Building conventional real estate is capital intensive and slow. Accordingly, short-term changes in demand for real estate do not conventionally lead to rapid changes in real estate capacity. For example, markets with high demand for real estate often suffer from insufficient real estate capacity for years before new conventional real estate projects are approved and completed. Peer-to-peer real estate networks mitigate this problem to some degree, but have other significant disadvantages, such as high transaction costs, inconsistent quality, and regulatory issues. Independent of these problems, valuable real estate in major urban areas is often unutilized or under utilized. These and other aspects of conventional real estate represent inefficiencies with the potential to be at least partially addressed by innovation.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds