RealtyMogul.com, a leading online marketplace for commercial real estate investing, today announced the launch of its first commercial real estate fund, MogulREIT I. Structured as a real estate investment trust (“REIT”) with a minimum investment of $2,500, the fund is open to nearly all* investors and offers the potential for consistent cash dividends and equity appreciation.
MogulREIT I has been designed to offer investors a number of distinct advantages. By investing in the “REIT,” investors will gain access to a diversified pool of commercial real estate investments with one single investment. The fund intends to invest in a variety of commercial real estate, including multifamily, retail, self-storage and office.
The fund is also designed to have low fees. Traditional non-traded “REITs” employ a highly manpower-intensive sales method, resulting in upfront sales commissions of 7 percent, on average, and total expenses of up to 15 percent.** By offering MogulREIT I exclusively on its platform, RealtyMogul.com affords investors direct online access to the product with no sales commission and offering expenses capped at 3 percent.***
“Beyond the zero commissions and lower fees, the fund’s strategy is exciting because it allows us to leverage RealtyMogul.com’s hundreds of inbound inquiries for financing on commercial real estate and curate them to find suitable opportunities,” said RealtyMogul.com CEO Jilliene Helman.
Within the universe of commercial real estate investing, RealtyMogul.com’s experienced real estate team takes a relatively conservative approach when selecting transactions to offer for investment: the platform only invests in cash-flowing properties and won’t invest in land or ground up development transactions. This approach will carry through to MogulREIT I.
“Through a flexible investment strategy, we can invest in both debt and equity as well as various property types and geographies, allowing us to be opportunistic. We’re looking forward to executing against our twofold objective for the fund: providing investors with both consistent cash distributions and the opportunity to benefit from potential appreciation in property values,” added Helman.
The launch of the “REIT” marks a new wave of opportunity to invest in real estate. Until recently, private investment markets have been off-limits to the majority of retail investors. However, recent legislation like Regulation A+ and Title III of the JOBS Act has leveled the playing field by allowing non-accredited investors making less than $200,000 per year to access these investment opportunities through online crowdfunding. Through Reg A+, MogulREIT I gives nearly all investors a new entrance to curated and pre-vetted private real estate investing.
“Our members have demonstrated a clear appetite for a range of real estate investments, and we’re proud to be able to provide that opportunity to even more investors through our first ‘REIT’ offering,” said Helman.
In May, RealtyMogul.com announced that, since its inception in 2013, the platform had surpassed $200 million in crowdfunded real estate equity and debt transactions.
RealtyMogul.com, one of the leading online marketplaces for real estate investing, announced today that it has closed an investment into a $21.6 million acquisition. The platform helped finance the acquisition of The Edison Apartments, a mid-rise multifamily property in Chicago, by Spirit Bascom Ventures, a sponsorship joint venture between Stamford, Connecticut-based Spirit Investment Partners and Irvine, California-based The Bascom Group.
The sponsorship group, which specializes in distressed and value-add multifamily investments, plans to rehabilitate and renovate the building with the goal of increasing its revenue to levels comparable with those of similar renovated properties in the market. The 223-unit building, currently 97-percent occupied, is situated in the rapidly transitioning Edgewater neighborhood and also boasts 8,850 square feet of ground-floor retail space.
“With this acquisition, we saw potential for our investors to benefit both from the market expertise of Spirit Bascom Ventures and from the submarket’s growing Millennial population,” said Jilliene Helman, CEO of RealtyMogul.com. “As the neighborhood undergoes a demographic transition, we believe the rehabilitation project will allow the property to tap into rising rental rates in the market.”
In this transaction, RealtyMogul.com contributed limited partner common equity. Since its inception, RealtyMogul.com has invested more than $25 million in Chicago-area property transactions.
“We specialize in investing $1 million to $5 million into joint venture equity, preferred equity, mezzanine loans and bridge loans, so this investment was a perfect fit for our joint venture equity program,” Helman added. “Through the democratizing force of real estate crowdfunding, we look forward to connecting more investors to opportunities like this one.”
Spirit Bascom Ventures is one of RealtyMogul.com’s largest sponsors to date, representing over $10 billion in combined transactions.
