Learn why Bill Gates is snapping up productive farmland across the country

Spring is in full swing and we’re back with your weekly dose of real estate crowdfunding news. This week, we’re going to cover several new crowdfunding deals, including CrowdStreet’s AREP Multi-Asset GP Fund III and the South Point Business Park in Sacramento over at RealtyMogul. We’ll also check out some new film industry acquisitions by Fundrise, and look at Fintech Point’s raise of $115 Million in Series C funds to boost an up-and-coming home equity platform. Finally, we’ll cover Jilliene Helman’s new podcast that examines how investors can leverage real estate crowdfunding to invest in commercial real estate assets.

Let’s get into it.

New Crowdfunding Platform Deals

The AREP Multi-Asset GP Fund III is a discretionary commingled GP Fund on offer at CrowdStreet. It has 30% promote participation and the fund itself targets value-add and opportunistic residential, industrial, office, and data center investments in East Coast markets. The fund is structured in a manner that any limited partners will receive 30% of any distributions of the “promote” or carried interest generated by projects within the fund. Promote allocations will be pro-rata to the proportionate interest in the master fund. 

For instance, if the fund owns a 20% interest in the master fund, limited partners will receive 30% of the 20% of promote allocations from any underlying projects. This may help to create outsized returns when compared to similar investments in traditional funds. Check it out on CrowdStreet, here

Next up is the South Point Business Park in Sacramento listed on RealtyMogul. This deal is comprised of 4 best-in-class, value-add light industrial park assets, made up of 4 buildings and a total of 83,549 square feet in the booming South Sacramento industrial submarket. The deal’s sponsor, Rising Realty Partners, is an LA-based firm that has focused on creating world-class commercial properties in California submarkets for more than a decade. The South Point Business Park has a target IRR of 16.12%, a target cash on cash of 1.8%, and a target equity multiple of 1.55x. You can learn more about this South Sacramento industrial park, here, on RealtyMogul.

General Crowdfunding Industry News

Fundrise recently secured two new tenants for their West Adams office properties in Los Angeles, two Hollywood commercial production companies with Academy Award-winning projects under their belts, Somesuch and Stink Films. The two companies leased a total of 15,200 square feet at the West Adams properties, following the trend of numerous production and advertising firms setting up shop in the vicinity. 

Somesuch plans to occupy 11,000 square feet at 4319 West Jefferson Boulevard, a property purchased by Fundrise in 2019 for $6.2 million. Stink Films plans to lease 4,200 square feet at 4406 West Jefferson Boulevard, which Fundrise acquired for $3.5 million in 2020. 

Read more at Commercial Observer, here.

Crowdfunding Platform Updates

Fintech firm “Point” recently raised $115 million in Series C funding in a round led by WestCap. Other investors, including those that are already invested in the firm, also participated in the round, including Ribbit Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Atalaya Capital Management, Redwood Trust, and several others. Point is a fintech firm that manages a home equity platform that gives homeowners the ability to access equity financing in exchange for fractional shares of the property itself. Point has experienced rapid growth over the past few years, with Q1 2022 funding volume growing more than 5x year over year. Get the rest of the story at Crowdfund Insider, here.

Multimedia Links (Videos, Podcasts, etc.)

Finally, we’ll finish off with a podcast hosted by Jilliene Helman, the founder, and CEO of the real estate crowdfunding platform RealtyMogul. We’ve covered her podcast in the newsletter before, and this past week she released a deep-dive conversation into the ways that investors can use crowdfunding to invest in commercial properties and maximize their returns while also maintaining a safe level of portfolio diversity. Listen to the podcast for yourself over at Listen Notes, here.

We’ve also got a new episode of the Rental Property Owner & Real Estate Investor Podcast for your listening pleasure. In this week’s episode, they speak with Brandon Silveira, a fourth-generation farmer and the CEO of FarmFundr, a crowdfunding portal that focuses on fractional ownership in highly profitable productive farmland, similar to newsletter stalwart AcreTrader. He takes a high-level look at the space and explains why mega-investors like Bill Gates are so focused on adding farmland to their portfolios. Check out the conversation on Listen Notes, here.

That’s it for this week, but we’ll be back next week with plenty more updates, news stories, podcasts, and more. Until then…

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