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Comment by j2d3 | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to see a real estate development swarm sourcing site that bootstraps a real estate dev deal from concept through site acquisition, design, build, and monetization (management if it's a rental / keeper and/or sales), so that it's basically super-interested parties collectively swarming around a chosen site until a fully crowd- (or as i prefer, swarm-) sourced building is realized. There are a lot of different ways I could see this going. I want to close the disconnect between designers/architects and financiers/developers, such that they operate together as a swarm to their collective benefit from concept through completion.

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like some have already noted in this thread, this and other real estate crowdfunding concepts are limited to involving only accredited investors. there can be ways to get around this, i think. what if the organization is a non-profit educational / community improvement corp, and people participate as designers and as investors (truly a crowd/swarm of investors, where there are MANY MANY individuals giving very small amounts of money) and the money is given for "rewards" - like getting to stay for a night in one of the rooms for free after the, say, hotel! is finished being built. .. so that at least some of the investment capital -if not all of it - is coming in because people want to participate in building long lasting high value structures. this would be attractive to architects and designers and the general interested public more than as a way to make a killing in real estate - it would not be about that.

What you describe above is more of a "rewards" based kickstarter model, where there may not necessarily be actual "equity ownership" of the projects. In that case, you can do that today!

I think we're seeing the beginnings of the industry shifting closer to your model above. We're only limited to accredited investors due to SEC regulations that are (slowly) changing - true "crowdfunding" is on the horizon.

The accredited investors limitation will end in about 60 days due to a recent SEC ruling regarding the JOBS act

Advertising of the offerings will be opened up to all, but there will still be restrictions on allowing only accredited investors to participate.

The broader crowdfunding portion of the JOBS Act will hopefully be put in place towards the end of this year/first part of next (if the stars align...). There will still be some restrictions on income/amounts you can invest, but that will truly open up opportunities like we've never seen.

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