NUVA brings U.S. residential mortgage credit to offshore investors

NUVA, the real-world asset marketplace created by Animoca Brands and Nuva Labs, introduced a token that provides foreign investors exposure to U.S. home-equity loans, starting at as little as 1 USDC.

The token, called HOME, gives holders exposure to a pooled investment vehicle that will initially hold home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) originated through Figure Technology Solutions. NUVA is targeting a 7% annual return from the loans, with the target resetting monthly. Interest income and loan performance are reflected in the vault’s net asset value, which in turn determines the token's price.

HELOCs are a way for homeowners to borrow against the equity they have in their property. The borrowers receive access to a line of credit for a defined period, typically at a variable rate of interest. The value of HELOCs in the U.S. climbed to $460 billion in the second quarter, according to Federal Reserve Economic Data.

HOME does not give holders ownership of individual loans, but exposure to the basket as a whole. The distinction matters because the token takes an asset class usually accessed through securitizations, private-credit funds or whole-loan purchases and puts a managed version of it into decentralized finance (DeFi).

“Traditional securitization was built primarily for institutional investors,” Nuva Labs CEO Anthony Moro said in an interview with CoinDesk. “For individual investors, those structures can be difficult to access.”

HOME is not the first tokenized private-credit product. Maple Finance built onchain lending pools for institutional borrowers, while Centrifuge has been used to bring credit and structured products onchain. Figure itself already tokenizes HELOCs on its Provenance blockchain. HOME differs in how it packages that exposure. Eligible non-U.S. users can enter a managed vault of Figure-originated home-equity loans with 1 USDC, rather than buy whole loans or invest through a conventional private-credit fund.

“HOME holders do not directly own the underlying loans,” said Moro, a former BNY Mellon executive of 22 years. “They hold HOME tokens that provide exposure to the assets held in the vault.”

NUVA has been working to connect Figure-originated assets to public blockchain ecosystems. HOME is a test of whether crypto users want that exposure in a tradable, composable token that conforms to Ethereum's ERC-20 standard rather than in a conventional fund.

NUVA is betting that it can tap decentralized finance (DeFi) demand for yield without having to create demand for the loans themselves. Figure’s consumer-loan marketplace processed $4.3 billion in volume in the second quarter, including $2.8 billion through Figure Connect, where whole-loan buyers and securitization investors purchase loans.