Property crowdfunding company, Realty Africa, has 100 local developers that are about to meet the requirements for their properties to appear on their website.
BY TATIRA ZWINOIRA
The crowdfunding website is targeting local developers who are seeking investment and allows them to advertise their projects online to a global network of investors.
Realty Africa Zimbabwe country director Lindah Mbidzo told Standardbusiness last week that they had registered investors, the majority of them international.
“Investors are already registering on our platforms since we went live at the beginning of March. Investors are saying they are interested and are saying ‘show us the projects’.
A lot of the investors that are registered are coming through the developed world because they are more familiar with the crowdsourcing concept and they are actually leading other local investors. We got investors from every continent as we speak,” Mbidzo said.
“There is a huge demand for funding in the property development market, especially with upcoming developers, given the difficulties they face with accessing traditional funding options. We currently have just under 100 registered developers working to meet our minimum world class requirements to apply for funding through our platform.”
Mbidzo said the investors included funds managers, asset managers, financial advisors or high net worth people and even people who use their saved up money in pension funds to invest.
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Realty Africa came on board when investment into property projects through traditional means went down due to the depressed economic environment.
Currently, Realty Africa’s Zimbabwe portfolio runs into millions of dollars.
Massolutions, a research firm specialising in the crowdsourcing and crowdfunding industries, says crowdfunding in Africa grew by 101% in 2014.
Property analyst Washington Musiiwa said getting investment for properties through crowdfunding was a sound idea as the real estate industry was not well documented and lacked exposure.
“So you realise that with information like this, Realty Africa has a database to inform someone who is here or away and can give them information on the different projects without necessarily employing someone to do the job for them here. So you find that these guys [foreign investors] can come here and help someone in his office in New York or London to have an idea of what they really want,” Musiiwa said.
Of the total $16,2 billion raised in 2014 from the global crowdfunding websites, real estate contributed 6,25% or $1,01 billion.
