Iintoo is an online real estate investment platform for accredited investors to access premium real estate investments.
Shoshana Winter managing director for iintoo USA, shares the opportunities for passive investors to take advantage of iintoo’s data science to achieve predictable returns.
The success of iintoo, is rooted in its data science. Digging into the numbers and looking for the trends are the key to identifying opportunities. What are the attributes of a particular market? How close is it to an urban center where housing is not affordable. Is the job market healthy? What about demand for housing? Does this market or industry have a cyclical basis?
Intoo has two investment options; single property or in a fund.
Through syndication, iintoo provides investors the opportunity to invest in a single commercial property with as little as $25,000. If you prefer to spread your risk to multiple properties and geographic areas, you can invest in a fund. The fund option has a minimum investment requirement of $30,000.
While the platform is online, and available 24 / 7, they recognize that many investors prefer the confidence that comes with personal contact. You want to know someone before investing hundreds of thousands of dollars. For this, iintoo provides the high level of touch including in person visits in the office, or video conferencing.
Currently iintoo’s model is an equity investment. All investments are placed as equity in a commercial property. In the future, it is expected that iintoo will have a debt option available.
Iintoo in joint venture with RREAF Holdings LLC, announced their acquisition of Realty Shares in May, 2019. Realty Shares was one of the pioneers in real estate crowdfunding, successfully closing over 1,100 deals in 40 different states. The acquisition increases iintoo’s investor count from about 50,000 investors to over 200,000.
Each week I ask my guest, “What is the Biggest Risk Real Estate Investors face?”
BIGGEST RISK: 2008 looms very large for people. All the KPI’s are looking for the positive signs. We know from experience that everything is cyclical. There’s a new administration, or not; a world event, changes in the job market, unemployment, interest rates, etc. All of the factors, we know from experience, have the ability to create a seismic shift in investment markets, across the board.
The book, Irrational Exuberance, that explains how we are in this phase where everything is good, but we are waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because, we’ve seen it happen.
Risk is inherent.
What iintoo does, and tries to do, is to pull apart risk. We ask, what are people most worried about? We use data. We stay actively involved. Our thesis is to stay in these investments for short terms, 3 years.
Most recently, we started providing “Equity Protection” for principals on certain funds of our investments. This provides a second layer of protection. The first layer is a portion of the proceeds go into a retention fund. These pooled funds are available if an investment goes bad. If the first layer gets exhausted, a second layer is available. This 2nd layer is through a reinsurance carrier, through Everest Re. and is available if the 1st layer is exhausted.