Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Real estate investing network Connected Investors has become the latest to jump in on the crowdfunding craze with the launch of an aggregated real estate crowdfunding marketplace. The new platform allows investors to locate crowdfunding investment opportunities both in the U.S. and internationally.
Connected Investors launched its popular social network back in 2005, and now counts more than 200,000 real estate investors who use the platform to find off-market investment properties available from other investors, asset managers, hedge funds and property locators. By adding a crowdfunding platform into the mix, investors can now research and locate opportunities in the fast-growing crowdfunding segment that's already worth some $11 trillion, according to research firm iFunding.
“Many people are looking for opportunities to build wealth in real estate but the traditional ways create many roadblocks,” said Ross Hamilton, founder and CEO of Connected Investors. “Through crowdfunding, real estate and investing in particular has been transformed. We recognized this fact and developed an effective, simple, and affordable way for anyone to get involved in a real estate investment.”
Connected Investors' crowdfunding marketplace allows investors to be very specific about where they're putting their money. For example, they can search for opportunities by location, expected rate of return, investment amount and various other parameters.
The company also boasts that due to its status as a well-established social network, the new crowdfunding marketplace automatically becomes one of the largest in the world.
Marty Coyne, CTO of Connected Investors, said the crowdfunding movement was exploding in the U.S. right now, and the new marketplace would help to reduce some of the complexity of dealing with multiple different portals.
“We already had the network, so we simplified the process and in turn, access to the opportunity,” said Coyne. “We’ve developed a “Kayak-like” responsive search engine that presents opportunities to the investor without having to deal with dozens of different sites.”
