LOS ANGELES—Although Realty Mogul's platform has typically catered to high net worth individuals, its new partnership with institutional investor Direct Lending Investments will now promise certainty of capital for its debt borrowers, according to Jilliene Helman, the company's founder and CEO. In an earlier story, GlobeSt.com reported that the institutional investor has committed $73 million to the crowdfunding platform to fund residential rehab loans.

“We are continuing to grow rapidly as a company. We're still very devoted to our high net worth individual base—it is still a very important part of our business and our trajectory,” Helman tells GlobeSt.com. “However, it is fantastic that we now have capital for our real estate borrowers on the debt side and that we have certainty of capital. One of the really important things when you are making a loan is that you can actually fund that loan and that you can close that loan. We have been able to get that certainty of capital through this institutional relationship.”

As reported earlier, this is Realty Mogul's first institutional partnership, and in addition to offering certainty of capital for these loans, Direct Lending's more general business strategy proved to be a uniquely good fit for Realty Mogul. “Direct Lending is a good partner for us because they have been very active in the online origination space, so they understand how platforms like ours are growing,” Helman explains. “They have traditionally been focused on small business loans, and they see our loans in a similar light because for real estate companies that are professional renovators and professional rehabbers, and this is their business.”

Although Realty Mogul now has more capital for the program, residential rehab loans are nothing new. “We have been doing rehab loans for the last 18 months, so this is now the next evolution of this business,” says Helman. “There is a lot of demand in the market. We are seeing thousands of rehabbers that are coming to us to get access to capital, and we are seeing a lot of demand on the capital side.”