Crowdfunding, the raising of monetary contributions over the internet for the funding of projects, has been a popular method of raising money over the last few years. Websites like gofundme.com allow people to share their page across social media platforms in order to collect monetary contributions toward their desired goals like traveling, education and medical.
However, crowdfunding in the real estate industry is a fairly new concept that has been changing the way investments are handled—online.
Jilliene Helman, founder and CEO of Realty Mogul— an online real estate investing company based in California—developed the company with the intent to create an easier mode of real estate investing.
But prior to this, she worked in banking for more than four years, where she was formally the vice president of Union Bank and worked in wealth management, risk management and with the finance and marketing team after earning her bachelor’s degree in business from Georgetown University.
Helman said she had always wanted to launch a technology company but new very little about technology. The idea of Realty Mogual, she said, came from the passion she shares for finance and also for real estate, since she grew up in a real estate family.
“I saw the opportunity to disrupt the old way of doing things,” she said. “Real estate is kind of the last industry to change typically, so it’s very archaic.”
Realty Mogul was founded in 2013 and since then, the company has invested over $70 million in over 240 properties and recently completed a transaction for a hotel in Illinois that was renovated and another with Brennan Investment Group for a property in Chicago.
According to the company website, more than $2 million was contributed by credited investors through the online crowdfunding platform to help Brennan Investment Group acquire the Cumberland Metro Office Park located near O’Hare International Airport—a 164,448-square-foot multi-tenant office complex comprised of 12 single-story buildings.
Helman said they are always looking to do more transactions in Illinois but first, it’s about informing people about the business. She said the biggest early challenge and one that’s continuing is education, which exists on both the investor and real estate side.
On the investor side, she said it’s getting them comfortable with what a private real estate transaction is and educating them on how you analyze a this type of transaction. As for the real estate side, she said it’s this old guard getting comfortable with technology.
“It’s why I speak as much as I do, it’s why I travel as much as I do,” she said. “It’s to really make sure we get the word out and educating people because the first step in getting them to come invest with us is: first, knowing that we exist; two, knowing what we do; and three, building an element of trust and confidence in the brand and business.”
Helman travels year-round and does anywhere from 50 to 60 interviews a year to teach others about the crowdfunding business.
And when asked about the future of crowdfunding, she told Chicago Industrial Properties that real estate companies still hesitate to say “are we really going to trust an online capital market? Are we really going to get our capital this way?” She explained that in the next five, ten or fifteen years as the new guard real estate comes through, they’re not going to know any different.
“That’s just where they’re going to go for their capital and it’s going to be very standard,” she said. “Not too similar from the fact from now, people buy stocks and bonds on e-trade and don’t think twice about it and I think that’s eventually where the market will go.”
According to Realty Mogul, Helman has underwritten over $5 billion of real estate, is a Certified Wealth Strategist and holds Series 7 and Series 63 licenses.
In her free time, Helman said her hobbies are SoulCyle and foreign travel and has lived in Beijing, China; Barcelona, Spain; and Tokyo, Japan.
