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The Great Comeback of 2014: Top 5 US Real Estate Projects Funded by The Crowd
The Great Comeback of 2014: Top 5 US Real Estate Projects Funded by The Crowd
by David Drake
From its early days as a concept used to provide funding for innovative startup ideas,
crowdfunding has since evolved into an investment vehicle used to fund million-dollar large scale
projects across the globe.
In recent times, real estate has been a major hotspot for crowdfunding activities with huge
amounts raised by developers across the globe to fund their projects. Through online crowdfunding
platforms, developers are now able to raise funds to complement what comes from traditional
sources of finance such as banks and institutional investors.
Since the JOBS Act took effect in 2012, a home run for real estate crowdfunding used to be below
$3 million; however, with the infusion of institutional capital into the industry and with the increase
in cross border deals, there has been a surge in the amounts raised by platforms in single
transactions.
Last year, the idea that crowdfunding is minority capital was shattered when Prodigy Network, a
leading firm in the real estate crowdfunding industry hit a milestone when it raised over $200
million from more than 4200 investors in a single transaction. The crowdfunding project, BD
Bacat was for the construction of the tallest building in Colombia, which became the largest
crowdfunding campaign ever.
The year 2014 has also recorded huge deals with millions of dollars raised by developers from a
pool of accredited and institutional investors online. Here are the top five real estate crowdfunding
deals weve tracked, raising the largest amounts of money from the crowd in the US:
of banks and major institutional investors in funding the deals in the Manhattan area shows that
crowdfunding is fast gaining traction in the mainstream of traditional corporate finance.
David Drake is an early-stage equity expert and the founder and chairman of New Yorkbased Victoria Global with divisions LDJ Capital, a family office and private equity advisory firm,
and The Soho Loft Media Group, a global financial media company involved in Corporate
Communications,
Publications
at David@LDJCapital.com.
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