About Atlas. Privately-held real estate investment firm ... long call with him to explain our business plan and investme
Atlas Real Estate Partners lifts eleven new investors on board with the RealCrowd platform.
CASE STUDY
How was your experience using RealCrowd?
We had a great experience raising funds for Fort Davis Center using your platform.
About Atlas
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Privately-held real estate investment firm headquartered in New York, NY with offices in Washington, DC and Miami, FL. Focused on value-add investments in multifamily, student-housing, retail, and office assets. Closed over 25 acquisitions with a total capitalization of more than $400M since its formation in 2009.
Goals
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Grow investor network using a platform focused on institutional quality assets and accredited investors. Decrease time spent on fundraising activities. Automate on-boarding and ongoing investor management administrative tasks.
Results
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Raised $400,000 in two weeks on RealCrowd platform. Acquired 11 new accredited investors. Increased investor exposure over 10x.
RealCrowd was a nice complement to our equity raise process. RealCrowd was able to bring new investors to the table who we could otherwise not reach. We had one of our investors unfortunately inform us on Fort Davis Center that they were unable to follow through with their commitment with only three days left to close. Sometimes these things happen. We informed RealCrowd and within 15 minutes they had the allocation filled, documents signed and funds wired. Your process worked better than we expected, and we’re are excited to post another deal.
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Your firm investigated a few sites, why did you choose to use RealCrowd?
RealCrowd is most aligned with our goals and business. In our view, other platforms are too focused on smaller, inexperienced investors. Frankly, the bar is too low and the potential for headaches is quite high. It could actually end up being more work instead of less. But RealCrowd’s strong accreditation process and reasonably-high investment minimums keeps the quality of its built-in investor network high. This means that my network grows, my deals get funded, and my investors are managed more efficiently, effectively, and with less overhead. Branding is also important to us. RealCrowd is one of the few platforms that has focused on institutional quality commercial assets and quality operators. While other platforms are posting residential fix-and-flips and fast food restaurants, RealCrowd is posting office and multi-family properties in strong markets. The net effect is that a strong brand is maintained which attracts more qualified real estate investors.
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Did you have any concerns about crowdfunding?
I did. We met an investor through one of the other platforms. We had an hour long call with him to explain our business plan and investment parameters. He was excited and ready to invest… $100. While I think that model of community based crowdfunding is fine for other developers and projects, it’s not our model. We use RealCrowd to meet other like-minded investors that we don’t have the time or resources to access to otherwise. We set the minimum investment amount and goal we are looking to raise with RealCrowd and do this in conjunction with sending out notices to our existing network of investors. As the RealCrowd platform grows we will certainly be raising larger amounts online. This is obviously the future and we want to be on the forefront.
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Why are you excited about RealCrowd?
We have rapidly grown our investor basis organically, but RealCrowd will facilitate another wave of growth for Atlas. We understand that our existing network of investors (and their friends) will only grow so fast. When I told a more senior partner at the firm about growing our investor base he grimaced with visions of administrative tasks running through his head. RealCrowd makes scaling simple and easy, allowing us to scale our business in a controlled and efficient way. We’re excited to use RealCrowd to manage the time-consuming tasks of syndication: reporting, document storage, signature collection and organization, investor communication, etc. This will allow us to grow and to pursue more deals without the usual human resource problems.
