LEX
p/lex
Commercial real estate investing for all
Nick Abouzeid
LEX Markets — Commercial real estate investing for all
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LEX is a venture-backed commercial real estate securities marketplace. LEX allows all investors - accredited and non-accredited - to buy and sell shares of individual commercial real estate assets without lockups, starting at $250/share.
Replies
Raj Vir
Absolutely incredible
Nate Smoyer
The team at LEX is incredible. I’m excited to see this launch. Congrats on the launch!!
Nick Abouzeid
Everybody should be able to invest in everything. Nice job LEX team on the launch :)
deepu
congrats on the launch
Jesse Daugherty
Thanks so much @nickabouzeid for hunting us. Hi Product Hunt - We're excited to introduce you to LEX! Most people are familiar with the benefits of real estate investing - tangible assets, less-correlated to public markets, more predictable returns, leverage, tax advantages, inflation hedging... the list goes on. But we all also see the wealthiest Americans continuing to grow their wealth through real estate while everyday investors are stuck on the sidelines, unable to access deals of the same quality due to high cost of entry, exclusivity, accreditation requirements, and lack of liquidity. We believe everyone should be an investor and every investor should have access to the high quality commercial real estate opportunities that the wealthiest Americans have had access to. That's why we started LEX. Our mission is to empower wealth creation by solving real estate’s access and liquidity problems. LEX allows any US investor to buy shares of individual commercial real estate assets, earn income as the tenants of the building pay rent, and sell their shares when they need to without hold periods or transfer restrictions. Our minimum investment is $250. LEX takes buildings public. Each building on LEX has an IPO, and each building receives a real ticker symbol to trade following its IPO. We have one IPO currently ongoing at https://lex-markets.com/286-lenox and the building we launched in an invite-only IPO earlier this year is trading under symbol GWYGU: https://g.co/finance/GWYGU:OTCMK... We'd love to get your feedback and we're happy to answer questions! *returns not guaranteed, of course.
Max Tkacz
Congrats! Big fan of fractional ownership projects (on-chain or off). Is this available for US citizens living abroad?
Jesse Daugherty
@max_tkacz Unfortunately need to have a US address and US SSN or Tax-ID # currently, but we may get to that in 2022!
Daniel Obiokeke
Signed up already. I could not proceed because I don't live in the United States. How are you planning to open to the rest of the world. LEX could open the world to commercial real estate assets and this would positively affect a sustained growth after your IPO. Are you confined to the US because of verification or something?
Liana Adamyan
Congratulations on the launch!
TCM
Very cool! Is this just for America?
Alexandra Kazakova
Congrats! We are launching a marketplace for RE syndicators. So your product resonates with me. However, I have a few questions. In what kind of Legal entity are people investing? Are you creating an LLC or is it a REIT (it is very different from investing in RE assets)? Or is it a crowdfunding platform? Would love to have some legal background..
Kimberly Banks Fawcett
@alexandra_kazakova2 I had the same question. Why shouldn't I just crowdfund?
Jesse Daugherty
@alexandra_kazakova2 Each offering is an LLC that qualifies to be taxed as a Publicly Traded Partnership. In some ways you can think of it as similar to a single-asset tradable REIT. LEX is different from a crowdfunding platform in that we only work with existing buildings, and we work with the owner of that existing building to sell equity in their building. We don't crowdfund new projects. And we offer our securities pursuant to Reg A Tier 2 and ensure each offering is tradable without restriction, while crowdfunding is generally done via Reg D (transfer restrictions and accreditation requirements) or Reg CF (transfer restrictions). On LEX, offerings get a symbol and trade 9:30-4pm following their IPO.
Jesse Daugherty
@alexandra_kazakova2 @kbf Thanks for the question - just answered Alexandra above.
Alexandra Kazakova
@jtdaugh I get it. However, the main advantage of RE investing is tax benefits, which REITs don't provide. Moreover, investing in REITs gives even less control than passively investing in a syndication. With RETIs, people are not purchasing any real estate assets when they invest in REITs. Instead, they own shares in the company that owns real estate assets. I think it is a super important point to clarify. I've also seen some products here on PH claiming that they are making REI accessible to people with no time or no money. This is a major mistake because people with no money should not invest in anything (SEC), especially in illiquid assets. And people who don't have time to learn about investing also should not be investing. That's why I am a big fan of SEC-compliant RE syndications because they are super clear with investors about this.
Jesse Daugherty
Agreed on both points. Important to clarify that LEX offerings are *not* REITS. They are single-asset partnership interests. And each offering we do is SEC-qualified.