Dubai Land Department (DLD) and tokenization firm Ctrl Alt launched a secondary market for real estate-backed tokens in a statement on Friday, allowing for the resale of fractional property ownership for up to $5 million.
Approximately 7.8 million tokens linked to 10 properties in Dubai are now eligible for trading in a controlled market environment. Transactions will take place on a regulated distribution platform, recorded on the XRP Ledger blockchain and secured by Ripple Custody.
The effort is part of Dubai’s ambitious plan to become a global center for real estate tokenization, turning property ownership into tradable tokens on blockchain rails. Proponents argue that Blockchain Rail could streamline ownership recording and settlement. However, an Ernst & Young report noted that uneven regulation remains a bottleneck, with low secondary trading volumes constraining liquidity.
The tokenized real estate market still accounts for only a small portion of the global real estate market, but is expected to grow rapidly over the next decade. Deloitte said in a report last year that $4 trillion worth of real estate will be tokenized by 2035, growing 27% annually.
Dubai’s $16 billion roadmap
DLD, the government agency for the real estate industry, last year laid out a roadmap to tokenize 7% of Dubai’s real estate market, or about $16 billion, by 2033. The first milestone of the initiative is the launch of a platform developed with Prypco and Ctrl Alt for tokenizing property deeds on the XRP Ledger (XRP) chain.
Secondary market trading of the tokens is part of the second phase of the pilot, which is designed to test market infrastructure, investor protection and consistency with existing property laws. The project’s infrastructure partner, Ctrl Alt, has integrated directly with the DLD system to issue and manage property deed tokens on-chain.
The tokens are also paired with a second layer – Asset Reference Virtual Assets (ARVA) – which regulates who can trade them and under what conditions. This setup ensures that all transactions are compliant and accurately reflected in Dubai’s official property registry.
Read more: Real estate billionaire Barry Sternlicht is ready to tokenize assets but says US regulations are blocking it
