Equity Capital Markets Blog

Until not so long ago, commercial real estate investment in the U.S. belonged to the limited class of accredited investors. Institutions and wealthy families were the only groups authorized to preserve wealth or speculate with real estate. Now, with the explosion of online crowdfunding and the slow but relentless legal opening of the market to smaller investors by the SEC, every person can join the wealthy and participate in what’s expected to become one, if not the biggest, of financial investment opportunities.

A real estate crowdfunding online platform matches investors with sponsors of real estate projects, whether single family homes, apartments, retail, hotels, office buildings, or else. It operates under two different models: the debt crowdfunding, which lends money to a company to buy the property and the equity crowdfunding, purchasing shares in the company that buys the property.

Benefits may come then from returns based on a traditional model of debt and interest, or from equity.