Dubai: A real estate portal with a crowdfunding component is to be launched by year end by a group of UAE-based investors. The portal — branded “Realopedia” — will be registered in the US and will look to create opportunities to link up both developer- and investor-financing needs via the crowd resource.
Realopedia was announced on the second day of the on-going Cityscape Global event in Dubai.
On whether the UAE marketplace is quite ready to take to real estate funding this way, Laura Choueri, one of the three partners, said: “Everyone’s ready for crowdfunding. Banks remain stringent on lending norms, while the larger projects have their own networking sources to tap the needed funds.
“But for a certain smaller size of funding, crowdfunding has become a flexible option to reach out to a large pool of prospective investors. The portal will offer both B2B and B2C fund raising options.
Unlike some of the other online portals that are vying for a grip in the same space, Realopedia will not limit future deals to a certain market. Listings of potential investment-seeking deals will cut across geographies.
The start-up cost of the venture has not been revealed. An Arabic language version of the portal is to be ready by next year.
In the UAE, there have been a handful of developer-led crowdfunding rounds. in broad terms, the same laws of the land apply in how the funds are raised and utilised as in an offline transaction.
“We are getting a lot of interest from Egypt, the US and the UK apart from the UAE — conceivably, Realopedia can list a housing project in Egypt or a strip mall in Colorado as the case may be to prospective investors from anywhere in the world,” said Choueri.
But she insisted that stringent processes will have to be gone through on the source of the funds that investors put up before the transaction can be effected. In other words, dodgy funds trying to find a channel will have to look elsewhere.
Ticket sizes, however, can be elastic and dependent on what sort of funds the listing wants to raise. “The needs of developers listing a certain project will be completely different from an investor looking to pull in more funds for a real estate transaction,” said Choueri.
Realopedia, meanwhile, will simultaneously try and be an online portal for industry-specific networking and for free property listings. Members deal directly with each other and cutting out any middleman.
“We have established legal contacts, we believe in due diligence, we know who the reputable agents are worldwide, and we know how to select them,” said Choueri.
