How does the investment system work?
We divide our buildings into shares, wich we call “tokens”, that each represent one square meter and anyone can buy in our buildings. Because the spaces of the buildings are being leasedout, they generate revenue on a monthly basis. Part of this money is redistributed to the token owners. So, each month, the value of your investment grows proportionately to the number of tokens you own. This system makes real estate investment very affordable as it allows you to gradually buy property with the money you currently have. You can invest in small amounts, starting with one square meter, and you can buy more tokens whenever you have some extra money. Your tokens immediately start generating extra income that you can withdraw to your bank account to cover your actual daily expenses or save for the future. You can also choose to sell some of your tokens when you need money for an emergency or to start a new business, for example. You can also give those tokens on to your children as an inheritance. Also it makes splitting real estate assets very easy: Let?s say you have two children. You can choose to give this many tokens to one child and this many tokens to the other. This is helpful as inheritance issues can sometimes lead to problems between family members because you can?t divide a traditional property.
A key part of the system is our involvement and participation as partners in each of our buildings. Urvita maintains ownership of at least 10% of each building so that it stays as a partner. We believe it is important for developers to also be owners and to have an owner mindset. Typically, developers would just sell the property and go, but with this kind of model, problems and conflicts could occur between the tenants, so we want to remain actively involved to preserve the life of the community.

Is the investment dashboard offered as an app?
Currently, it can be accessed online from www.urvitaeverywhere.com. There, you can make your payment instructions and find your digital contract, which shows you how many tokens you own at which buildings, your earnings, the value of your investment, and your monthly investment amount.

What kind of people are using the platform?
We knew from the beginning that it would be hard to convince people who invest in traditional real estate to use our platform, so we initially thought that our primary users would be young people who want to own a house but don?t want to live far from the city center and don?t want to pay a mortgage. When you do that, a significant portion of the money you pay is interest to the bank, but our platform allows you to take all that money that would have gone to the bank and put it to work for yourself instead. What we have found, though, is that most of our actual users are people who really appreciate the value and freedom of renting a house that meets their needs in their current stage of life. When you rent a home, you don?t have to deal with the expensive and time-consuming process of selling a home when your life changes. For example, if you have a child or if your children grow up and leave your home, ideally you would want to move to a house that is more suitable to your needs, but this is not easy to do when you own your home. So, our users are mostly people who understand the merits of renting and also want to put their money to work in a real estate investment that can help them generate an extra income stream to cover part of their living costs.
To give you an actual example, one of our users is a couple that had originally bought a house in Mexico with a mortgage, but then decided that they wanted to go study in Canada. They didn?t want to pass the burden of the mortgage to their parents, so they sold their home and began investing in Urvita instead. Now they are generating monthly gains that they can use to cover their rent while they are living in Canada. This example illustrates well the original idea behind the platform: to help people generate an extra income through a professionally managed real-estate investment so that they can use this income to live anywhere. That?s why it?s called “Urvita Everywhere”.
Other people investing with us include young investors who are just starting out and don?t have access to traditional real estate because it?s too expensive. There are also people who used to invest in more high-end real estate that have switched to investing in our affordable housing because the high-end properties are underused, costly to maintain, and don?t generate anything. I would like to think that these investors are turning to our platform not only because it offers a safe way of generating an extra income but also because it is built on the underlying concept of investing the money of the people into making a city that the people really want.