Hello! Welcome to Crowd Street. We are the leading online real estate investing platform, connecting thousands of individual accredited investors across the United States with real estate firms and developers (also known as sponsors) looking to raise capital.
We were an early entrant into online CRE investing and we’ve emerged as a market leader by balancing quantity and quality in our marketplace.
Unlike competitors, we also provide you, the investor, with the resources needed to help you become a sophisticated, self-managed investor
Because of this we have been able to list over 500 offerings, enabling Sponsors to raise over $2B from individual investors. Investors have realized over $280M from these offerings as of October 2021.
In this video, we will provide an overview of our platform, the Marketplace, and the resources we provide so that whether you are a seasoned commercial real estate investor, or just starting out, you will find the tools to be able to help diversify your portfolio with real estate investments.
Disclaimer
First, a disclaimer. Crowd Street is not a registered broker-dealer, investment advisor, or crowdfunding portal and therefore cannot provide investment advice. None of the information contained in this presentation may be construed as investment, legal, or tax advice. Crowd Street does not endorse any of the opportunities that appear on the Crowd Street website, nor does Crowd Street make any recommendations regarding the appropriateness of particular opportunities for investors. Investing on the Crowd Street Marketplace includes a high degree of risk, including risk of entire loss of investment. Users and investors should consult with their respective investment advisers, attorneys, and tax advisors concerning each investment opportunity, carefully review all documentation concerning each investment, and seek clarification on any questions or concerns of a particular investment opportunity prior to investment. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. No advisor-client relationship may be formed absent a written, executed advisory services agreement with Crowd Street Advisors, and without such an agreement, nothing herein may or should be construed as investment advice.
Homepage
We will start here, on Crowd Street’s homepage. As mentioned, we want to enable investors to feel empowered to manage their own portfolio. We aim to provide a fair advantage, transparent information, comprehensive education, and dedicated support.
To begin, let’s take a look at some of those resources.
- I recommend navigating the New Investor Quick Start Guide and the resources it links to. This page was specifically designed with new investors in mind.
- Our resource center holds a plethora of articles and videos to help you learn more about Commercial Real Estate and the market.
- Our Investment Thesis is developed by our Chief Investment Officer and knowledgeable investments team
- Our Marketplace Performance tab provides full transparency through case studies and full projected vs actual returns provided on realized investments
- Our Help Center will guide you through our processes and troubleshoot any issues you may have while investing through Crowd Street.
- And finally, if you aren’t able to find what you’re looking for, we have a dedicated Investor Relations team who will help you troubleshoot or point you in the right direction Monday through Friday, during business hours.
The Marketplace
You can access the Marketplace anytime by clicking on “Marketplace” in the upper right corner. It is where you can find all deals open to investors.
Crowd Street is dedicated to providing individual investors like you access to institutional-quality commercial real estate investment opportunities across the United States. But how does a deal get on the Marketplace?
First and foremost, every deal, and the sponsor behind it, undergoes the same objective review process for inclusion on our Marketplace. This means that a sponsor cannot simply pay a fee and post just any offering onto our Marketplace. On average, only five out of 100 deals seen by our Capital Markets team makes it onto the Marketplace.
During the review, we evaluate the Sponsor, the project, and the Legal Terms of the limited partnership between the investor (yourself) and the General Partner (the legal term for the Sponsor or party making the decisions on the project).
You can learn more about our entire deal review process here.
You can find some basic information about the deal on its card. But, if you create an account, you get access to the full detail page. The goal of these pages is to provide you with an overview of the offering so that you can begin performing your due diligence and deciding if this investment may be right for you and your portfolio. As you go further into your review, the legal documents for the offering are also available on this page.
For a detailed walkthrough of the offering detail page, be sure to watch the dedicated video in our Help Center. Additionally, if you are looking for specific criteria, you can filter the Marketplace using the filter features at the top.
So what role does Crowd Street play in all of this?
What is important to note is that Crowd Street is the provider of the platform; and while we may post our own offerings from time-to-time (more on that later), if an external Sponsor is listed, we are not a party to that offering. Therefore, any investment made is directly with that sponsor and not with Crowd Street. Consider us a commercial real estate investment match-making service; we’ve created a modernized way for investors and sponsors to find each other. We then facilitate the relationship but are not a party to it.
Once you select a deal, Crowd Street’s proprietary online tools will help you to invest directly in the offering and then track the lifecycle of the investment in your portfolio. Should you invest in multiple deals, you will be able to view an aggregate of the portfolio you are creating. This allows you to track and manage your investments through one centralized Crowd Street account. Gone are the days of having to keep multiple logins across each sponsor or investment firm. The best part? Creating your Crowd Street account is free.
How does Crowd Street earn revenue, then?
Crowd Street charges Sponsors fees for Crowd Street’s services and technology. The Sponsor may allocate Crowd Street’s fees as a project or entity expense.
The only time that Crowd Street would directly charge a fee to an investor is if they invest through a Crowd Street fund or our PMA services. We will discuss those options later in this presentation.
Since CrowdStreet, Inc is not a broker-dealer, a registered wealth advisor, a tax advisor, or an accounting firm, we legally cannot provide tax or investment advice. Just as someone cannot provide legal or medical advice unless they are a licensed attorney or doctor, we legally cannot provide investment advice (unless you are a client of CrowdStreet Advisor LLC’s Privately Managed Account Services, which we will touch on later).
However, while we can’t provide advice, we aim to provide you and your advisors with the resources needed to make the best independent decisions for your portfolio.
So what are the first steps to participate in the offerings you see?
- Create your account, if you haven’t already
- Be a US citizen or US-based entity with a valid, legal US address.
- Determine if you are an accredited investor and understand what steps will be required to provide proof of your accredited status
- Set up the investing account profile you would like to use.
- We recommend getting your paperwork ready before you make your first offer in order to streamline the process, but you’re not required to in order to browse the Marketplace.
- Review the latest deals and see if one meets your investment criteria.
- If there isn’t anything at this time, don’t worry - our Capital Markets team is always looking for new deals from best-in-class sponsors to add to the Marketplace. On average we add 3 - 5 new offerings a week.
Once you have selected an offering, you will follow our step-by-step offer process. Don’t worry if you get stuck, our Help Center or Investor Relations team will guide you along the way.
Other Ways to Invest through Crowd Street
If reviewing and comparing individual deals doesn’t appeal to you, there are other ways to invest through Crowd Street.
- Funds
- For those who would like a simpler approach to diversification through one investment, rather than self-selecting individual offerings and building your own portfolio slowly; fund vehicles can be a great solution.
- In a fund, your capital is spread across multiple assets that the fund vehicle acquires. The fund determines which assets to acquire, but the strategy of the vehicle will be clearly defined by the fund’s General Partner. These could include a particular region, asset class, risk profile, etc. For example: the Sunbelt, self-storage, Value-Add.
- Crowd Street creates a fund vehicle, offers it on the Marketplace, and yes, acts as the General Partner. The fund invests into offerings on our Marketplace, creating a more diversified approach.
- Privately Managed Accounts
- Finally, if you would prefer to receive investment advice and have an advisor manage the steps of the offer process for you, we offer Privately Managed Accounts through our subsidiary, CrowdStreet Advisors LLC, which is a registered investment advisor.
- You will work directly with an advisor to create a customized investment strategy The minimum account size for these services is $250k, and a management fee will be charged.
- To learn more about the fees, please refer to the “Privately Managed Accounts by Crowd Street Advisors” offering detail page on the Marketplace. If you are interested, please reach out and they will set up a call to discuss.
In conclusion, we hope this video provided a better understanding of our platform and the resources available to you as an investor. In this presentation, we covered:
- An overview of the Crowd Street platform
- An overview of the Crowd Street Marketplace
- And the available investor resources
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to help@crowdstreet.com