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San Francisco-based RealtyShares has acquired rival technology-first marketplace platform Acquire Real Estate, marking RealtyShares’ first major acquisition. Both companies have been building up online real estate investment crowdfunding platforms.
“RealtyShares and Acquire share a vision that technology will make real estate investing easier and more accessible, uniting bold thinkers to set an innovative tone for the industry,” RealtyShares founder and CEO Nav Athwal said.
RealtyShares has more than 120,000 registered investors and has deployed over $500M for real estate projects across about 1,000 deals in 39 states. The platform tripled business during the last quarter and originated nearly $140M in real estate projects.
Led by CEO Josh Klimkiewicz and Chief Technology Officer Gerry Polucci, Acquire focused on developing products to serve its commercial sponsors and investors. It was the first real estate marketplace to introduce a real estate exchange, investor profiles, a dynamic investment calculator and self-directed IRA investing. Both Klimkiewicz and Polucci will join RealtyShares as part of the acquisition and spearhead integration from the company’s East Coast office.
Acquire targeted commercial equity and middle-market projects with equity checks between $5M and $10M, according to Klimkiewicz, who began Acquire in 2014 after eight years with CBRE. He has a commercial background in acquisition, disposition and structured finance of over $6B in real estate transactions.
At RealtyShares, Klimkiewicz will serve as the director of commercial business development, while Polucci will join as a director of engineering. Polucci is an entrepreneur, product leader and software architect with more than 30 years of software engineering experience across a number of industries, including healthcare, storage management and technology.
RealtyShares has brought on other industry experts into leadership roles in recent months. In May, RealtyShares named former Cushman & Wakefield CEO Edward Forst to the board of directors and Senior Vice President of Marketing Kristina Wallender joined in June after working with Amazon and Ticketfly. The company also hired Bill Lanting as vice president of commercial originations and expanded into commercial debt at the end of 2016.
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