A $15 million multifamily crowdfunding flip in just 8 months?

Can you smell the turkey, cranberry sauce, and stuffing? Thanksgiving is almost upon us and we’re back with another issue of “The GowerCrowd Real Estate Crowdfunding Newsletter.” This week, we’ve got several new deals from CrowdStreet, including a socially conscious opportunity zone project, an Indiana corn and soybean farm, a phenomenal flip from Lynd Living, and a major announcement from the crowdfunding platform AcreTrader. 

Let’s get into it. 

New Crowdfunding Platform Deals

One of the major unsung benefits of real estate crowdfunding is its ability to put power back into the hands of individual investors to shape their local communities, and communities nationwide, for the better. Crowdfunding investors have benefited tremendously from the significant appreciation in rents and housing prices over the past decade or more, but this success has created some challenges for the “missing middle” income range of renters, who make less than the area’s median income and thus are often priced out of quality housing. 

A new project at CrowdStreet hopes to help solve this problem with the 1411 S. Flower Multifamily Development, a 227-unit Opportunity Zone and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) project in the growing South Park neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles that intends to offer residents affordability, privacy, and an eminently walkable, transit-friendly lifestyle. This multifamily project has a targeted investor IRR of 15%, a targeted equity multiple of 2.9x, a targeted average cash yield of 9.4%, and a targeted investment period of 10 years. Get the scoop for yourself at CrowdStreet, here.

A project that may prove just as important to our shared prosperity is the Steam Corner Farm at AcreTrader. This 391-acre corn and soybean farm sits in Fountain County, Indiana, one of the strongest agricultural production counties in Indiana. The farm includes 3 parcels with 342 acres of cropland, planted in a corn and soybean rotation to ensure its productive capacity stays healthy. AcreTrader’s Business Development Manager, Kyle Knight, and Investor Relations Manager, Gentry Martin hosted a webinar and Q&A session about the project, which you can access here. 

General Crowdfunding Industry News

San Antonio, Texas-based multifamily investor Lynd Living recently hit a home run with the flip of a 280-unit Margate, Florida apartment complex, the Aqua Villa in an off-market deal. Lynd Living sold the property to an Atlanta-based real estate firm for $66.5 million, almost $15 million more than its initial purchase price. The big story is that this return took only 8 months to achieve. 

In a chat with The Real Deal, Lynd Living CEO David Lynd noted that rents at the property jumped more than 20% since the company purchased the property in March, and the firm was able to achieve its projected five-year net proceeds for investors and partners in a fraction of the five-year period. According to a press release by Lynd Living, they were able to acquire the property via crowd-sourced equity. Not bad. Read more, here.

Crowdfunding Platform Updates

In another major step for farm-focused crowdfunding platform AcreTrader, the firm recently announced the public launch of AcrePro, a land brokerage platform offering “best-in-class services for land sellers and buyers across the United States.” Here at the newsletter, we often cover projects by AcreTrader, so it might help some of you readers out there to learn a bit more about it. The firm is led by President Geoff Lewis, a longtime real estate industry vet, who was formerly the President of RE/MAX Holdings as well as VP of Growth Jeff Corbett, who cut his teeth as the former CRO of Better Real Estate, a company under the umbrella of Better.com. 

Farm and ranch land in the United States is among the largest real estate sectors in the nation, with a total value exceeding $3 trillion, but the market has historically been plagued with inefficiencies, including less than ideal transactions between buyers, sellers, and investors. AcrePro looks to connect land brokers and agents in the farm business to leverage their proprietary data resources, tech, and digital marketing assets to help benefit all stakeholders involved- from the investor looking for a good way to evaluate a property, to the farmer growing the food on your table. Learn more about AcrePro, here. 

That’s it for this week- but we’ll be back. Have a Happy Thanksgiving and we’ll catch you next time on “The GowerCrowd Real Estate Crowdfunding Newsletter.” See you then.