How a Tokenized Real Estate Platform Turned Detroit Rentals Into a Landlord-Free Nightmare

RealT set out to reinvent residential real estate by chopping Detroit houses into digital tokens and selling fractional stakes to overseas buyers for as little as $50 each, pitching it as passive income for investors anywhere in the world. What that pitch omitted is what happens to the tenants once ownership is split among thousands of scattered, largely anonymous wallet holders: nobody in particular is left to answer for black mold, a broken furnace, or a roof that won't stop leaking.

Shirquera Ayers is one of the renters living that reality. Since escaping homelessness in 2018 into a state-subsidized RealT unit, she's dealt with a shower that hasn't worked in months, a toilet overflow last year that wrecked the carpet, and mold spreading up her walls — all while she told local reporters that repeated maintenance requests went nowhere. "As far as I can tell, they're slumlords," she said. Across the company's Detroit portfolio, RealT has racked up more than 1,000 blight violations even as its marketing continued to tout "democratized ownership" and "community investment."

The numbers behind the pitch

Public filings reviewed by Outlier Media show RealT holds 1,200-plus housing units across Detroit, with over 300 delinquent on property taxes, 1,000-plus blight violations on the books, and roughly 200 units heading toward foreclosure. The company's outstanding tax and ticket debt to the city runs to at least $2 million. RealT has since carried the same model into Cleveland, Chicago, and St. Louis — cities that, like Detroit, share a history of redlining, cheap housing stock, and steady government subsidy flows, particularly Section 8 payments that land directly with property owners.

The business model is straightforward: acquire a rundown home for roughly $60,000, split it into hundreds of tokens, and sell those tokens to buyers who, per the company's own eligibility rules, cannot be American citizens — only foreign investors are permitted to hold RealT tokens. Co-founder Remy Jacobson has said a $60,000 property's full token allotment can sell out in roughly ten seconds, a pace that leaves little commercial incentive to chase down a leaking pipe once the raise is complete.

Management churn, unanswered calls

Some tenants, including Kimberly West, were notified that a new property manager, New Detroit PM LLC, was taking over their buildings. It turned out New Detroit PM is simply RealT's own in-house management arm, created in 2023 after the company says its previous outsourced managers pocketed funds meant for repairs and taxes — an allegation the Jacobson brothers have not backed with the name of the accused firm, citing ongoing litigation. In the meantime, tenants describe unanswered phone calls, bounced emails, confusion over where rent should even be sent, and in many cases no valid lease on file at all. The Jacobsons reportedly told tenants they wouldn't "push the eviction button," then followed up days later with formal eviction notices; Jean-Marc Jacobson has defended the notices as simply a way to get tenants' attention and move them onto new leases.

Where the tax bills pile up

Delaware corporate filings and social-media research compiled by ALeclerc show RealT-linked LLCs falling behind on taxes across its city footprint: a property at 1907 Ottawa in Toledo carrying $16,703 in tax arrears, Chicago holdings accumulating $10,000-a-day non-compliance fines, and a Cleveland portfolio with taxes unpaid since 2021. Several of the corporate entities behind these properties carry an "AR delinquent" status in state records, and properties have reportedly been shuffled between affiliated LLCs faster than city code enforcement can keep pace.

Under the RealT structure, each token is technically a claim on an LLC that owns the underlying property — which raises the question of what token holders are actually left with if that LLC is foreclosed on. Unlike a conventional real estate investment trust, where a single professional manager is contractually responsible for upkeep in exchange for investor dividends, RealT's fragmented, tokenized ownership means no individual holder — some owning a small fraction of a percent of any given roof — bears clear responsibility for repairs. Sunrise Capital Group has described this as accountability that has been outsourced into nonexistence rather than merely delegated.

A pattern repeating across cities

RealT has expanded the same approach into Cleveland, Chicago, Akron, and St. Louis — consistently targeting historically Black, previously redlined neighborhoods with low property costs and steady subsidy income. City regulators and inspectors in these markets appear stretched thin trying to keep pace with the scale of the rollout. RealT says it has sold tokens to buyers in more than 150 countries, virtually none of whom will ever see the properties whose upkeep their "investment" nominally funds.

The Jacobson brothers maintain that outside property managers, not their own model, are to blame for the maintenance failures and unpaid taxes — while continuing to list new tokenized properties even as existing holdings accumulate violations and foreclosure risk. For tenants like Ayers, the practical effect is the same regardless of who is at fault: rent obligations continue, but there is no single, identifiable landlord left to call when something breaks.