Rethink Real Estate. For Good.

Crowdfunding

Local Spaces. Crowdfunded.

Crowdfunding can take many forms — from donation-based to investment-based, supporting small and large businesses or bricks and mortar and even civic projects.

We’ve always loved Spacehive, the earliest civic crowdfunding platform to emerge, founded by Chris Gourlay in London.

Spacehive helps locals and communities bring their ideas to life through crowdfunding. As the world’s first civic-centric crowdfunding platform it has grown into a platform that has helped to deliver 1,950 projects across the United Kingdowm. When an individual or community lists a project on the platform, Spacehive provides matching funds from councils, foundations and companies, with £3.4m currently available from various partners.

To date Spacehive has raised £26m through the platform with a success rate of 55 percent for projects listed. As well as bringing a plethora of ideas to life these projects have created jobs, seen trees planted, walls painted, public squares created, community centers built and improved, sculptures installed, and phone boxes converted to mini art galleries.

Projects raising funds right now include solar panels for a 152-year-old open-air swimming pool; a playground redevelopment; restoration of a Community Center floor; the conversion of a double-decker bus as a community space; a new athletics track; a Moonraking Festival; a croquet clubhouse and a second movie screen for a local cinema.

“We envision a world where everyone can shape their local area to create places that make people happy, proud and prosperous.” says Chris. “We want to make it easy for people to improve their local area. Our technology brings together people, businesses, government and foundations to collaboratively fund projects that communities want.”

If you want to learn more about Spacehive from Chris Gourlay, listen in to this podcast.

Image of Spachive website

100% Community.

Tosha Wilson was born in the community she serves and is a proud graduate of Evanston Township High School in Evanston, Illinois. She received her bachelor’s degree from Illinois State University in Communications and her master’s degree in Children’s Law and Police from Loyola University School of Law.

In 2018, Tosha Wilson and Jacqui White had the idea of opening The Laundry Cafe (TLC), a laundromat that incorporates comfortable seating, fresh brewed coffee, a book room and a yoga and meditation space. While trying to turn their business idea into a reality, they ran into an issue with acquiring capital. They were turned down for the small business loans they applied for. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Tosha said: “Two professionals with decent jobs (and) good credit scores, and the bank basically told us, ‘You don’t have enough experience. I just thought, `How in the world do you beat the red tape to get a dream to unfold?’”

In frustration Tosha founded Boosting Black Business, an internet-based community group that helped raise over $100,000 for Black owned start-up companies throughout Chicagoland in 2020. Heidi Stevens of The Chicago Tribune, named her as one of the “10 People that Gave Me Hope in 2020.”

This grew into her current role, as a co-developer of an $8 million project in Evanston called The Aux, which is dedicated to healing, wellness, racial equity and entrepreneurship. The Laundry Café will open as one of the businesses inside The Aux. 

Tosha is deeply involved in the Evanston community and has been a part of many outreach programs for youth, coaches middle school girls’ basketball, and is currently a board member with two great Evanston organizations. She is also a police Sergeant with the Evanston Police Department and has been with the department for over 20 years.  She became the first Evanston born African American woman to be a Sergeant with the Evanston Police Department following her great-Uncle William Logan Jr. who was the first African American from Evanston to do so. In her spare time, sleeping, playing with her puppy, catching up with friends and watching TV is what she does to relax. She is also the mother of her two sisters, who she adopted 21 years ago, and they have challenged her along the way to be a better person, sister, mom, community member and police officer.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:15] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone. And speaking of building better, I’m very excited to share that my company, Small Change, is now raising capital through a community round that is open to the public. Small Change is a leading equity crowdfunding platform for impact investment in real estate. For as little as $250, anyone 18 and over can invest in Small Change, helping to fuel our growth as we disrupt the old boys club of capital that routinely ignores so many qualified people and projects. Please visit wefunder.com/smallchange to review the full details of our raise and to make an investment if you can. And remember, investing is risky. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

Eve: [00:01:50] Today, I’m talking with Tosha Wilson. Born in the city of Evanston, Illinois, and now a police officer there. In 2018, Tosha and her cousin, Jackie White, had the idea of opening the Laundry Café, a laundromat that incorporates comfortable seating, fresh brewed coffee, a book room and a yoga and meditation space. But finding a loan defeated them. They were turned down for every small business loan they applied to. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Tosha said, “two professionals with decent jobs and good credit scores and the bank basically told us, you don’t have enough experience. I just thought, how in the world do you beat the red tape to get a dream to unfold?” In frustration, Tosha founded Boosting Black Business, an Internet based community group that helped raise over $100,000 for Black-owned startup companies throughout Chicagoland in 2020. Heidi Stephens of the Chicago Tribune named her as one of the ten people that gave me hope in 2020. This grew into her current role as a co-developer of an $8 million project in Evanston called The Aux, planned as a 100% community owned Black business hub. You’ll want to hear more.

Eve: [00:03:26] If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast or head over to rethinkrealestateforgood.co and subscribe. You’ll be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:03:49] Hi, Tosha. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Tosha Wilson: [00:03:52] Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Eve: [00:03:55] I know you’re a police officer in the city of Evanston, Illinois, and that you’ve been plotting your next act. I also read that you’ve been heard to say, beyond being a police officer, I’m a Black woman and I understand social injustice. I wanted to ask you what social injustice means to you, just as a starting point.

Tosha: [00:04:16] I mean, from a starting point, I have been a police officer for about 20 years. I’m a sergeant now. But watching my parents both suffer addictions in the crack cocaine epidemic through the nineties, starting in the late eighties. So, I could just see how my parents were kind of criminalized versus just say, people who have meth addictions now and it’s considered medical and not criminal. So, there are just different aspects of how I see the world from these different bubbles and how those things try to, they actually pushed me to be a better police officer, understanding social ills, whether it’s how we got involved in a Laundry Cafe and how it turned into the Aux due to trying to get loans and being denied and. You know, schooling.

Eve: [00:05:10] There’s many, many aspects to this.

Tosha: [00:05:12] Many aspects, yeah.

Eve: [00:05:13] That touch your lives. I’m going to ask you about this, as well. So, what does community mean to you then?

Tosha: [00:05:20] Community means everything to me. Like I feel like we are in this age of social media. There’s nothing communal about it. Like we’re not touching each other, we’re not hanging with each other, we’re not laughing together. We’re sending laughing emojis, but we don’t feel like that connection. And then I feel like we have lost that. And community used to be, if Eve was my neighbor and I was outside doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing, Eve had permission to say, Tosha, get in here and let me talk to you, and everyone would support you.

Eve: [00:05:55] And more than that, we actually had front porches, right, back then?

Tosha: [00:05:58] Yes. Yes. And we’d wave at people driving by. And I don’t even know my neighbors that way. It’s terrible.

Eve: [00:06:04] Oh, that’s awful. Yeah. Well, I don’t either. So, yeah. So, you have been plotting your next act. And the first part of that was the Laundry Cafe. What is the Laundry Cafe?

Tosha: [00:06:19] Well, the Laundry Cafe was something I saw, like, just kind of surfing the internet, not looking for any business ideas. Let me, mind you, I was not looking for business ideas. But I saw some laundromats in Europe that were just super cool. They were like the spot, not like these nasty, bug infested, no one’s maintaining them sort of laundry where you go in there to clean your clothes in a dirty place. And I’m like, Can you imagine if you could just do like this mundane, silly chore, but you could kind of hang out with people, drink coffee, sit on your computer, do homework? And I’m like, Ooh, what if we did, like both? And so, I had been thinking about it, and then my poor cousin, I just dragged her right on into this. And thankfully she was supportive. She became my partner. But we decided, like, our community needed this place, like we had so many places to go to as a kid to just hang out. And we thought, why not Evanston? Why not now?

Eve: [00:07:18] So, in building this business, which isn’t open yet, we’re going to get to that later, what are the challenges you’ve been faced with?

Tosha: [00:07:26] Well, when we thought, Let’s make it an LLC, let’s get started. Let’s make this a real thing, we’ll need some laundry equipment, obviously. So, we were willing to go to the bank. Throw our Social Security numbers on paper and go for this loan for equipment. And the bank said no. And we’re thinking, well, why not? We have the collateral, we have the credit scores, we have jobs. You know, we’re secure in so many things. And they said, well, you don’t have laundry experience. We’re like, Oh, is that is that the end? I’m like, we’re not washing the clothes. The machines are. But, you know, I think we have pretty good customer service, you know, being a police officer.

Eve: [00:08:10] It’s all about customer service, right.

Tosha: [00:08:12] It’s a customer service business. And I’m thinking, we do this all day in the worst situation, and I don’t think laundry would top what we deal with. So, we didn’t understand and it kind of got out that we were denied and the community swarmed and they were disappointed, and they brought the story to other people. And that’s kind of how we started surfing our way towards The Aux and the connections to different people.

Eve: [00:08:40] So, just to finish up that story, did you ever find a bank or is that still out there?

Tosha: [00:08:46] No, we never found a bank. We never went back. We were kind of…

Eve: [00:08:51] Very disheartening.

Tosha: [00:08:52] Yeah, we were just discouraged and we’re like, okay, let’s take a step back. Maybe this is not what we’re supposed to be doing. Maybe this is not the time. And that’s kind of where we just left it. But I did create, you know, a little community group on Facebook Boosting Black Business. Because I felt that during the pandemic, if we’re being told no, other people are being told no. So, I was able to raise like $110,000 for nine other businesses just sitting in this room saying, I want to help someone else, and the community, that’s why I believe in community. When you have the credibility and community, they show up for you. And they showed up for me and they helped boost a lot of businesses and it was really cool.

Eve: [00:09:40] That’s really fabulous. So, but then there’s a really bigger story here, and that’s what we’re getting into. And that’s the Laundry Cafe’s planned home, because along the way, you met someone planning something much bigger for Black businesses. So, where is the Laundry Cafe going to be located and what’s it called? Tell me about it.

Tosha: [00:10:02] So, the Laundry Cafe will be inside a bigger facility called The Aux. And we met Laurie Lazar and Julie Kaufman. And when I say we, it was myself and a couple of friends. We were sitting in a restaurant, and I promise you, I don’t know these women from anyone else in the world. We’re just sitting there. I’m eating, I’m about to put a sandwich in my mouth and someone says, oh, that’s Tosha Wilson and that’s Tiffini Holmes, who’s another co-developer with the Aux, and we’d like to introduce you and then go, Wait, did someone tell you about us this morning? And sure enough, someone had called me earlier that day to say, I want to introduce you to Laurie and Julie. And I said, okay, you know, whatever, whenever. 11 hours later, we just kind of literally physically bumped into each other. And we have not been apart in the last two years. And along the way we came up with the Aux, which is short for the Auxiliary Chord. And that’s why you have this little thing here.

Eve: [00:11:06] She’s got a, we’re not going to do a video. But Tasha is wearing a t-shirt with a nice logo.

Tosha: [00:11:14] The logo with the Aux cord.

Eve: [00:11:16] Yes.

Tosha: [00:11:17] Because we, as people, have to plug in, you have to plug back into each other, plug back into just connecting. And that’s kind of like the symbolism of the Aux cord and what it always has done for us before Bluetooth and all we always had to plug in.

Eve: [00:11:32] Yes, it’s true. So, the Aux cord. So, what are you planning? This group of people who are now, who now got together two years ago?

Tosha: [00:11:41] Well, what we’re planning is a business hub for healing, wellness and racial equity. So, we’re using real estate. We have purchased a building that will be located in Evanston, Illinois, and that building will help us empower our community. So, through equity sharing, they will now, soon to be owners in what we’re building. We don’t want to just build this and kind of disappear, but we want people to know that if you have shares in this, if you have equity in this now, you want it to succeed. You want to come there, you want to wash clothes there, there’s a workout facility and Wellbeing Chicago. You can get culinary classes from Chef Q’s kitchen, get your hair done and embrace your crown, wash your clothes at the Laundry Cafe, do yoga with the Growing Season, go to a business class with Sunshine Enterprises. So, we have created a circle of things that people can come enjoy and we will have pop up shop. So hey, if you’re that person who just cannot afford the brick and mortar right now, you know, we’re going to provide a safe space for the community to come and buy your products and build your confidence and show you how great you are. And that’s our plan.

Eve: [00:12:58] That’s the big audacious plan. And the building is a warehouse, right? A vacant warehouse that you’ll be converting.

Tosha: [00:13:05] Yes. It was a stinky vegetable cleaning factory. So, when you go in there, you’ll still get hit with that smell. Thank God they’re starting some moves in there. But they used to clean potatoes. And, you know, anything you can think of that went out to the local restaurants, but they needed more space. So, they outgrew this 16,500 square foot building. And it was sitting there for a few years. People tried to buy it. It’s really oddly designed in a very odd space. We’re going to call it the Hidden Gem, because you have to look for it. But we walked in, and I want you to know, we ignored this building for quite some time. We had a previous building, but we don’t know what really happened. But we were going to make a deal. And then we went into the building and shortly thereafter the owner says, I don’t want to sell it to you.

Eve: [00:13:58] Oh.

Tosha: [00:13:59] And real estate in this capacity is very hard to find. So, we were really shook by that and we had to kind of get back on board and find somewhere else. And that’s how we landed in this facility.

Eve: [00:14:11] So, this stinky warehouse. Walk me through the spaces that you’re going to create, because you’re going to have to really rip the guts out of it and start over, right?

Tosha: [00:14:21] Yeah. So, we’re going to rip some guts for sure. We’re going to take some things and rearrange it. But overall, we have a laundromat, which will be us. You can get your hair done at Embrace Your Crown. There’s the Small Business Academy, Sunshine Enterprises, which I am a graduate of, my partner, Jackie, is a graduate of. The other co-developer, Tiffini Holmes, is a graduate and instructor at Sunshine Enterprises. We just created a great deal between Sunshine Enterprises, Northwestern University and the City of Evanston to make sure we have that incubation space that is supported by strong entities. Chef Q is a CNN hero. She fed so many people during the pandemic and CNN recognized her. And she’ll be in her kitchen, in her commercial kitchen in the back of the building. And she also has the hidden dinner.

Eve: [00:15:22] Oh, yeah. The private, little private dinner pop up.

Tosha: [00:15:25] I went in, and it was fantastic. The Growing Season, which is our fiscal agent for the Aux right now, and that is with Laurie Lazar. And she is about meditation and mindfulness and all the great things that just bring you back to a space of relaxation. And then there’s Wellbeing Chicago, where they will have clinicians for mental illness, therapy for self-esteem, working out, anything you can think of that completes the whole being, Wellbeing Chicago is focused on that. And so, and then we have pop up spaces for.

Eve: [00:16:08] For other businesses.

Tosha: [00:16:10] Yeah absolutely.

Eve: [00:16:11] And what about office space? Do you have co-working spaces as well?

Tosha: [00:16:15] Absolutely.

Eve: [00:16:15] So it’s really a complete business center and are all the businesses are going to be Black owned? Is that the goal?

Tosha: [00:16:23] That is the goal. But we’re also understanding of demographics, how demographics change. Being aware of what’s changing in Evanston, we’re totally aware of that. I think our upbringing in Evanston showed us that type of realization 70 years ago. So, our focus is intentional. I’m learning in this process that sometimes it feels odd to say that your focus is Black intended, and I never thought that that would be like a subject matter that I was kind of stuck on because I’ve gone to Hispanic communities where there’s a strong community presence and you love it. You want to be there; you want to eat their food and buy their products. You know, in Chicago, you can go to any neighborhood and it’s a strong base. And then as we’re trying to create this base, people say, well, are you going to have other cultures in there? And then you want to say, Yes, of course. But our intention is, you know, Black-owned businesses. Yeah, absolutely.

Eve: [00:17:30] Yeah, I understand that. It sounds like you love diversity, but really the point of this is to support Black-owned businesses that don’t get it, that don’t get a chance in other ways. Right.

Tosha: [00:17:42] I mean, when do you stop and are you able to say, you know, I’m going to go over to this neighborhood where I know there’s a strong Black presence where I can get the food and the culture, and I don’t know a place.

Eve: [00:17:53] Or even just support a Black owned business, right?

Tosha: [00:17:56] Yeah, I don’t know a place. Yeah. So, it’s important.

Eve: [00:17:59] That’s great. So, what’s the team? Who’s the team doing this?

Tosha: [00:18:04] Oh, the team. Oh, our lovely team. So, The Aux team is myself, Tiffini Holmes, Jacqueline White, Gabori Partee, Lori Laser, we’re the co developers and we have a great support system and Juli Kaufmann from Fix Development out of Milwaukee and her partner Jessie Tobin, who’s also with Fix Development and she’s actually from Evanston. So, the weird thing is, we didn’t know Jessie and then once we met, we’re like, hey, did you go to school with us? You know, sort of thing. So, it was great. So, that’s our team.

Eve: [00:18:40] They really are pretty amazing, Fix Development. I’ve worked with a lot of developers and they’re pretty extraordinary.

Tosha: [00:18:47] Yes.

Eve: [00:18:47] So, the really interesting thing to me is the financing structure, which I’d love to talk to you about, because, as you know, we have a crowdfunding platform. And what I’ve been seeing over the last year is more and more developers coming to us playing with this idea of community ownership. And I would say the Aux is the first one that really, really gets at it in a wholehearted way. So, tell us about how this $8 Million project is going to be financed.

Tosha: [00:19:19] Well, due to inflation, it went from 6 to 8.

Eve: [00:19:22] Yeah, that’s…

Tosha: [00:19:23] Same structure. So, we used community-based funds, meaning like state, federal, city backing. So, we got $1,000,000 from the city of Evanston, $1.5 million from the state of Illinois.

Eve: [00:19:38] These are grants, right? They’re not loans they’re grants.

Tosha: [00:19:40] Absolutely. We are not interested in loans.

Eve: [00:19:43] These must be around job creation, these grants, right?

Tosha: [00:19:46] Yes. Yes, absolutely. So, there were ARPA funds. There were things to get the base of business back going. So, that was pretty much our angle and saying that a lot of Black businesses lost during COVID and we need to rebuild and be strong. We’re raising money by using state, federal and city funding. So, we have received funds from that. Then we’ve also had strong backing with philanthropic donors who support this project and move forward. And then we also have a section where we’re going to use crowdfunding for equity ownership in the building, and all three of those had to be strong. So far, we’ve raised a nice chunk of change from our overall 8 million and we’re very proud of our endeavor because in last year around this time we were like, what are we doing? And in that 365 days we worked pretty hard and we’re doing very well, and we think we can pull it together in this last stretch of equity ownership and additional philanthropic funds and the state and city, they’re still supporting us.

Eve: [00:21:01] That’s fantastic. So, my understanding is that anyone who invests is going to have a vote in the management of the building, and those investors will eventually own the building 100% so the philanthropy and those donors and the state and the feds won’t have any ownership say. So, you’re going to be a self-managed self-owned really community owned project which is astounding.

Tosha: [00:21:32] That is correct. That is correct. Thank you.

Eve: [00:21:35] It’s really pretty fabulous. And where are you in, like, building. And I mean, what’s the plan? The timeline.

Tosha: [00:21:43] Well, actually, later today, of all things, we’re meeting with the architects for our final final. We always get that email that says final, drawings and moving on to the construction. So, once we get the permits going with the city. and that’s always a challenge…

Eve: [00:22:03] Always difficult, yeah.

Tosha: [00:22:04] Yeah, anyone who knows, and the city of Evanston is very diligent in how they make sure whether it’s curb cuts to where this tree is going to be planted. They are very diligent, which makes the city beautiful. But that is our next phase in just getting the process going. They’ve been testing the roof and the sewers and everything and we are done with that and we’re so happy.

Eve: [00:22:28] That’s pretty fabulous. So, what’s the goal for groundbreaking and what’s the goal for opening the doors and moving in and for quitting your job?

Tosha: [00:22:40] That’s an even longer story. We’re quitting the job, like groundbreaking we’re looking for the end of this year. So, end of this month into November, we plan on having the groundbreaking. Our goal is to open a year from now around Thanksgiving-ish time. We know it’s kind of probably hard to open during cold winters in Chicago and the Chicagoland area, but that is our goal right now, hoping that permits go through smoothly and we can get the process going.

Tosha: [00:23:13] It would be great to have a Christmas like opening festival. Wouldn’t it be fabulous?

Tosha: [00:23:18] That kind of would be cool. That would be nice.

Eve: [00:23:20] What’s your ultimate goal with this building and is it the last one this group will build or are you already thinking ahead?

Tosha: [00:23:29] We thank the process for making us co-developers, we’ve learned a lot. And do I think I could do this again to my partners? When you’re in the middle of it, you’re like, absolutely not. But I think when we see these doors open, the people happy, businesses thriving, community, they’re laughing, engaged, supportive. I feel like, yes, we could do it again and Fix Development has given us a great blueprint for that. Things that we can fix, things that we can make better, things that we’ll do just the same. So, I do think our overall goal is to win, you know, just win, and let kids see that. I know a place, you know what I mean? I know a place. We went to Sherman, Phoenix, which is one of Fix Development’s projects in Milwaukee, and that’s the old BMO Bank that was burned down and, after a police officer shot a young black man and there was a lot of protesting and civil unrest. And after this building burns down, they recreate this building.

Tosha: [00:24:33] And I walked in, Eve, and I could not believe what I saw. And I’m from, you know, a city that claims to be the most progressive city in America. And when I walked into this place, I had never seen anything like it. Where Black businesses were everywhere. And it was love. It was, I don’t, every face imaginable was sitting down and just being one. The police officers are sitting down eating. You know, there are police stations across the street. So, they came over to get coffee. You know, they are doing it right in Milwaukee at the Sherman Phoenix. And why can’t we do that the same way? Why does it have to be something I’ve never seen before? Why does it have to be something you’ve never seen before? So, we want to make it normal. Our goal is to say places like the Aux and the Sherman Phoenix are, you know, it’s like the other businesses in the world. We’re just business and good business.

Eve: [00:25:32] I love the idea of making it normal. I think that’s…

Tosha: [00:25:35] Yeah, I want to make it normal.

Eve: [00:25:36] …really, what we’re aiming for.

Tosha: [00:25:37] That’s our goal.

Eve: [00:25:38] I can’t wait to see it. I hope I get invited to the opening.

Tosha: [00:25:41] Oh, God, yes, you will be there.

Eve: [00:25:45] And good luck with your fundraising. It’s a really fabulous project and I’m excited we’re hosting it.

Tosha: [00:25:52] Thank you.

Eve: [00:25:53] Thanks so much.

Tosha: [00:25:53] We’re thankful. So thankful.

Eve: [00:26:02] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. You can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media or leaving a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing yourself head on over to wefunder.com/smallchange, where you can invest directly in Small Change and our mission to democratize capital formation to create impact in commercial real estate development. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music, and a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Tosha Wilson

Creative Homies.

Adewale Agboola (pronounced “WAH-Lay”) and his partner, Cyrus Coleman have purchased the historic Enterprise Building in downtown Portland originally constructed in 1905. The 20,000 square foot building is located at 433 NW 4th Avenue, Portland, Oregon. They plan to repurpose the 20,000 square foot building located at 433 NW 4th Avenue, into a creative hub dedicated to the BIPOC (Black and Indigenous People Of Color) community in Portland and are calling it the Creative Homies Enterprise Building (the “Building”).

Adewale believes there is a critical need for such a gathering/work space in the market for the growing BIPOC community in Portland. A series of curated spaces are being designed, ranging from a subterranean music bar and lounge, to a museum-style gallery, cafe/wine bar and boutique store, a full production studio space, with equipment rental and creative space available for use by the Portland creative community along with rental lodging for studio guests.

Adewale Agboola is a photographic artist by trade. His work is emotionally driven, capturing the mood and demeanor of his subjects in powerful photographic images. He is well-versed in understanding human emotion, art + storytelling and not afraid to express his strong emotions through his work.

He attended Mankato state university for Aviation and studio art. After being recruited to travel to China one summer to photograph lifestyle, Adewale became fascinated with the art of photography and creative directing. Now, after a 15- year career in the creative industry, he has worked with clients such as Nike, Target, Adidas, Wolf and Shepherd, redwing, RedBull, General Mills, Invisalign, Lil Nas X, Gronk, Bon Iver, The national, Chastity brown, Indigo girls, Ani Difranco and the list goes on.

Adewale is fascinated by people and has a genuine love for everyone he meets. His superpower is bringing like-minded people together. His ability to communicate and encapsulate moments from extreme to intimate is born of a deep and natural understanding of emotion. His photographs speak for themselves because of the beauty and truth they lay bare.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:07] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone. And speaking of building better, I’m very excited to share that my company, Small Change, is now raising capital through a community round that is open to the public. Small Change is a leading equity crowdfunding platform for impact investment in real estate. For as little as $250, anyone 18 and over can invest in Small Change, helping to fuel our growth as we disrupt the old boys club of capital that routinely ignores so many qualified people and projects. Please visit wefunder.com/smallchange to review the full details of our raise and to make an investment if you can. And remember, investing is risky. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

Eve: [00:01:38] Today I’m talking with Adewale Agboola. Adewale is an astounding photographer with many Fortune 500 clients. As a Black man, he is in a minority in that profession. Only about 5% of professional photographers are Black. He’s also a minority in his hometown, Portland, Oregon. Only about 13% of the population in Portland is Black. But he and his partner, Cyrus Coleman, another successful artist who also lives in Portland, started hatching a plan to create a small art gallery and meeting space aimed at people just like them. Last year, they closed on a 20,000 square foot building in downtown Portland. Not so small at all. And have some very big plans to turn it into a creative hub catering to BIPOC creatives. They call themselves the Creative Homies. You’ll want to hear more.

Eve: [00:02:41] If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do, share this podcast or head over to rethinkrealestateforgood.co and subscribe. You’ll be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:03:07] Hello, Adewale. Thank you so much for joining me.

Adewale Agboola: [00:03:10] Hey Eve, how are you doing?

Eve: [00:03:12] Your career path has fired both sides of your brain, first in aviation and then in your amazing work as a photographer. Truly amazing, beautiful work. How did photography take this lead in your life?

Adewale: [00:03:26] Photography, I think it became a place where I could express my emotions and express who I am as an artist. Earlier on in my uni days, I was really fascinated by the art of photography and just in general, the art of art. I mean, coming from a very technical engineering and like aviation background, I was kind of just blindsided by the art of art. So, I started shooting for my school newspaper and that kind of led into more involvement in creativity and more involvement in art. By the time I was junior year, during my uni years, I was recruited by Nat Geo to go to China for three months and travel with them and just photograph lifestyle. And this was like almost like an internship kind of things, but it was almost like the first time I’ve ever faced a world bigger than mine and so completely different and so beautiful. And I was just enamored by the culture that everything in China was like, almost like a sensory overload. Like, it just woke me up to this thing. And by the time that I came back home to school, I was gone. I just went through school, finished my degree and finished my pre-flight and professional flight certification. And I basically told my parents the last day I graduated, I’m going to move to Chicago and be a photo editor. And it goes.

Eve: [00:05:02] And like all parents, they were probably horrified.

Adewale: [00:05:06] Very, very, very horrified. It was pretty hard for them to kind of take that in because I’ve just spent like almost six years of my life flying.

Eve: [00:05:14] Yeah.

Adewale: [00:05:14] Spent a great load of money to do something so minute, but also something that I love, you know?

Eve: [00:05:23] So, they must be pretty proud now because your photographs are gorgeous. They’re just amazing.

Adewale: [00:05:28] They’re very happy now. Now it’s like, oh well, you’re not asking us for money, like how you can do everything on your own. I think they’re very happy now. They’re very, they’re very like, oh great, you can make money. That’s good.

Eve: [00:05:43] Well, that’s what every parent worries about, that their child isn’t going to starve on the streets, I suppose so. So, then I have to ask, what are the challenges you’ve being confronted with as a Black photographer in a majority white profession? I’ve read that there’s a very small percentage of Black photographers, something like 5%.

Adewale: [00:06:01] Yeah, I mean. When I started out, I didn’t have anyone to really walk me through how this is going to pan out, right? I had this ambition that I wanted to make it and work as a photographer, but something I never realized is you have to play the game, right? Like, you have to take all the clients. You have to go through all the seminars. You have to go through all the networking events and all of that. But also, I never had an agent. Now I have an agent to represent me. So, I never really knew how to really market myself except like on Facebook and Instagram. Well, Instagram was not even around during that time, It just was Facebook. So, it was really, really, really hard for me to really, like, make strides in any way until basically I just started randomly going to different agencies, I would look up ad agencies, and I would talk to a creative director like, hey, do you mind if I show you my work? And I started doing that. I think I kind of told myself I need to do three a week, to talk to three different creative directors or someone on an agency a week. And I would do that constantly until I got my first, like, my first big break. And once that happened, I think my first big break was a five different campaign with 3M, which is a massive company. And for the first time in my life, I saw like this big check. I was like, oh, my God, I couldn’t believe like a photographer could make this. And then as that kind of went through, I started showing those work and that landed me my second work and that landed me my second work until I got to like, photographing for Target and now Nike and Adi. So, it’s been really, really great. But also, being Black in a field that is really slim. For example, during the uprising, the George Floyd era of what happened, it was really important that Black Voices gets to narrate those events. It was really hard for me to see that go through, having the white photographers photograph, almost like Black grief, which is really hard. So, for me, I took it upon myself. I mean. I think one of the biggest quotes as a photograph was, I forgot who said this, pick up a camera, photograph the things that are going on in your community. That’s how you get noticed by anything. Once you’re out there shooting the interesting thing going on in your community and you’re giving it, you’re doing it with gratitude and you’re doing it with empathy, you’re doing it with grace. I mean, everything will come to you by nature. Everything will come to you easily. And I think that’s what I did during that time. I photographed what was going on in my community. And I told the story through images. You know, people always ask me, what do you do for a living? I simply just say, I see for a living. My job is to capture a moment to eternity. My job is to take moments and just put it in history as what they simply are. In my life, make tangible. Really, so…

Eve: [00:09:20] So then, I’m going to ask a leading question. So, you live in Portland. What’s it like to be a creative in Portland? A Black creative in Portland today?

Adewale: [00:09:30] It’s quite tough, actually. It’s I think for me, I would think artists should be more, given more opportunities here in Portland that are of color. But, generally speaking, Portland is a very, very white city. And people will give work to who they know and what they know.

Eve: [00:09:54] And what they’re comfortable with, right.

Adewale: [00:09:56] What they’re comfortable with, and people don’t really go out of their comfort zone to really search for great artists or great black artists. It’s usually, oh, we’ve used that person, let’s use that person again. Where you could actually challenge yourself and look at who is around and who lives in Portland, Oregon. It’s a really hard town, which is like one of the reasons why we wanted to do what we’re doing.

Eve: [00:10:21] Well, let’s talk about that, because we haven’t talked about that yet. So, you got together with your partner, Cyrus Coleman, who’s also a very talented artist, recently and purchased a commercial building in downtown Portland. So, I want to hear about how that came about. But tell us about what you plan to do with the building.

Adewale: [00:10:41] Yeah. I mean, Cyrus and I started this idea, like, we were looking at a 400, 500 square foot studio to just have a space where we can create our work, where he could paint, and I could just turn it a photo studio. But also, we wanted a place where our friends can come to and just hang out and also just like, kick it with us while we do our work or they’re doing their work. And this idea kind of just started snowballing into multiple facets of things. You know, Cyrus’s family, are a music legacy family, and they’ve got this crazy tie to music legends. And I think that was like, really amazing. It’s like, oh my God, we could have a block party in the summer in this 400, 500 square foot building.

Eve: [00:11:29] As long as I’m invited.

Adewale: [00:11:32] Well, we kept coming up with this idea and something really hit me. I realized that there isn’t a lot of Black creatives in town, at least not enough that are showing theirselves or showing their work or being advertised. I started realizing that even looking at my work. So, we got together with Jessie Burke, who her and her husband, runs the Society Hotel here in Portland. And after we talked about our pitch deck and everything and kind of presented her this idea of what we wanted to really bring to Portland and how we want to unify creative people in town together and make something better for our community. And she basically asked the question, would you like to rent, or would you like to create generational wealth? And we know it’s to do with generational wealth. Of course, we definitely don’t want to rent because we’ve just gone through this two-months long campaign of trying to find a place and everything is just a bit too much. So, Jessie was like, well, I’ve got some units I can show you and I’ve got a building that you can buy. So, they started showing us these rental places that we can, which were all wonderful. But Cyrus and I had this inkling in the back of our head, we wanted to see this building. And the minute we walked into this building, we realized, it’s like, we can’t go back.

Eve: [00:13:02] And it was 20,000 square feet instead of 500 hundred.

Adewale: [00:13:07] Yeah. We couldn’t go back. We’re now stuck in this thing. And we’ve got to figure out how to acquire this building before anything happens. So, all of the inspiration comes from just my background of being a photographer, his background of being an illustrator and a designer. And also, we love wine, we love bringing people together, we love bringing Black people together, but we also love bringing all the Black people together, of creative, in a place where we can all talk and all laugh comfortably. Where no one is looking over our shoulder or no one is telling us what we can do or what we can’t do. And the idea is also to foster creative mind and to foster people’s outlet. You know, I would just be open minded in a place that could be of shelter, a place that could be like an oasis for people. So, we ended up acquiring the building in December 2021, and we started this conversation in June 2021. So…

Eve: [00:14:13] That was pretty quick, that was pretty quick.

Adewale: [00:14:15] Talk about reality kind of coming to fruition. We were very, very happy and very honored that Jessie and Jonathan saw something in us and they, kind of, went on this trip with us and it’s been an amazing ride and it’s still an amazing ride. There’s still, there’s bumpy days, there’s great days, there’s bad days, there’s good days. And you take it as it is and you go and you wake up the next morning and you go again and do it.

Eve: [00:14:39] So, just for our listeners. So, Jesse and Jonathan are a couple in in Portland who’ve been very successful with two hotels that they own and other real estate developments. And during the pandemic they decided that I suppose they needed to give back and they have developed this non-profit where they’re working with, I think the way Jonathan said it was to help shift real estate assets into the hands of the BIPOC community. And they do this with a limited number of clients, right? And you guys were, I think, some of the earliest. So, it’s a great story.

Adewale: [00:15:20] We’re also the one with the biggest undertaking, I think. I think our building is very ambitious and it’s also very well needed and it’s something that, you know, you can really talk to people and people just connect with it because it’s been something that has been wanted. We’re so surprised that Nike and Adidas and all the other companies that are around Portland hasn’t really thought about something like this for all the creatives that they bring into the city. Because one of the biggest issues Portland is having is losing great talent. They’re not able to keep them here because it’s not New York or it’s not L.A. Or it’s not London or any big metropolis. So, the idea is if we can foster a building where all of these people that are coming in could actually build family, build friendship, build all those things, It’s.

Eve: [00:16:14] Maybe even professional networks, right?

Adewale: [00:16:16] Yeah. The possibilities are infinite on what could happen then. So, yeah.

Eve: [00:16:21] So, what’s your big audacious goal for the building? You’ve got 20,000 square feet. What are you going to do with it?

Adewale: [00:16:28] I’m hoping it’s forever everlasting, really. It just grows. But, at the moment, the basement is going to be a jazz club, which is something that is very well needed in Portland as the couple that we had here has shut down. So, a lovely jazz club. And then we’re going to have a private speakeasy room in the basement too, and a beautiful kitchen. And then, that’s the basement of the building, which is also another 5000 square feet, which is, oh, insane. The first floor is going to be a big gallery room and a wine bar, a coffee shop and a point-of-sale place for every artist, but also for merchandise from whatever show is there or whatever we want to sell that it’s going to be that spot there. And then the second floor is going to be a full makerspace. This is a dream artists space. You can come in, you can paint, you can sew. There’s going to be a podcast room, there’s going to be a printing center, there’s going to be a screen-printing center too. So, it houses everything, any creative needs. And also, when you’re done with everything from the maker floor and you want to do a production and photograph your product and photograph everything, there’s a full production studio that is going to cater on the same level as Nuke Studio, Acme Studio. All of those places in LA, so people like Nike and Adidas and King and on running can find a place to actually shoot product and be present in Portland, Oregon. So, we don’t have to always keep flying everyone out to New York, flying everyone out to L.A. There’s a premiere studio in town and you can get that done here.

Eve: [00:18:13] So, what’s like the best outcome that you can imagine with this building?

Adewale: [00:18:18] Oh, man, the best.

Eve: [00:18:21] Am I asking too hard questions.

Adewale: [00:18:23] No, the best outcome for this building would be for it not to be used to the full potential of what it could be. I want people to see what it could be, and I want people to forever keep coming in to just work and produce work that are unparalleled, that are great, that are just revered by other artists. So, one of the best outcomes I really want for this building is I really want it to be a great oasis for artists. I want kids from high school to come in once a month to learn what it feels like to be an artist, to learn what you can become as an artist, because I wasn’t given that as my younger self. But also, it’s elevated and it’s Black excellent. It’s going to be something different from what people are used to in Portland. It’s going to have some African flair, some European flair. It’s going to have things from the world in it that I think everyone would be really stunned. But one thing I do also really want is I wanted to always, forever evolve. I don’t want it to stay stagnant. I don’t want it to stay still. I wanted to keep evolving and keep moving as we all grow.

Eve: [00:19:39] So, how far along are you in the process? You have the building. You need to renovate it, right?

Adewale: [00:19:45] Yeah. So, we’ve just won the occupancy review so we can have more people in the building. With the city, we are submitting our permits. We’re submitting the permits on Monday, this upcoming Monday to the city, we are now represented by an advertising firm who is going to do all the branding and all the the brand book and the design and the signs. We have a PR team that is behind us now to start going to different magazine and publishing. We have a world renowned, a world-renowned hardware store that is giving us a good amount of credit to come by and see things we can put into the building. We have friends going around talking about the building to friends. The building is in one of the most impeccable shape I’ve ever seen. It’s really got these lovely bones that is undefined. But also, we’re in the middle of talking to multiple different contractors. We’re now getting, we’re supposed to be getting the bids in actually today of what the build out is going to be. So, we hope to start demolition hopefully at the end of November or at the beginning of January so.

Eve: [00:21:04] And open the doors?

Adewale: [00:21:05] Open the doors hopefully as early as June.

Eve: [00:21:09] So, I do know that that you had, you know, financing was a challenge. So, tell me how you financed all of this and how are you going to finance the renovation?

Adewale: [00:21:21] So, even starting, we basically spoke to the lenders, and we presented to them what we really wanted to do with the building.

Eve: [00:21:32] What was their reaction?

Adewale: [00:21:34] They were like, this has never been done in town. This is great. Like, this sounds amazing. And we went ahead and put down the earnest money and then we also went ahead and put down the deposit on the building. We’re so lucky, we had really, really great sellers when they financed it for us. So, we didn’t have to go straight to a bank real quick. They trusted us and they believed in the idea of what we had. And now we’re at this point and we’re going through a local bank for construction and construction and finalizing things. They’re called Prosper Bank. They basically oversee all the BIPOC community. They oversee all those built out for BIPOC. They’re supposed to be an opportunity zone like bank, where, you know, if you’re a BIPOC community, like someplace like Chinatown and all that, they would finance all of those.

Eve: [00:22:37] So I have to say, you know, Jonathan told me that you went to maybe a dozen banks.

Adewale: [00:22:42] Yeah.

Eve: [00:22:43] And you, and I saw your business plan. It was very professionally laid out. And he said, only when you removed your images from those packets did the bank start talking to you. And honestly, that is, that just made me gasp. That was really pretty shocking for me.

Adewale: [00:23:01] It’s. It’s a hard thing to eat up sometimes. And trust me, I’m so sorry if I get a bit emotional.

Eve: [00:23:11] No, I’m emotional.

Adewale: [00:23:13] It was. You know, we’ve heard about things like that before, but it being done to you, it’s a whole completely different thing. You know, I like to want to say like there isn’t you know, what they call it like, there isn’t. The word is getting away from me. Well, it happens. It happened to us. And one of the biggest things was like Jonathan, Jessie, you know, started also their business. They had to go get a loan from a bank and they were right where we were. They didn’t really have much, and they were approved because basically they look like.

Eve: [00:24:07] They’re white.

Adewale: [00:24:08] Yeah. And for us it was very different. We had this amazing idea, and we have this great execution and we were just shunned off by everyone. And it’s very apparent because we’ve sat down for hours and hours and days to work on this business plannings and everything and to make sure it is so perfectly driven and perfectly written. I’m pretty sure the banks are going to be the one who even wins no matter what. But they declined us, multiple people. And it’s been really sad to kind of really see. But at the same time, Cyrus and I have such really crazy drive and really big heart, because we don’t let things like that phase us, we kind of rise to the occasion and we rise to do more, better and be better. That’s the way we’ve kind of looked at this process.

Eve: [00:25:01] Yeah.

Adewale: [00:25:02] We don’t let it knock us down. I think we just get up and we keep moving and hopefully something happens. And throughout the entire process we’ve always rised up and something has always come true for us.

Eve: [00:25:15] So, there’s a lot of discussion about, you know, wealth generation for minorities, communities, for the BIPOC community. And, and the thing that is tracked, I think, is redlining. You know, people have tracked what happens with redlining. But they’re really not tracking what’s happening to people like you going to a bank and the process of getting a commercial loan and how different it is for minorities and women, and they do track venture capital funding. And we know that the amount of money that is invested in minority businesses is minuscule. So, I really, like 1.2% of all funds this year. So, I’m sure it’s not very different for real estate. And it’s really, we’ve got a long way to go, so. I’m sorry you went through that. I’m very glad you got the building.

Adewale: [00:26:12] Yeah, it’s the lay of the beast. You know, it’s life. It’s not fair, but we understand it. You know, I think Cyrus and I, we’ve been really in tune and intertwined. Like we understand the world and the world of injustice and the world of what it is. But we don’t want to ever let that get us down. There’s so much more to be done, but we’re very optimistic and we’re very driven. So, nothing is going to break us down anytime soon.

Eve: [00:26:47] So, full disclosure, you have also listed a crowdfunding offering on Small Change. And you know, who do you hope will invest and be partners with you in this building?

Adewale: [00:27:00] We hope to see the leaders of tomorrow, people who believe in ideas. People who want to see things evolve. People who are dreamers. People who are artists. People who supports the hearts. People who know exactly what it feels like to be an immigrant, who also knows what it feels like to be Black in America to start anything. But also, people understand business and know this is good business and also understand, like the dark history of sometimes of what Portland is and what this is going to do for that community and how it’s going to celebrate this community. We’re hoping big investors come in and look at it like, okay, I support this. I love jazz club. I can go there and just sit down and listen to good music.

Adewale: [00:27:48] I feel free drinks coming on.

Adewale: [00:27:51] Yeah. Hey, it’s a perk. But also, if you’re a fan of, like, good art. Cyrus and I have promised ourself, we will always find people that would believe in quality to present their work, that wants to present their work. And something that is being really, really hit at the moment is a wine bar. We love good natural wine. That’s how we bring people down to the table. I mean, if you love wine and you want to see Black kids bring good wine from the Canary Islands, from London, from Spain, come to this place, it’s going to be great. Invest in it. And if you’re an artist that you always need a studio and you can’t work from your home and you need something to sew, like you need a machine to sew, you end up price machine. It’s also for you to come. Invest. That’s what it is. It’s for the like-minded, the artist in us, and also the business savvy people who just love to sit on the computer and do their meetings.

Eve: [00:28:54] You know I, first of all, I hope America is listening and I hope everyone goes and checks out your offering. And I really hope you are wildly successful, and I get to come see it next year.

Adewale: [00:29:06] Well, you’re going to be there on the opening day.

Eve: [00:29:09] I am. I’ve been told I have to do what dance is that I have to do? The mashed potato.

Adewale: [00:29:15] The mashed potato dance. No, you have to be that because you’re part of the reason why we’re really doing all of this. You’re helping us and a great deal. So, you and your team have to be there. That’s definitely going to be an invitation sent to you guys.

Eve: [00:29:31] It’s a deal. Okay onwards, right.

Adewale: [00:29:34] Yeah.

Eve: [00:29:35] Thank you.

Adewale: [00:29:36] Thank you so much.

Eve: [00:29:54] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. You can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media or leaving a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing yourself head on over to wefunder.com/smallchange, where you can invest directly in Small Change and our mission to democratize capital formation to create impact in commercial real estate development. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music, and a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Creative Homies

Counting on Crowdfunding.

Jamison Manwaring is the co-founder and CEO of Neighborhood Ventures, a remarkable Arizona-based real estate crowdfunding company, focused on value-add multi-family properties.

It’s a real estate company, for sure – they buy, hold and sell property. But the capital plan is innovative, with a growing pool of state residents who are permitted to invest through Arizona intrastate securities law. Nine successful projects later, Jamison is now taking his plan to the national stage with their latest project, a short-stay hotel he wants to repurpose into affordable housing. And he’s raising funds on SmallChange.co, not just once, but a second time now.

Jamison attended business school at the University of Utah where he graduated with a BS in Finance. He was always interested in finance. He loved it enough to become president of the finance club. Even at a young age Jamison’s determination shone through. He wanted to work in New York, at a top finance firm. But those companies have their pick of Ivy league school graduates, which he was not. So, every Thursday night he flew the red eye to New York to network.

You’ll have to listen in to hear the rest of the story.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:06] Eve Picker: Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone. And speaking of building better, I’m very excited to share that my company, Small Change, is now raising capital through a community round that is open to the public. Small Change is a leading equity crowdfunding platform for impact investment in real estate. For as little as $250, anyone 18 and over can invest in Small Change, helping to fuel our growth as we disrupt the old boys club of capital that routinely ignores so many qualified people and projects. Please visit wefunder.com/smallchange to review the full details of our raise and to make an investment if you can. And remember, investing is risky. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

Eve: [00:01:39] Today I’m talking with Jamison Manwaring, for a second time. Jamison is enjoying success as the co-founder and CEO of Neighborhood Ventures, an Arizona based real estate crowdfunding company focused on value-add multifamily properties. Always interested in finance, Jamison went to business school and studied finance. He loved it enough to become president of the finance club. Even at a young age, Jamison’s determination shone through. He wanted to work in New York at a top finance firm, but those companies have their pick of Ivy League school graduates, which he was not. So, every Thursday night he flew the redeye to New York to network. But wait, if I tell you what happened next, I’d be a spoiler. So, listen in to hear the rest of the story.

Eve: [00:02:39] If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast or head over to rethinkrealestateforgood.co and subscribe. You’ll be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:03:02] Hi, Jamison. It’s great to have you back on my show.

Jamison Manwaring: [00:03:05] Hey, Eve. Good to be back. As I was mentioning in the intro, I’d much rather be in Pittsburgh right now. You’re 80 degrees. We’re supposed to get 99 degrees and it’s still mid-September. So, we’re ready for the cooler weather here in Phoenix. But real estate is hot as well.

Eve: [00:03:23] As hot as the weather. That’s right. So, I want to go back to your background, which is solidly in finance, all the way back to college when you majored in finance. And I’m wondering what led you to launch Neighborhood Ventures and focus on real estate?

Jamison: [00:03:39] I didn’t know what I was going to study when I got to college, not unlike many people. And started in accounting, did some accounting classes, ended up landing with finance because what I knew I wanted to learn was how to analyze a business. And I kind of look at finance as the language of business. You know, if you are a good entrepreneur and you can start a business at some point, you’re going to need to understand what’s happening in the business. And I had actually started a small business right out of high school that was like a for sale by owner service. At one point we had a couple hundred listings and we charged people a flat fee, like $1,000 fee to list their home and would market it for them. And the business was great at times and then at times it wasn’t great, and I really didn’t understand why, what was driving that, what was beneath the results.

Jamison: [00:04:40] So, I ended up knowing that I wanted to go to college to be able to learn how to analyze a business and ended up in finance, which is where trying to understand a business for either investment purposes, if you’re from the, looking at the company kind of outside in or if you’re inside the company learning how to manage the business properly, where to spend money, where to pull back capital, where to reinvest more capital. And so, that was a very useful skill that I’m really happy I ended up sticking with that major.

Eve: [00:05:14] That’s where you started with finance. So, take me on the journey from there to Neighborhood Ventures.

Jamison: [00:05:20] Out of college, well, my junior year of college, I decided I wanted to go to Wall Street and I don’t know if I had seen a movie. I’m trying to think back at the time it was after the great financial crisis. So, some of those movies were out, the Big Short was out. And I was definitely intrigued by everything that was done by the investment banks, the importance of that in our economy and the importance of the work they do. And so, I determined that I wanted to go get to Wall Street. And I was from University of Utah, which is not a school that the investment banks recruit at. They don’t really consider.

Eve: [00:06:02] Not Ivy League, right?

Jamison: [00:06:04] Yeah, they really focus on those Ivy League schools. So, I had to go in what I call the side door and I started flying out on a Thursday night redeye after class, I didn’t have class on Friday. I’d fly out to New York Thursday night, redeye. I would arrive at about 6:30 a.m. in JFK, JetBlue flight. And I would start reaching out to folks. I would try to have a few meetings, set up an advance, just an info session. So, I would ask, I would tell folks, hey, if I can have 15 minutes of your time, I’m just trying to, I’m a college student. Which kind of opens people, opens doors. And these were alumni from either University of Utah or BYU, which there’s a lot of close ties there. And I’m here in New York for the day, I would love to be able to come by and meet. What I also found is Friday afternoons, a lot of people on Wall Street, it’s a little bit of downtime. They kind of have to be in the office, but they don’t mind having, spending some time with somebody to get off of their desk. And so, I did that for a couple of months. I probably did a half a dozen trips.

Eve: [00:07:19] That’s exhausting!

Jamison: [00:07:19] It was, and I spent the night at the beginning in a hostel with eight other people. And that was a new experience for me. I was like, I got to get out of here.

Eve: [00:07:32] At least it wasn’t a park bench, right?

Jamison: [00:07:34] Yeah, it was close. It was about, I think it was 25 bucks a night. And then even the cheapest hotel was like 125, which I couldn’t afford. So, I ended up meeting a lot of great people who even to this day are I’m connected with and view them as mentors through that process. So, it was kind of one of my experiences that was really hard. But you look back and you’re like, I’m very glad I did that, and I don’t know if I could do it again.

Eve: [00:08:05] It’s pretty gutsy. I don’t know how many people would take that on. You know, that’s.

Jamison: [00:08:10] Well, and being from Utah, the people who know say you have to do it that way if you want to get there.

Eve: [00:08:16] Interesting.

Jamison: [00:08:18] You got to go hustle. I ended up meeting an alumni who, I didn’t ask him for an internship, but we connected a few times and he said, Hey, would you be interested in doing an internship with us? He was at Barclays Capital, which had bought Lehman Brothers. He was a senior person there. And I said, Yeah, I’d love an internship. And now that you ask, I would love one. And he got me an interview, phone interview. And then when I passed that, they flew me out and did a super day. I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t have any other options for that, that internship. But they ended up giving me an offer. And I think they paid pretty decent, enough that I could move to there for the summer, live in New York.

Eve: [00:09:08] Not have to stay in the hostel, right?

Jamison: [00:09:10] Not have to stay in a hostel, which was very exciting. And I worked on a sales and trading floor there. Selling equities and talking about equities that. Basically, what we did was we would promote the research of the firm. Hey, this is a stock that we like. This is stock we don’t like. Talk to clients about their thoughts on it. And it was a great experience. I ended up moving from the sales floor to the actual research floor, which I’m very happy I did. That’s where you can really do deep dive financial analysis on companies. And I worked on a few IPOs and ended up moving to Goldman Sachs in their technology team and working with software stocks.

Eve: [00:09:53] That’s pretty impressive from Utah.

Jamison: [00:09:56] Yeah, and it’s, kind of, back to your question. One of the things that I learned through this time was I loved investing, but I didn’t like equities in particular, tech equities. They’re very volatile. They have big swings, daily swings, sometimes especially software stocks up 15, 20% after earnings down 15 to 20% after earnings if they miss. And it did not suit me when it came to my kind of temperament.

Eve: [00:10:33] Yeah, I get that. It doesn’t suit me either. Maybe it’s a control thing. You kind of got to understand what’s making those swings happen, right? And it’s pretty hard to get that.

Jamison: [00:10:46] And there’s a lot of factors in public equities that are outside of our knowledge and our control. There’s a lot of quant funds that are just trading on the algorithm, and they don’t make sense, but they move the market. I was certainly turned off by any impact I could have. Right. You’re just one person in such a large pool of people. So, I learned a lot there, but I began looking for my next option and knew that I wouldn’t be there forever. One of the companies I worked on their IPO was LifeLock. They’re based in Tempe, Arizona, and had grown a business to several million subscribers around identity protection. I worked on their IPO, and I got to know the CEO and the CFO, and through that process I kind of let them know, Hey, if anything comes up, I would be interested in getting out of New York and getting back west and ended up moving out here in 2015. When I joined the company, our stock was $8 a share. And I knew it had a long way to go, and that’s why I wanted to join. I saw it as a real opportunity. We ended up selling to another company 18 months later for $24 a share, 3x.

Eve: [00:12:02] That’s pretty good. Yeah.

Jamison: [00:12:04] So, that was great. At that point, I didn’t have a job because we got acquired by a bigger company, but I had bought a property when I was in New York, a ten-unit building, in my home, near my hometown of Idaho. And just kind of going back to what we were talking about before, Eve, how much I didn’t like software stocks and equities, public equities. I really liked, for about a year and a half, that I had had this little ten unit building on the side. I don’t know, there was just something about that it was physical that I could see it, that we could improve the operations, we could enhance what the property looked like from the street, all those little things. And then we would see big improvements in our revenue. And I really love that experience. And I was kind of just doing it for investment. I didn’t expect that I would go into that now, looking back. But I could clearly see that I like that a lot better. And I think you have to enjoy what you do. And so, that was one thing that, it was pretty clear to me. I wanted to do more of that and less of public equities.

Eve: [00:13:16] So then, tell us about Neighborhood Ventures, because that’s what grew out of that love, right?

Jamison: [00:13:22] Yeah. So, I had actually followed you and some other folks in the industry in the mid 2000, 2014, 2015, 2016. My company got, Lifelock got bought out in 2017, and a lot was happening in the crowdfunding space. And I wanted to figure out how could I raise more capital to do more projects. I had done this one project of my own on the side, and I really saw crowdfunding as a unique way to do that. I didn’t want to do the old-fashioned country club route where you go out and get a few wealthy people to raise, to write checks. That didn’t seem very interesting to me. And I wanted to do something new and different and creative and kind of a new challenge. And I was looking at a building to potentially buy and try to crowdfund. And my broker, I told him what I was looking to do, and my broker said, well, you know, my boss talks about real estate crowdfunding all the time. And I said, well, what’s his name? He said, John Kobierowski.

Jamison: [00:14:27] And I ended up emailing him and he had been an apartment veteran for 30 years in Phoenix and was very interested in launching a real estate crowdfunding company as well. And he brought a lot of industry knowledge and over 30 years in the Phoenix market. It was kind of an instant match where I said, well, let me focus on the capital raising, the crowdfunding, the technology side, and you could really focus on the real estate side. So, we realized that we had a good match. We’re very different in the skills that we bring and what we like to do, but that’s when we launched the company. And the name Neighborhood Ventures, he had already bought and already had the domain name. And so, we, I love the name and we launched in, basically 2018 was our first offering.

Eve: [00:15:22] So, let’s talk about that a little bit. Like, what are you trying to accomplish with Neighborhood Ventures? What is it? What does it look like? What’s the business?

Jamison: [00:15:30] I was talking about this yesterday in a team meeting with our team at work, at Neighborhood Ventures. And I think it’s important to go to your why. Why you do what you do? Your motivation. I think that’s very, it’s important to me to understand why am I doing what I’m doing? And I also look at that in other people. If somebody is being very friendly to me because they’re trying to sell me a pair of shoes at the mall, I kind of question that. I’m like, well, they’re just being, you know, they’re just buttering me up so they can sell me something. So, I think motivation matters a lot. And I don’t like it when, in that situation I can see real quick, okay, they’re just trying, they have an angle here, right? So what Neighborhood Ventures are, it’s very simple.

Jamison: [00:16:22] With John and I, we want to get more people involved in the opportunity to invest in commercial real estate. That is, has been our mission from day one. It’s always been a really good asset to own. That’s what drew me to it. It’s very stable relative to other assets. It goes up in value, it produces cash flow. There’s all these things about it that are really appealing, but it’s only been available to a small group of people. So, what our mission is and our reason why we started this is we want to get a lot more people involved. And we have big ambitions, we think we can grow that to a lot of folks nationally, there’s a big pool, about 40 million people nationally who have funds they want to invest, but they don’t reach that accredited status, which most people have to reach to invest in most projects on on crowdfunding platforms.

Eve: [00:17:20] So that’s 97% of the population, right? Approximately, yeah.

Jamison: [00:17:24] Yeah, yeah. And young folks right now who want to start putting money away. I think commercial real estate is very appealing, if they can invest in smaller increments. For us, it’s $1,000 minimum, and then they can start putting even $100 increments after that or whatever it might be. But you can start with small amounts and start to build that nest egg. And then we do have larger investors who like to do more than that, too. But our goal is to broaden that group, to allow a lot of people to own this asset. And I think we’re in the second inning so far and we think the next few years are going to be really interesting for us.

Eve: [00:18:08] So the buildings you focus on, what are they like?

Jamison: [00:18:13] John’s an expert in multifamily, so we’ve largely focused on multifamily projects in the Arizona market, both in Phoenix and then Flagstaff, which if you’re not from Arizona, Flagstaff is about 2 hours north of Phoenix. And when it’s 110 in Phoenix, it’s 90 or 85 in Flagstaff.

Eve: [00:18:36] Balmy.

Jamison: [00:18:38] And it’s 2 hours away. So, it’s pretty amazing. The elevation is pretty, is a big factor in that. But if you’re in Phoenix and you can get up to Flagstaff, it’s an amazing place. It’s kind of almost like a a Jackson Hole or an Aspen or a Park City. One of these cities, it’s mountain town, but it’s great for Phoenix. So, we have two projects in Flagstaff. It’s an area that’s landlocked. So, there’s not much development going to happen there, and if you can get a piece of property, it’s a good property to hold on to. And so, we largely focus on finding properties that are in these core areas that have good trends happening there, but they need to be repositioned. The assets are underperforming for some reason. A lot of times it’s because the amenities aren’t up to date. There’s been deferred maintenance, there’s poor property management, and we can look at the other properties in the neighborhood and see that the rents are much higher in those properties than in this property. And that’s when we act. We say, look, we know we can go purchase that property.

Eve: [00:19:46] So really, value add.

Jamison: [00:19:48] Yeah.

Eve: [00:19:49] And that’s smart because you can probably offer a return much earlier because the building continues to cash flow or starts to cash flow pretty quickly, right?

Jamison: [00:20:00] That’s right, yeah. We typically don’t pay distributions for the first year, but it cash flows earlier. Sometimes it’s been four or five months. We’re paying distributions to investors.

Eve: [00:20:12] That’s pretty amazing. So, you know, you actually did an offering, it was a three-way offering, and one part of it was on my funding portal Small Change. And that was a pretty big repositioning of a rather worn-out looking hotel. Do you want to talk about how that went?

Jamison: [00:20:34] Yeah, we still, we own the asset. It’s performing well. This was a, as I think the way you put it, worn out hotel in a neighborhood in Mesa, which is a bedroom community to Phoenix. Originally a very good property, well built, beautiful pool courtyard all of the units were suite, so they all had kitchens. But the manager who had owned it for ten years really ran it into the ground and there was illegal activity going on at the property. The Mesa police were, and the fire department were locked out of the property. The owner was very antagonistic to them for a lot of interesting reasons. And it was the blight of the neighborhood.

Eve: [00:21:21] How many units was it? It was pretty big.

Jamison: [00:21:23] 120.

Eve: [00:21:24] Right right. It’s a big blight.

Jamison: [00:21:27] And here it sits in a really, an up-and-coming neighborhood. But it was pulling the neighborhood back. There had been a Starbucks that popped up 100 yards from the property. There’s a Costco a quarter of a mile away. It was on the up and coming, but this place just continued to drag it down. And it was the place that bad people came to do bad things, frankly. And I’m sure there was other people there that were just looking for a cheap place and that’s where they stayed. So, when we saw it, we saw the potential. And ultimately, we are planning to get it rezoned to multifamily. We’ve been working with the city of Mesa on that, and that does take some time. But until then we operate it as a vacation rental and it’s doing very well. And ultimately.

Eve: [00:22:20] I gather you made improvements to it, right?

Jamison: [00:22:23] Yeah, that’s right. So, we went in and new carpet, new flooring, new fixtures, new cabinetry, new paint. And you know what? This didn’t take a lot. It wasn’t a gut. It was kind of a they call it lipstick and eyeshadow. You know, the bones were good, right? So, we just went in and made it look good, made it look like it’s a place that you’d want to stay, freshen it up, make it contemporary. And people love staying there. And we do want to add it as a multifamily, as an apartment building, because there’s a shortage of affordable housing across the board and definitely in Phoenix. And these units, I think the city will be able to get this rezoning and folks will, for example, a normal two-bedroom, one bath in Phoenix is about 1800. And I think ours is going to be more like 1500. So, to be able to add 120 units onto that will help.

Eve: [00:23:23] How many buildings have you raised funds for now through Neighborhood Ventures?

Jamison: [00:23:27] We’ve done 13 projects so far. 12 of them have been multifamily, and then we did do one retail project. We brought on a retail expert. And that’s a project in Tempe that’s three buildings. One’s a fast-food restaurant, one’s a Dunkin Donuts, which we’re in the process of building right now. And then we have a third vacant that we’re going to start leasing up soon, once the Dunkin Donuts comes in and their sign goes up, then we’re going to lease that out. So, that’s been a really fun reposition, very similar idea. This was before a cannabis shop, kind of a rundown mattress shop. And, you know, not a place that, not well maintained. There hadn’t been a capital investment. The parking was weird. The dumpster was right in the middle of the property, that kind of thing.

Eve: [00:24:19] Now you have your retail legs, right?

Jamison: [00:24:22] Yeah, yeah. And the city was very excited. We were going to come in and help revamp that part of town. But we believe you need to have deep expertise in whatever you’re doing. So, we took that on once we brought out a retail expert. Chris My mind is blanking his last name, but.

Eve: [00:24:47] He’ll forgive you.

Jamison: [00:24:48] Yeah, maybe we’ll see. He’s a retail expert, so he’s led that for us. And it’s been a great project.

Eve: [00:24:57] Great. So, your current project, full disclosure, is also raising funds on Small Change, which we’re delighted about. And you want to tell us about that? Where is it? What is it?

Jamison: [00:25:08] Yeah. So, this is in again one of these up-and-coming areas. This one is in central Phoenix. It’s near my home where I live in central Phoenix. I live right off the light rail and love this area. But this area has seen a lot of revitalization in the last decade. Downtown kind of used to be a place in Phoenix where you didn’t want to go. And this is uptown, which means it’s about two, two and a half miles north of downtown. It’s a highly desirable area because you’re in the middle of everything. You don’t have to commute to work if you’re working downtown. We’ve seen more of the young folks who are moving to the area want to live in these areas that have a bit more culture, they have more activities they don’t want, they’re not going out to the suburbs. And so that’s really exciting. And so, this area, this project fits right into that. It’s 30 units and as we went and did the tour, it was very clear that they haven’t done anything on this property for probably 25 years, except the minimum amount. But it’s sitting right here around all of these new build projects that are six, seven stories, and they’re great, two-bedroom, one bath townhouses and stacked apartments. And so, we saw the opportunity immediately to go in and bring this up to the standard of today’s renter, and we’ll see a really good return on that.

Eve: [00:26:39] What are your plans for the project? I think it’s actually six little buildings, right?

Jamison: [00:26:43] It’s six separate buildings. But one of the things that you don’t know when you do value add, sometimes you dig in there and you open a wall, so to speak, and you realize you’re going to have to do more plumbing, you’re going to have to do some electrical work. The part of the flooring needs to be repaired, you know, those are the sorts of things you don’t know going in. So, we always build a contingency around that. But the plan here is, the units were laid out really nicely, so we don’t have, we don’t have to get permits to build anything different or to move walls. We avoid moving walls, but we’re going to go in and update it. New flooring, new paint, new fixtures, new cabinetry. We’re going to rethink the outside area. The outside area is kind of weird, kind of felt like a prison yard for whatever reason. It’s all blocked off and the pool has a really weird, big fence around it that you can’t see. So, that’s actually going to be one of the big value-adds is kind of rethinking how the outside space is used, which is really important in Arizona, especially in the winter when people just want to spend time outside. So, rethinking the outside, updating the inside and then the location, because of where it’s at, people will be really excited to live in that area in a brand new newly renovated unit.

Eve: [00:28:05] So, then what’s the total development cost, including the building? And tell us about how you’re financing it.

Jamison: [00:28:13] Yeah, so it’s 30 units. The purchase price is 222 per unit. And so, I like to look at it on a per unit basis, but 222 per units what we’re buying it at and then we’re going to end up spending about 35,000 to renovate it. So, our cost basis is 260, 265,000 and some of that includes contingencies. So, if we can shave some of that off, might be closer to 260 on the high side 265, that’s our cost basis. And then when we look at what the value of that building is going to be, it will depend on what the rents are going to be. And we’re expecting the rents will be around the average of that neighborhood, which is about 1800 for two bed, one bath. And that would put the value of that unit around three 325 to 340.

Eve: [00:29:11] What are the rents now for that unit?

Jamison: [00:29:16] They’re in rough shape so they’re renting for under 1000.

Eve: [00:29:19] So, it’s a pretty big shift.

Jamison: [00:29:21] It’s a big jump. They’re all over the place. There’s one that’s 100 and there’s one that’s 800, which is kind of strange that, and they’re the exact same unit. But the neighborhood comps are real right now, are 18 to 1900.

Eve: [00:29:40] That sounds like a great project. So, just generally, what are some of the challenges that you’ve been confronted with this business? Because it’s different. I mean, the product is pretty normal, but the way you’re tackling it is different.

Jamison: [00:29:53] Yeah. I think one of the, our goals is to make it a frictionless experience for our investors. But we know how difficult this is to get from purchasing a property, getting, securing debt and capital to buy it, do the renovations. All of those steps perform the renovations, which we have a crew in house that does all our renovations, which helps us a lot. Then leasing up the property to qualified tenants who are going to pay the rent. That’s a big process in and of itself and then continue to collect the rent and manage that. And for our investors, we want it to feel like they’re involved, that they get to see what’s happening, but they don’t have to worry about all of that stress. For them, it’s easy. It’s almost like when you’re on Amazon and you just three clicks, you get some you order something, and it shows up at your doorstep a few hours later. That type of experience is what we really aim for our investors, even though there’s a lot of complications to get there. So, I think the biggest thing that is a challenge is ensuring that you don’t go over budget in the renovation. It’s really easy to do.

Eve: [00:31:05] That’s for sure.

Jamison: [00:31:06] When you get into one, a project, you say, oh, let’s do that, let’s do that, let’s do that. And then you kind of realize, look, you have to have an ROI at the end of this, so you can’t do everything you want to do. You have to be strategic about that and you have to hit deadlines. If one thing gets pushed back, then it pushes everything back. So, that’s the biggest challenge.

Eve: [00:31:30] And that must have been super big the last couple of years because the construction industry got really weird there.

Jamison: [00:31:38] Yeah, yeah, prices went up. It was harder to get materials. So, we were, we tried to be ahead of that. We tried to order stuff well in advance, so that helped us. Still, there were some things that we just couldn’t get for a long time, right? But we think about that. We try to get ahead of the game. You know, and then the other big challenge is finding good deals. And we are very picky about the deals that we do because we don’t have to do deals, meaning we’re going to only do deals that we really believe we can achieve, and we have a high level of confidence. Some of the ones on the fence we’ll look at and we’ll pass on. Other people might move on it because they need to deploy capital, or they need to keep their investors happy or whatever. For us, we’re not going to do deal unless we really have a high level of confidence. We believe in it, and that means we pass on a lot of deals, we see a lot of them, and we just say, look, we’ll let somebody else take that. We’re going to go after something that we think has a better opportunity. Which, we want to keep the risk as low as we can.

Jamison: [00:32:48] So, finding deals is hard in this market. And my co-founder, John, he runs day to day. He’s the CEO of ABI Multifamily, they’re the largest broker in Arizona that sells apartments. They sold 125 apartments so far this year. And that’s where we get our deal flow. A lot of times old clients call him and say, hey, look at this. Here’s a project that I’m looking at selling, and we buy it off market. So, figuring out where those deals are going to come from, especially in a market where it’s tight, has been really important for us and we have a big advantage there. But it can be really challenging to find those deals and, that really have a good amount of juice left in them.

Eve: [00:33:36] So, are you thinking about expanding operations beyond Flagstaff and Phoenix and maybe even beyond Arizona?

Jamison: [00:33:45] Yeah, yeah. So, working with Small Change is kind of our first step into that, where we can now raise capital from investors nationally. Prior to that, we’ve only raised capital from Arizona investors through the Arizona crowdfunding laws. So, we’re excited to begin to raise capital and to begin building in our investor base nationally and over the next 18 months, I think they’ll be, actually sooner than that, probably six months, I think we’ll have some exciting announcements, more things we’re doing nationally to meet our mission. We want to, we have about 5000 investors in Arizona so far, and we’re just in Arizona. So, we want to go nationally and offer what we are doing to the whole country. And we’re really excited about that. And so, I think it’s going to be an exciting time for us. We’ve been building towards this. Our momentum just kind of keeps carrying us through to this next step.

Eve: [00:34:41] Well, thank you very much for joining me. I’m really looking forward to seeing the next exciting announcements.

Jamison: [00:34:47] Yes.

Eve: [00:34:48] Thanks, Jamison.

Jamison: [00:34:49] We’re excited, thanks again for having us. We love everything Small Change is doing and love to partner with you guys and you guys are great to work with. So, thanks for having us on.

Eve: [00:35:00] Appreciate that. I appreciate that.

Eve: [00:35:10] That was Jamison Manwaring, CEO of Neighborhood Ventures. Jamison is putting his determination to work building his innovative company in Arizona. It’s a real estate company for sure. They buy, hold and sell property, but the capital plan is innovative, with the growing pool of Arizona residents permitted to invest through Arizona intrastate securities law. He’s seen early success, and he’s taken his plan to the national stage, raising funds, for a second time now, on my crowdfunding platform, SmallChange.co. We can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Eve: [00:36:00] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. You can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media or leaving a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing yourself head on over to wefunder.com/smallchange, where you can invest directly in Small Change and our mission to democratize capital formation to create impact in commercial real estate development. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music, and a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Jamison Manwaring

Transforming neighborhoods through crowdfunding.

“The idea of harnessing small-scale investors for real estate development is gaining momentum nationally, boosted by digital platforms and federal rule changes” writes Carey L. Biron, for Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Backers say the approach opens up real estate investing to a broader pool of buyers and gives locals a say in neighborhood investments – and a stake in any profits, too.”

Since 2016 crowdfunding laws have been driving investment and the US market is estimated to reach USD250.62 billion by 2030. “Real estate has traditionally been left to those who already have money to make more money. And crowdfunding gives you a platform to democratize that,” says Molly McCabe, chief executive of investment advisory firm HaydenTanner. “This is one way to really ensure the community gets to participate and benefit from what’s being created, and to have a sense of ownership.”

Crowdfunding not only makes real estate investing available to a broader pool of buyers, but it provides previously unobtainable finance for unusual projects and marginalized minority and women developers.

Lyneir Richardson, chief executive of social enterprise Chicago TREND, is one of those developers. He crowdfunded a partial purchase of Walbrook Junction, a shopping center in a Black neighborhood of Baltimore which has seen major decline in its 40 years. Richardson held more than 60 meetings with local groups and 90 percent of his 130 investors, who invested between $1,000 and $50,000, care about or have some connection to the neighborhood. He now intends to revitalize Walbrook Junction to bring life and wealth back into the neighborhood.

Another developer, Joanna Bartholomew, used crowdfunding to raise capital for Aruka Midway. The project aims to restore 23 Baltimore row houses which have been vacant for decades. “We did it with the purpose of showing people you can have a stake in the neighborhoods you’re from, or neighborhoods that remind you of where you grew up,” said Bartholomew, chief executive of O’Hara Developments.“That you’re able to invest in your own backyard.” This was Bartholomew’s first try at crowdfunding and although it took more work than she expected, it brought her almost 80 new investors.

Both developers raised capital through Small Change, an online platform launched in 2016 by Eve Picker. Small Change has helped raise almost $11 million to build housing for the homeless, transform empty buildings into corner shops, put retail in food deserts “and everything in between” said Picker. More than half of those developments are women- or minority-owned, and most would not have succeeded in seeking traditional financing. “Projects like these require patient money and a long-term hold,” she said. “You have to wait while the neighborhood catches up.”

Read the original article here. Or listen to podcast interviews with Lyneir Richardson and Joanna Batholomew.

Image courtesy of Joanna Bartholomew