Groma

Thrilled to launch a first-of-its-kind DeFi product with Birch Hill Holdings and Yearn—read the article for the full story:

After a long time in “semi stealth”, Groma is now in pre-launch mode. To reflect this, our homepage and whitepaper now tell the story of GromaCoin, the real estate coin for the world, backed by the world. It’s a cleaner, more focused version of the Groma vision, building on all of the parts of it we’ve talked about in the past–the small multifamily asset class, the performance improvements enabled by Grobot and by our iteratively improving operational model, and all of the legal and financial work that’s been done to enable us to bring GromaCoin to the general public–but with the focus now squarely on the value proposition of bringing institutional-grade real estate on chain. The homepage tells the most condensed version of this story we’ve shared so far, highlighting GromaCoin’s uniqueness in the current on-chain environment. The past month has demonstrated more than ever the value of having a stable on-chain store of value, but stablecoin yield is going down (and is threatened by policy changes), and people are looking for a more compelling return profile. As a compliant and performant real estate token, GromaCoin provides this better than any existing options. In addition to bringing real estate’s desirable attributes to blockchain, GromaCoin attaches blockchain’s best characteristics to real estate. GromaCoin holders will soon be able to lend or borrow against their GromaCoin in ways that have been inaccessible to most retail investors, creating extra yield or spending power. I’ll share more on this in the coming weeks as we hammer out the details, but we expect it to be a game changer. And for a deeper dive than what’s on the homepage, the whitepaper provides a 3000-word (pretty short by our standards) account of where we are today and where we’re going in the next year. While there are some nods to our long-term vision, it’s a much more tactical, near-term-oriented paper than the previous versions. We’re now almost entering open beta, so thoughts and feedback welcome.

President Trump recently proposed a ban on institutional purchases of single-family homes and noted the need to clearly define the term “single-family homes”. While the plain meaning of the term “single-family homes” is “residential properties with one unit”, some sources, including previous Democrat-sponsored legislation along these lines, define “single-family” as including properties with 1-4 units, distinguishing it from larger multifamily for zoning or lending purposes. This brief makes the case for limiting the proposed ban’s definition of “single-family homes” to the common-sense definition, i.e. properties consisting of a single residential unit per deeded plot of land. We argue that using the expanded (and somewhat Orwellian) definition could unintentionally chill investment in the class of 2-4-unit rental buildings that constitute a significant portion of middle-income, market-rate rentals in urban centers. There are roughly 85M single-family homes, using the commonly understood definition, in the United States. There are far fewer 2-4 unit buildings, roughly 3M, but these provide over 9M units of generally market-rate, lower-cost housing supply. The social impact of institutional investment in 2-4-unit properties is largely beneficial, upgrading existing rental units to modern standards and keeping them available at market rates for the urban workforce. Banning such investment would either result in condo conversions (reducing rental supply) or these properties becoming dilapidated and relegated to government-designated non-profit management, which historically tends not to maintain units at the quality necessary to attract upwardly mobile residents. While a ban on institutions buying single-family homes may increase the availability of single-family homes for individual purchases, expanding “single” to mean “up to 4” is not the intended purpose of the policy and, based on our analysis, is likely to have significant negative unintended consequences. I'm too verbose for LinkedIn apparently, so read more on the Groma Substack: https://lnkd.in/e89C8xkC