From Risks to Opportunities: Real Estate Equity Crowdfunding

Real Estate Equity Crowdfunding (REECF) enables small investments on big real estate projects through the funding by an online crowd. As there is only limited research on this novel type of financial instrument for the real estate sector, this paper investigates risks and opportunities of REECF in order to establish and improve the understanding of REECF, in particular to identify potential risks and potential opportunities that come along with an engagement in such projects. Based on traditional offline risks of capital investments, three categories of both potential risks and opportunities have been identified: market risks and opportunities, execution risks and opportunities, and agency risks and opportunities. We adopt a holistic approach, as we identified, collected and consolidated existing risks and opportunities in REECF. As a result, we introduce an up-to-date framework on real estate equity crowdfunding.