RealtyShares Reaches $200M in Raised Capital

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Nav Athwal, RealtyShares

San Francisco—Just under three years after its launch, RealtyShares has exceeded the $200 million mark in capital raising. The online marketplace for real estate investing, which focuses on both the commercial and residential sectors, raised the big bucks from its vast network of investors.

RealtyShares provides a platform for accredited investors—from individuals to hedge funds—to invest with professional real estate developers and borrowers. To date, the company has linked approximately 25,000 such investors with pre-vetted real estate companies seeking debt or equity through crowdfunding.

It’s been a fast ride since 2013. RealtyShares has initiated a whopping 400-plus investment opportunities—and that’s with the company’s foot on the brakes.

“It has been about controlled growth. As a curated marketplace, RealtyShares only accepts a small percentage of deals onto the platform as part of our strategic plan to offer our investors high quality investments,” Nav Athwal, founder & CEO of RealtyShares, told Commercial Property Executive. “And although we could have grown our originations more quickly, we’ve exercised restraint to ensure our deal flow remains strong

The financials have been falling into place across the board. In February, RealtyShares secured a $20 million Series B fundraising round. The company kicked off by landing $1.9 million in seed money and in 2015, raised a $10 million Series A. Additionally, RealtyShares recently closed a $30 million line of credit. That the company can now boast having raised $200 million in short order is icing on the cake.

The last few years haven’t just been eventful for RealtyShares; there’s been notable change in the online real estate crowdfunding market, too.

“In three years we’ve seen online syndication go from a nascent industry to a billion-dollar force. Commercial operators, particularly in the multi-family sector, have embraced this new model as a way to raise equity and debt capital for projects,” Athwal said. “Our team’s focus has been to build relationships and work with high-quality partners, focusing on markets where there is still a potential for yield. Multi-family projects are an important part of our eco-system, but we also have high hopes for other commercial products like retail shopping centers, office buildings, and self-storage facilities.”

RealtyShares’ activity over the summer included the raising of $800,000 through 78 investors in just two days to assist in ProVest Properties’ $7 million acquisition of the Lincoln Center retail property in suburban Charlotte, N.C. The company also crowdfunded Network Acquisitions Partnership Alliance’s $11.6 million purchase of the 144-unit Parkside Townhomes in Arlington, Texas, to the tune of $2.6 million. In June, RealtyShares announced that it had raised in excess of $28 million across Florida, and in August, the company revealed that its crowdfunding had reached a total of $53 million in California. And the list goes on.

“We feel confident that the problem we’re solving is a big one in an otherwise massive multi-trillion-dollar market and that we’ll continue to experience strong growth into the future,” Athwal added.