of early adopters willing to navigate the regulatory gray area.

Looking Ahead: When Will Tokenization Become Standard?

The underlying economics point to eventual widespread adoption. Large pools of capital want more flexible ways to participate in development, and developers want access to that capital. Tokenization provides a way to bridge the gap by introducing liquidity into an asset class that has historically been locked for years at a time.

The timeline for mainstream adoption will depend on how quickly regulatory frameworks develop and how effectively market participants are educated about the benefits and mechanics of tokenized structures. Early movers may gain an advantage by attracting capital that would otherwise remain sidelined by illiquidity.

The shift toward tokenization in real estate development is not about creating new returns or shortening project timelines. It is about unlocking capital that is otherwise constrained by rigid structures—thereby enabling a wider range of investors to participate and institutions to manage risk and liquidity more effectively. The question is not whether tokenization will become a part of development finance, but how quickly the industry will adapt and which players will lead the way.