AIRE Lunch, Learn & Lead: Crowdfunding in Commercial Real Estate

On Tuesday, February 10th, John Picchiotti, COO – Brokerage with NAI Hiffman, moderated AIRE’s latest panel discussion on crowdfunding in commercial real estate. A summary of the panel is below. 

Speakers included Anthony Zeoli, Attorney at Ginsberg Jacobs LLC, Kevin Brennan, Vice President of Acquisitions at Brennan Investment Group, David Brown, Partner at Nixon Peabody, and Scott McKibben, Managing Principal at Brennan Investment Group.

Picchiotti – About a year ago I noticed the issue of crowdfunding while reading a NAIOP magazine but I didn’t know anything about it so I did a little research. I brought it up to our brokers at NAI Hiffman, letting them know it should probably be something you put on your radar.  

We are now seeing credible sources of capital using crowdfunding to fund their projects. This is where we see technology and real estate intersecting yet again. 

Zeoli – Crowdfunding basically is a way to get smaller pieces of financing from a larger multitude of people. Normally, clients see large amounts of money from a small amount of people. 

Kickstarter is a completely different than what we are talking about today. Think of Kickstarter as pre-selling products. In return, you get either a product or some sort of recognition or discount, and that is an entirely different form of crowdfunding. What we are talking about today is debt and equity, investment, crowdfunding. 

Crowdfunding is not a new thing; it’s actually one of the oldest forms of financing. The Statue of Liberty was one of the first crowdfunded projects. They were about $300,000 short of it not coming to America until a group of high-net-worth individuals in New York got together to contribute the necessary funds needed. 

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