The six questions

What is the token a claim on? The answer should be a specific legal interest, most often a share in an entity that owns a property. If the materials describe owning a piece of a building without naming the entity and the interest, the structure has not been explained.

Who holds legal title? A named entity, in a named jurisdiction, recorded at a registry. This should be verifiable independently rather than asserted, and where the property carries debt, the lender's position should be disclosed since it is senior to everything else.

Under what exemption or registration is it offered? Interests in property-owning entities sold to passive participants are generally securities. A legitimate structure knows which regime it operates under and says so, along with the restrictions that follow on who may participate. An offering that cannot answer this has a problem regardless of anyone's intentions.

Who maintains the register and custody? Whether a transfer agent holds the authoritative record with the ledger mirroring it, or the ledger is the register. This determines what happens if a holder loses their keys and, more importantly, whether ownership survives the platform ceasing to operate.

What fees are charged, on what, and to whom? Acquisition fees, management fees, performance fees, platform fees, and exit fees. All of them, stated as a basis rather than a marketing figure. Fee structures buried across several documents are worth reading precisely because they were made difficult to read.

How does a holder exit? The realistic answer, including what has actually traded on any secondary market rather than what the market is described as enabling.

Warning signs that recur

Headline yield without a stated source. A return figure presented prominently, without explaining what produces it, what the assumptions are, and what could reduce it. Property income comes from rent net of costs and is constrained by what buildings actually earn. A number materially above that range needs an explanation, and the absence of one is the answer.

Daily or continuous distributions. Property income arrives when tenants pay, on monthly or quarterly cycles, against costs that arrive irregularly. Structures promising frequent fixed payouts are describing a payment schedule that the underlying asset does not naturally produce, which means something else is funding it.

Liquidity as a headline feature. Transferability is not liquidity. A platform leading with tradability should be asked, directly, what volume has actually traded.

Vagueness about jurisdiction and regulatory status. Legitimate structures are specific about where the entity sits, what regime applies, and who may participate. Global availability with no restrictions is a claim that conflicts with how securities regulation works.

Referral incentives for recruiting other participants. Where recruitment is compensated, the incentive structure rewards inflow rather than asset performance, and that changes what the operator optimizes for.

Code audits offered as reassurance about the investment. An audit examines whether the contract does what it says. It says nothing about whether the property exists, is worth what is claimed, or is owned by the entity described.

Emphasis on the technology over the asset. Where the pitch is mostly about the ledger, ask what the buildings are, where they are, what they earn, and who manages them.

How to actually do the diligence

Most of this takes an afternoon and it is skipped almost universally.

Read the offering documents rather than the website, since they say different things and only one of them creates obligations. Verify the holding entity exists in the registry it claims, and check the property records if the jurisdiction publishes them. Search for the operator's regulatory registrations and any enforcement history. Look for the property itself and confirm it exists and matches the description.

Then ask the platform the six questions directly, in writing. The responses are informative in two ways: what they say, and how readily they say it. An operator running a properly structured offering answers these routinely because regulators and counsel already required the answers to exist.

And consider the failure case explicitly. If this platform stops operating tomorrow, who holds the property, who maintains the register of holders, and what is the process for holders to realize value? Structures that have thought about this can describe it. Structures that have not will change the subject.

This is general information rather than legal or investment advice, and it deliberately assesses no specific platform. Where meaningful amounts are involved, having the documents reviewed by qualified counsel costs a small fraction of the position.