Nuurez has closed on its first funding round. And its investors are now homeowners or at least owners in a share of a home.
The residential investment, management and leasing platform reported raising $1.4 million crowdfunding campaign at a $4 million pre-money valuation that saw more than 1,450 investors participate. Those investors are now owners of a share of the properties that the company leases via its platform.
“What we do is we really look to see what the property is and which model is most profitable,” Noelle Randal, Nuurez’s founder, told NTX Inno. “We take technology, research, and we take different techniques in real estate and put them together.”
Nuurez plans to use the funds to acquire properties across DFW, Houston, Florida, Atlanta and Charlotte, which it will furnish, market and turn into short- and long-term renters. The company also recently acquired Florida real estate firm Hampton Realty Group’s portfolio of properties. Revenue from the properties is then split, with 60 percent being split among investors and 40 percent going to Nuurez’s nine-person team.
Nuurez, which launched along with the crowdfunding campaign in February of last year, also works with affiliate investors who wish to list their own properties through the company. Additionally, people can submit potential properties on the market, even if they don’t own them, and if Nuurez ends up purchasing them, they will get paid for their referral.
“We really tried to make it where it was about this investor and making it an experience for people, for people that probably could not invest on their own getting the opportunity to say that they own a piece of hundreds of pieces of real estate,” Randall, who splits her time between DFW and Florida, said.
Randall has an extensive background in real estate. The concept of Nuurez came to her after several students she was mentoring entered into joint ventures with her. Eventually, there were too many to take on, so she looked for a way to combine thousands into one venture. She also credits her background and her long-standing presence on social media to succeed in the crowdfunding raise. An endorsement from one of the original Sharks on the ABC show Kevin Harrington also didn’t hurt, she notes.
“After a while, you can’t coach everyone,” Randall said.
Nuurez has 19 properties, with plans to have 25 more come online within the next 30 days. Licensed in Texas and Florida, Randall said the focus on the Lone Star state and the Southeast is due to several reasons. For one, places like DFW and Miami have seen an influx of new residents causing high appreciation values. The properties it selects include apartment units, detached homes and those in between, and are spread geographically from urban cores to the suburbs. Randall said one of the best-performing properties for Nuurez in DFW is a home it rents out for a short-term lease in Denton.
“One of the things I’m super focused on is economic development, where people are moving, what are some of the demographics of the area, so when we were doing the research and looking at what some of the net migration was, what some of the travel patterns were, what were some of the top destinations, what saw the highest appreciations,” Randall said. “These (destinations) are where the people are ... where the people are visiting, and these have the best economic indicators.”
Beyond giving returns to investors, he hopes participation in the Nuurez platform will help teach others the skills they need to make their own real estate investments – one of the number one ways to wealth in the U.S.
“My thought, even with the crowdfund is… now I’ve done it, I can show other people how to do it, and I can pass the torch, and now more and more people can get involved,” Randall said. “We can really start to change, and community and family, any generational disparity that there was, you can really start to turn that around with knowledge and real estate and assets.”
While the crowdfunding raise was successful, Randall said she isn’t likely to take that route in the future. She said the next round would likely be via a more traditional accredited investor route, which would help with the company’s goal of acquiring larger multifamily properties, roughly between 50 and 100 units. As it grows, the company plans to add more properties to its portfolio across the country. And ultimately, Randall said the end goal is to take Nuurez public eventually.
“Of course, we’re just going to keep scaling and adding properties to the portfolio, but we’re going to start focusing on some larger multifamily units,” Randall said. “That would just give us more leverage to do all sorts of different types of things within that.”
