PropTech Intelligence

Tokenised Real Estate in Switzerland: DLT Securities, Challenges, and the 2025 Outlook

Donovan Vanderbilt · 24 February 2026 · 9 min read

Switzerland is one of the few jurisdictions in the world with a clear statutory legal framework for representing property ownership interests as digital securities on a distributed ledger. The Swiss DLT Act — which introduced the concept of “DLT securities” (Registerwertrechte) into Swiss law in 2021 — created a foundation that blockchain entrepreneurs and property technology companies have been working to build upon ever since. Yet the distance between legal possibility and market reality remains substantial. This analysis examines where Swiss tokenised real estate stands, why progress has been slower than advocates predicted, and what the realistic near-term outlook looks like.

What Tokenised Real Estate Actually Means

“Tokenised real estate” is a term that encompasses several distinct structures, often conflated. At its core, the concept involves representing ownership interests in real property — or in a legal entity holding real property — as digital tokens on a blockchain or distributed ledger system. These tokens can, in theory, be divided into fractions, transferred digitally without traditional paper-based conveyancing, and traded on secondary markets with greater efficiency than physical property transactions.

The potential benefits advanced by proponents include:

Fractionalisation: Enabling investment in property at much lower minimum amounts than full ownership, democratising access to real estate as an asset class
Liquidity: Creating a secondary market for property interests that would otherwise be illiquid
Efficiency: Reducing the costs and delays of property transactions through programmable, automated processes
Transparency: Providing investors with direct visibility into property performance, rental income distribution, and asset management via blockchain-recorded data

These benefits are real in principle. The challenge is that Swiss property law, land registry infrastructure, and financial regulation create layers of complexity that make simple implementations technically and legally inadequate.

The Swiss DLT Act: What It Actually Enables

The Federal Act on the Adaptation of Federal Law to Developments in Distributed Ledger Technology — commonly called the DLT Act — entered into force on 1 February 2021. It was a considered piece of Swiss legislation that amended approximately a dozen existing federal statutes to accommodate DLT-based financial instruments.

The central innovation relevant to real estate is the introduction of “DLT securities” (Registerwertrechte) in the Swiss Code of Obligations. A DLT security is a right that has been incorporated into a distributed ledger in such a way that it can only be exercised and transferred through that ledger. This creates a legally recognised digital bearer instrument — something that Swiss law previously did not accommodate cleanly.

For real estate, the DLT Act means that:

Equity interests in a special purpose vehicle (SPV) owning property can be issued as DLT securities
Fund units in a collective investment scheme can potentially be represented as DLT securities
Other financial instruments representing property income or ownership interests (profit participation certificates, Genussscheine) can be structured as DLT securities

Critically, what the DLT Act does not do is create a way to directly register property title on a blockchain. Swiss property title exists in the cantonal land registry (Grundbuch) — a paper and database system administered by cantonal authorities. The DLT Act does not connect to or replace this system. Tokenised real estate in Switzerland therefore represents a layer of beneficial ownership or economic interest that sits above the land registry title — not a replacement for it.

The Three Main Tokenisation Structures

Structure 1: SPV Equity Tokenisation

The most commonly used structure in Swiss tokenised real estate. A property is acquired by an SPV — a Swiss AG or GmbH established solely for the purpose of holding that property. The equity of the SPV (shares) is then issued as DLT securities on a blockchain platform, with token holders owning fractional equity in the SPV.

Investors receive economic exposure to the property (rental income distributions, appreciation) via their SPV equity position. The SPV holds legal title to the property in the land registry. The blockchain layer represents the beneficial ownership of the SPV equity.

This structure is legally straightforward in Swiss law and has been executed by several Swiss PropTech companies. Its complexity lies in the ongoing corporate governance of the SPV, the relationship between token holders and the SPV management, and ensuring that the distributed ledger meets the technical requirements for DLT securities under the DLT Act.

Structure 2: Fund Units as DLT Securities

FINMA-regulated real estate funds can, in principle, issue their fund units (Anteilscheine) as DLT securities rather than in traditional form. This would allow fund units to be held on-chain and transferred via blockchain rather than through traditional securities settlement (SIX SIS).

This structure has attracted interest from institutional market participants — Sygnum Bank (Zug-based, one of Switzerland’s two crypto-native banks with full FINMA banking licence) and AMINA Bank (formerly SEBA, also Zug-based) have both explored DLT-based fund unit issuance. The regulatory clarity provided by the DLT Act is sufficient to make this viable, though the market for DLT-issued fund units remains nascent.

Structure 3: Profit Participation Certificates (Genussscheine)

Profit participation certificates (Genussscheine) are a form of hybrid financial instrument in Swiss law — they confer economic rights (participation in profits, liquidation proceeds) without conferring voting equity rights. They can be issued as DLT securities under the DLT Act.

For real estate, a Genussschein structure allows investors to participate in property economics while the property-owning entity (which may be a traditional Swiss company) retains full legal and corporate ownership. This can simplify some aspects of corporate governance while providing investors with an on-chain instrument representing their economic interest.

Swiss PropTech: The Tokenisation Pioneers

Blockimmo — Zug-based and among the first Swiss companies to execute a tokenised real estate transaction — completed one of Switzerland’s earliest blockchain-based property offerings, representing fractional interests in a commercial property via Ethereum-based tokens. Blockimmo worked to align its structure with evolving Swiss regulatory expectations and was an early demonstration that Swiss real estate tokenisation was legally and technically achievable. The company represents the early-mover pioneering stage of Swiss PropTech tokenisation.

Crowdhouse — a Swiss real estate crowdfunding platform that enables fractional participation in Swiss residential and commercial properties — represents the closest mass-market approach to real estate fractionalisation in Switzerland. While Crowdhouse’s primary model uses traditional legal structures rather than full DLT securities as its core, the platform has explored DLT-enhanced components for its products and serves the proof-of-concept for what fractional property investment demand looks like in Switzerland.

SwissRealCoin — a project exploring a stablecoin backed by Swiss commercial real estate — represents a distinct approach: creating a digital currency whose value is pegged to a portfolio of Swiss commercial properties. The concept links cryptocurrency utility (payment medium, store of value) with real estate stability. Implementation challenges around the regulatory treatment of such an instrument at the intersection of payment systems and collective investment schemes have been significant.

Sygnum Bank and AMINA Bank — both headquartered in Zug with full FINMA banking licences — have tokenised real estate-backed instruments for institutional and qualified private banking clients. These are not consumer-facing products but institutional issuances demonstrating that the technical and regulatory groundwork for Swiss real estate DLT securities is operational at the high end of the market.

The Land Registry Challenge: The Core Obstacle

The single largest structural obstacle to widespread Swiss real estate tokenisation is the gap between blockchain-recorded ownership and cantonal land registry title. The Swiss Grundbuch (land registry) is administered at the cantonal level by cantonal authorities. It is the definitive legal record of property ownership in Switzerland. To transfer legal title to Swiss property, a notarial deed must be executed and the transfer registered in the cantonal Grundbuch. This process cannot currently be replaced or shortcut by a blockchain transaction.

The consequence is that all current Swiss real estate tokenisation structures represent beneficial ownership or economic interest above the land registry title — not legal title itself. The SPV holding the property appears in the Grundbuch as the legal owner; token holders own the SPV economically but do not appear in the Grundbuch.

For investors, this creates a question of enforcement and protection: if the SPV management acts against token holders’ interests, how do token holders protect their economic rights? Strong contractual and corporate governance structures are essential to fill the gap that on-chain property title would otherwise close.

The Swiss Federal Council and the Federal Office of Justice have explored land registry digitalisation — part of broader Swiss e-government initiatives. A fully digital, potentially blockchain-integrated Grundbuch would close this gap. However, practical implementation across 26 cantonal registry systems is a long-term project. As of early 2026, land registry blockchain integration remains a medium-to-long-term prospect rather than an imminent development.

Legal Complexity: 26 Cantonal Property Law Systems

Swiss property law is substantially cantonal. While the Swiss Civil Code provides a national framework for property rights, its implementation — including land registry procedures, building law, zoning regulation, and conveyancing requirements — varies by canton. A tokenisation solution that works cleanly under Zug cantonal practice may require adaptation for Geneva, Valais, or Graubünden.

For nationwide tokenisation platforms, this creates engineering and legal complexity well beyond what US or UK platforms face in their more nationally uniform systems. Swiss PropTech companies must either limit themselves to specific cantons or invest in understanding and accommodating the variance across cantonal systems — a significant barrier to scale.

International Comparison

RealT (United States): Ethereum-based fractional real estate ownership platform, primarily US residential properties. Operates primarily via Ethereum ERC-20 tokens representing fractional ownership in SPVs. US regulatory environment (particularly SEC) creates significant compliance complexity; RealT has focused on non-US investors for some product lines.

Lofty AI (United States): Platform offering fractional real estate investment in US residential rental properties via blockchain tokens. Has processed thousands of transactions and serves as a proof-of-concept for consumer-scale real estate tokenisation.

These US platforms operate in a market where regulatory clarity is less established than Switzerland’s DLT Act framework — making Switzerland technically ahead in legal architecture but behind in consumer-market implementation, reflecting Switzerland’s more institutional rather than retail orientation and its higher regulatory standards for investor protection.

The 2025 Outlook

Several developments converge to make 2025-2026 a meaningful period for Swiss real estate tokenisation:

Digital Grundbuch initiative: Federal and cantonal authorities are progressing discussions on digital land registry modernisation. Any move toward a digital registry — even short of full blockchain integration — would reduce friction in real estate tokenisation.

Institutional product development: Sygnum and AMINA have demonstrated operational capability for DLT real estate securities for qualified institutional clients. The pipeline of institutional products is growing, even if consumer markets remain years away.

DeFi integration possibility: As Swiss regulatory clarity around DeFi protocols develops, the possibility of DLT-represented real estate interests being integrated into decentralised lending and liquidity protocols becomes more technically feasible — potentially unlocking liquidity for tokenised property holdings without traditional secondary market infrastructure.

Federal Council review of CISA: Any FINMA regulatory evolution that makes it easier to structure CISA-regulated real estate funds with DLT-based unit issuance would provide a FINMA-supervised pathway for tokenised real estate at scale.

The realistic scenario for 2025 is continued institutional product development, a small number of qualified-investor tokenised real estate issuances by regulated Swiss financial institutions, and the groundwork being laid — both technically and regulatorily — for broader market participation in the years ahead. Mass-market consumer tokenised real estate in Switzerland remains a 5-10 year proposition.

This article is informational only and does not constitute investment, legal, or financial advice. DLT securities and tokenised real estate involve significant legal, regulatory, and technical complexity. This content does not constitute advice on any specific transaction or investment. See our Disclaimer.

Author: Donovan Vanderbilt | The Vanderbilt Portfolio AG, Zurich

READ THE NETWORK PERSPECTIVE

Zug Finance — Financial Services Intelligence → Financial markets intelligence

About the Author

Donovan Vanderbilt

Founder of The Vanderbilt Portfolio AG, Zurich. Institutional analyst covering Swiss real estate markets, property investment vehicles, tokenised real estate, Lex Koller regulation, and the intersection of blockchain technology with Swiss property markets.

In This Article