BEVERLY HILLS, CA-Realty Mogul, a website that allows accredited investors to purchase shares of pre-vetted investment properties, has been launched. The invention of Jilliene Helman, CEO of Realty Mogul Co., the site allows investors to pool their money online and buy shares in a transparent purchasing environment.
Properties available for purchase include residential and commercial, single-family, multifamily, retail and office properties, Helman tells GlobeSt.com. “We're limited to accredited investors right now, due to securities regulations. An accredited investor earns over $200,000 a year or has a net worth of over $1 million excluding the value of their primary home. The regulations may change, but right now we're playing the waiting game.”
Investors entering the site first need to validate that they're accredited, then they go into the system and browse transactions, Helman says. “We have commercial-office buildings in one location, single-family in another, multifamily in another. We provide the projected return characteristics, the address, location—it's like a marketing package you might get from a broker.”
Investors can put up as little as $5,000 per transaction. When they're ready to invest, they can do so and track the investment completely online. The site will prepopulate their name, address and other relevant information, they can submit their loan documents online, the investment goes into their dashboard and they can watch how it is performing.
Realty Mogul also has two operating partners—AH Capital in the L.A. market and Real Property Funding Group LLC in Seattle—that act as the firm's “eyes and ears on the street,” says Helman. “We don't have local market knowledge in all the markets we want to be in. So rather than us being an acquisitions team in markets we don't know, we partner with those who have a history and a track record in the market and are good at what they do.”
Helman, the youngest of seven kids in a real estate family, grew up learning about these types of investments. She has also invested in real estate personally, running money and investments for her family and friends and managing a multifamily property as a family asset. “My background is all financial services. I spent 4.5 years working for Union Bank, primarily in wealth management, working with high-net-worth individuals. I've worked with high dollar-sales transactions, with the best interest of the client being put forth. Financial services is a very unique thing—everybody wants something different.”
Helman says the goal of Realty Mogul is to “give people access to play in the real estate market who did not have access historically and to make it really simple. That's my goal from a macro perspective: to let people play with $5,000 and make it so simple that anybody who can take that risk is able to do so. It doesn't need to be that complicated. There are people out there who can do that complicated stuff on your behalf.”
As GlobeSt.com has previously reported, several digital options are emerging to make online real estate transactions simple, easy and transparent, including Auction.com for selling properties at auction, EverestAuctions.com for leasing space at auction and F9Analytics, for leasing space via a mobile app.
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Carrie Rossenfeld
Carrie Rossenfeld is a reporter for the San Diego and Orange County markets on GlobeSt.com and a contributor to Real Estate Forum. She was a trade-magazine and newsletter editor in New York City before moving to Southern California to become a freelance writer and editor for magazines, books and websites. Rossenfeld has written extensively on topics including commercial real estate, running a medical practice, intellectual-property licensing and giftware. She has edited books about profiting from real estate and has ghostwritten a book about starting a home-based business.
