Nuveen Real Estate Looks Into Online Individual Investors

Nuveen Real Estate is a specialized investment manager with, by its March 31, 2022, count, $156 billion in assets under management. Global, across the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific. “Managing a suite of funds and mandates, across both public and private investments, and spanning both debt and equity across diverse geographies and investment styles, we provide access to every aspect of real estate investing,” as the website notes.

The direct parent — Nuveen, a TIAA company — “currently manages over $900 billion in assets for a variety of investors including corporate and public pensions, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, endowments and foundations, financial advisors, families and individuals.”

But there’s an expansion in the company’s approach through a new arrangement with CrowdStreet, which offers crowdfunding from accredited investors for real estate. That would bring its fundraising in part online — a big change from traditional marketing.

TIAA Ventures recently took part in a $43 million investment round in CrowdStreet and Nuveen Real Estate’s chief investment officer, Shawn Lese, will join the fintech company’s board of advisors.

CrowdStreet says that it has raised $3.8 billion for more than 700 commercial real estate projects across the US and that in 2021, the company had its first billion-dollar year, with $1.2 billion in investor funding across single-property deals, professionally managed funds, and separately managed accounts.

CrowdStreet does require individuals investing on the platform to be accredited under US regulatory requirements, which opens a much wider range of investment types, including commercial real estate projects. That removes potential problems of additional vetting that Nuveen might otherwise have to do.

“Managing a suite of funds and mandates, across both public and private investments, and spanning both debt and equity across diverse geographies and investment styles, we provide access to every aspect of real estate investing,” the Nuveen Real Estate site notes.

These are potentially large opportunities to which individuals would not typically have access. The association would also allow Nuveen access to more capital without, critically, needing to directly support a larger group of individual investors. By working through CrowdStreet, the company greatly reduces the amount of work it would otherwise need to perform that could potentially undercut the value of investment that most individuals, even if accredited, would bring.

The association also means that Nuveen would not need to make the significant investments in research, planning, design, development, learning, and specific regulatory clearance that would be necessary to create its own platform.