It’s been a slow start to the year for many of the investment platforms that we cover. We’re seeing a notable slowdown in pace of offerings across platforms and asset classes. That having been said, there’s still plenty that’s happening.
Here’s a quick roundup of some recent news from the world of alternatives.
Groundfloor Crosses TWO Major Milestones
Many platforms offering fractional investment opportunities in alternative assets are relatively new. Groundfloor is not one of them. In a LinkedIn post, the CEO and Co-Founder shared that the company just turned 10 years old. But that’s not all.
In the same post, he also shared that Groundfloor had now offered over $1B in securities on the platform over that lifetime. At this moment they have about $300M in assets under management.
After closing a community investment round on WeFunder, they should have fresh capital to help grow those numbers further.
We also recently covered Groundfloor’s expansion into Tulsa.
AcreTrader Moves Further Towards Broker-Dealer
Earlier this month, AcreTrader told webinar attendees they were deep in the process of registering as a broker-dealer with FINRA. In a February 7th email to investors they described the registration as “impending.” In preparation, investors are asked to fill out the following:
- A suitability questionnaire (new)
- Know Your Customer (KYC) verification (updated)
- Anti-Money Laundering (AML) verification (updated)
Here Kicks Off 2023 Offerings With “Mountaineer”
After a long period of relative inactivity, Here debuted their latest offering – “Mountaineer.” In a deviation from their previous strategy, Mountaineer returns investors to a previous market – the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia. The offering was their first acquisition without any debt. It opened on January 25 and sold out on February 3.
Some of Here’s earliest listings are scheduled to pay out their first dividends this month. We’ll be back with coverage on what returns looked like once that happens.
Arrived Homes New Offerings
Not to be outdone, Arrived looks prepared to emerge from a period of low activity as well. In their “December Leasing Update” email there was new inventory coming soon. There are now NINE properties listed as “coming soon” on their properties page. Which has also received some minor aesthetic updates.
Unfortunately for Here, FOUR of them are vacation rentals. Here initially looked like it would be the first to have an offering in Broken Bow, but they canceled the listing. Arrived now has, not one, but two properties coming to Broken Bow. It also looks like Arrived will be the first to Myrtle Beach and Flagstaff.
Our map of fractional vacation rental properties has been updated with all the latest offerings.
Realm Metaverse Real Estate Offering Canceled
In the height of 2021’s crypto-mania, the Realm Metaverse Real Estate offering debuted on Republic. The pitch was essentially buying shares of a company that would buy, hold, develop, and market metaverse real estate.
Despite the near-implosion of the crypto market, very few updates, and a tremendous amount of waiting, the offering consistently sat with all $75M fully reserved week-after-week. Unfortunately for crypto enthusiasts and those who waited patiently, the plug was officially pulled last week.
One has to wonder how much of that $75M in reservations will flow into other equity crowdfunding offerings?
Site News
Lastly, a quick bit of site news. We’re excited to share that Asset Scholar recently ranked #20 in Feedspot’s list of top 30 alternative investing blogs and websites on the Internet.
This is a powerful affirmation that we’re off to a great start on our mission – delivering you useful and informative content about alternative asset classes. We’re continuing to improve our capabilities to deliver on that with a few more site updates:
- In January we shipped out our first newsletter. You can subscribe here.
- If you missed our first newsletter, you can find the archive here.
- We’ve invested in some additional tools to help make our content more engaging and interactive. For example, you’ll start seeing more interactive charts, as opposed to screenshots of them.
- We’ve made a series of updates to two of our most popular articles – our introduction to Groundfloor article and our comparison of Arrived Homes and Here.