Dubai: The crowdfunding movement is acquiring visibility in Dubai’s property market – one such platform, SmartCrowd, has struck an agreement with MAG Property Development to pool such investments into the developer’s projects.
This is one of the first such alliances between a crowdfunding stage and a leading local developer. What crowdfunding does is permit different investors to get little stakes in a property – or properties – rather than to purchase individual units all alone. Also, the upfront investments to purchase a stake is in the thousands of dirhams rather than in the hundreds of thousands.
“With MAG 5 Dubai South, investors will be able to own an affordable share of real estate from just Dh5,000 in one of the most up-and-coming new destinations in Dubai,” said Siddiq Farid, CEO, and co-founder of SmartCrowd.
Pull in serious funding
On this Tuesday, another Dubai-based propertytech platform Stake collected $4 million in a seed funding round. The funding was led by Combined Growth Real Estate, a company led by Amer Hammour, who is Chairman of Madison Marquette, a US-based real estate investment management company with $6 billion of advantages under management.
Stake also pulled in cooperation from Vivium Capital, a Dubai-based private family office, notwithstanding Verve Ventures, Lama Holding from Riyadh, Mishaal Alireza a Saudi Arabian private investor, and investors of the UK’s Chalgrove Properties Ltd.
Launched in December last, Stake permits clients to pick from pre-checked choices of properties and contribute from upwards of Dh2,000. Stake’s emphasis is on “prime locations where the rental demand is high and the long-term fundamentals will be a strong driver of capital appreciation”.
In a statement, Manar Mahmassani, co-founder of Stake, said: “When we launched Stake, we made clear our goal to democratize real estate investment and remedy to ills of Dubai’s property market, which prevented the young from participating and delivered unattractive returns for experienced investors.”