Fintor, a fintech startup that makes it easier for unaccredited investors to invest in real estate, has just launched its mobile app for both iOS and Android. It also just raised a $6.2 million renewal round of funding from its existing investors, including Public.com, Hustle Fund, 500 Global, VU Ventures, Graphene Ventures and angel investors such as Manny Khoshbin, Andy Madadian, Cindy Bi and Marcus Ridgway. .
This latest round values Fintor at $80 million, founder and CEO Farshad Yousefi told londonbusinessblog.com exclusively. With the new funding, Fintor says it has now raised a total of $9 million from investors.
The Palo Alto, California-based company is qualified under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Regulation A to offer investors fractional shares in properties it owns. It does this by issuing shares of LLCs that own the underlying properties, Yousefi explained in an interview.
Yousefi started the company in early 2021 with his co-founder Masoud Jalali to meet a growing demand they had noticed among Gen Z and millennials to invest in real estate, an asset class often inaccessible to ordinary investors who are not familiar with it. can always afford to buy properties whole.
Fintor allows its clients to invest in real estate with as little as $5, according to Yousefi. The platform currently offers shares in single-family homes in states such as Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and Alabama, and Yousefi said it plans to enter 20 different markets by the end of 2022.
Ultimately, Yousefi said, he hopes to build Fintor into a comprehensive real estate platform by offering multi-family, industrial and other types of real estate to investors.
It’s a competitive market, with startups like Landa, Nada, and Arrived Homes, all of which have been covered in londonbusinessblog.com before, looking to democratize access to real estate investment.
Yousefi highlighted a few different aspects of Fintor that make it stand out.
First, unlike many other real estate investment platforms, Fintor operates a secondary marketplace where individuals can place bids and inquiries on real estate after the real estate has been on the platform for more than 90 days, Yousefi said.
The second differentiator Yousefi highlights is Fintor’s focus on content that promotes real estate literacy, which is specifically aimed at the Generation Zs and millennials who make up Fintor’s target customer base. The app offers walkthroughs and educational modules that teach users how to analyze real estate deals, Yousefi said.
Fintor aims to remain operationally lightweight, Yousefi said. The company outsources its property management function to a third-party provider rather than doing it in-house, he explains. By outsourcing property management, Fintor can focus solely on its core mission of making high-yield acquisitions and fractionating these assets for investors.
Yousefi added that he is not worried about having competitors due to the novelty of the niche. He said other companies are helping Fintor with its broader mission of educating people about what fractional investing actually is and spreading the word that it’s available for real estate.
“I don’t see Arrived Homes or Landa as competitors. I rather see the stock market and the crypto market as competitors,” said Yousefi.