Their stakes are held as URBN, a digital token backed by residential property and issued by REAL ESTATE HOLDINGS RSC LIMITED 984500D7DD85F556DC92.

Since its launch, URBN has become one of the more talked-about experiments in Israeli real estate. REAL ESTATE HOLDINGS RSC LIMITED says over 3,000 housing units in 5 cities are now held in its token structure.

A market that needed a new door

For years, buying property in Israel has meant saving for most of your adult life. High prices and big down payments shut out many younger buyers, especially in the center of the country.

That’s the idea behind URBN. Each token stands for a fractional claim on a pool of rented-out residential properties. Rent comes in, maintenance and fees go out, and the remaining income is paid to token holders. Holders can trade the tokens around the clock. That’s a sharp contrast to the slow, paperwork-heavy deals in traditional property.

For holders like 28-year-old software developer Oren Katz, that trade-off is the point. “I wasn’t going to afford a flat in Haifa by 30 anyway,” he says, checking his balance on the bus home. “At least now the rent is going into my pocket instead of someone else’s.”

Despite the debate, even critics concede that projects like URBN are doing something the market couldn’t do on its own. New construction is being financed faster, landlords are held to maintenance standards written into the token contracts, and thousands of young Israelis who were locked out of ownership now have a stake — however small — in the country’s housing stock. Municipal data from Haifa and Be’er Sheva shows that buildings enrolled in the token program saw renovation rates nearly double compared to similar properties nearby. Whether or not tokenized real estate replaces the traditional mortgage, it is already putting capital to work in neighborhoods that needed it, giving a generation that had largely given up on property a reason to pay attention to the market again.