Real estate has long been the domain of the few. For most people, the idea of owning investment property feels as remote as owning a yacht. This might ring especially true in recent years. But mogul, a fractional real estate investing platform operating on Avalanche is turning that idea on its head.  Founded by Alex Blackwood and Joey Gumataotao, its goal is simple: generate wealth like a mogul. 

Fractional real estate investing makes that possible. Real estate is both time and capital intensive. By investing fractionally, not just accredited investors who meet specific earning and net worth qualifications, can own a real stake in tangible, income-generating properties. mogul Club uses the Avalanche Network to make the process accessible and efficient behind the scenes.

“Everyone should be able to generate wealth like a mogul,” says Blackwood. “You are investing in an asset that has brought generational wealth to moguls everywhere. We wanted the brand to capture that energy, even though you are doing it without any headache."

The brand name "mogul" was no accident. Blackwood and Gumataotao are building  a brand that reflects the essence of power and ambition behind their platform. They landed on a name that evokes both aspiration and access. From the beginning of their journey, the mission was to make high-quality real estate available to anyone. Not just the accredited elite.

A Different Kind of Investment

Blackwood's path to real estate wasn't linear. He wanted to follow in the footsteps of most of his family by becoming a doctor. He even started down the pre-med track as early as seventh grade attending science camps with early frog dissections and dreaming of a white coat future. That changed when Georgetown recruited him for rowing and told him it would be near impossible to  balance athletics and medicine.

“My grandpa told my mom, her siblings, and then us grandchildren we could be anything we wanted, but first we had to be doctors,” Blackwood recalls. “That was the mindset. It took sports and a twist of fate to push me in a different direction.”

Forced to pivot, Blackwood switched to business. Real estate caught his eye during an internship, but he initially pursued investment banking at Goldman Sachs. It was there, working within the Financial Institutions Group on blockchain-focused companies, that he realized how speculative it was to bet on companies compared to tangible assets like property.

“With real estate, you can look at it. You can touch it. It has true, inherent value,” he says. “Meanwhile, investing in companies often felt like a crapshoot. You can never fully quantify the human element."

The resilience of real estate also appealed to him. Limited supply and real-world utility offered an antidote to the chaos he watched unfold in the stock market. The idea for mogul Club clicked into place when he saw how hard traditional real estate investing was outside of his day job.

Building a Better Path to Ownership

mogul Club focuses on residential properties in key emerging markets. They deliberately avoid major metro areas like New York and Los Angeles, which Blackwood calls "blue-chip but inefficient for cash flow." Instead, they target cities where rents are high relative to property prices. mogul specializes in high-yield models like short-term rentals on Airbnb and unique workforce housing concepts like PadSplit, which converts large homes into multiple rentable rooms. “We aim for cash-on-cash yields around 10-12 percent,” Blackwood says. “That’s just rental income. When you layer in appreciation, the aim is 18-20 percent internal rate of return (IRR) to the end investor.”

Today, mogul Club offers dozens of properties, adding a new listing every week. In order to genuinely open the real estate market to everyone, the platform allows users to invest starting small, although average investment sizes hover closer to $8,800. Some investors have placed as much as $1 million into individual deals. “When we started, we thought we were going to be for everyone,” Blackwood explains. “And we still are. But as the deals performed, more sophisticated investors started coming in. It’s been a mix, but the large-ticket nature  of our investor base is rising fast.”

mogul’s remarkable growth has been almost entirely organic. They have spent little on marketing, instead relying on word-of-mouth, community engagement, and the natural pull of consistent performance. “Success begets success,” Blackwood notes. “Social validation is a real thing. Once people see others investing, they want to join in. FOMO (fear of missing out) is one of the most powerful drivers I've seen.”

Blockchain Infrastructure, Hidden in Plain Sight

Despite its Web2 feel, mogul Club's entire backend is built on blockchain. Titles, transactions, and investment records are stored securely on-chain. “Real estate is the best use case for blockchain,” Blackwood says. “But most real estate investors aren’t crypto investors. They want steady returns, not 1,000 percent swings." mogul Club is more evidence of the growing utility of blockchain applications outside of crypto and even gaming. They are showing a new sector of investors the power of technology in real time. 

mogul Club uses Avalanche because the blockchain delivers dependable speed, efficiency, and low transaction costs. Avalanche’s multi-chain architecture and sub-second finality also allow mogul Club to handle real estate transactions with a level of security and speed that traditional systems can’t generally match.

"We chose Avalanche because it lets us build a more efficient back office," Blackwood says. "It reduces costs, improves transparency, and sets us up for long-term scalability. We can pass those savings directly to our investors." mogul has plans to deepen its blockchain integration. Long-term, Blackwood hopes to bring title records onto Avalanche as well, creating a fully on-chain property ownership system.

“Bringing titles on-chain is our ultimate goal,” Blackwood says. “Right now, property records sit in local clerk offices running on systems that are 300 years old. If those servers burst tomorrow, there would be no backup. ”

The Resilience of Real Estate

mogul Club places a strong emphasis on education. New users are encouraged to schedule an onboarding call with a team member before making their first investment. “Most people don’t even know the first question to ask about real estate investing,” Blackwood says. “We wanted to make sure every new user feels confident and supported from the start."

This hands-on approach has proven to be a major driver of user engagement and conversion. In addition to onboarding calls, mogul Club is rolling out a new rewards-driven community feature called mogul Clubs, developed in collaboration with Ava Labs. "Think of it like a Facebook group, but built directly into the investment platform," Blackwood explains. "Users can learn together, share ideas, and get incremental rewards for participating, sharing, and investing."

Rewards aim to entice users to share and invest regularly. The result is significant reinvestment and friend referrals. It's a strategy designed not just for growth but for building a steady and engaged investor community.

A Bigger Vision for the Future

Looking ahead, Blackwood dreams big. In five years, he hopes mogul Club will manage over $10 billion in assets. In ten years, the target is $100 billion. But it's not just about scale. mogul Club plans to expand beyond fractional ownership into end-to-end real estate infrastructure.

“We want to be the biggest real estate platform in the world,” Blackwood says. “Fractional investing is just the entry point." And in a refreshing twist, they see competitors as potential partners. Instead of fighting over users, mogul Club offers their high-quality inventory to other platforms for co-investment.

“There’s enough room for everyone,” Blackwood says. “We’re building supply infrastructure. That’s the foundation that will outlast trends." For mogul Club, the dream is simple. Open the doors of real estate wealth to everyone. Help ordinary investors think and act like moguls. And quietly, power a revolution in ownership that changes the rules forever.