NEW YORK–LEX Markets, a commercial real estate securities marketplace built for all investors, announced that it is taking a building public through a novel securitization process in a first of its kind IPO.
This is the platform’s first offering open to all investors, and represents a new way to invest in commercial real estate. LEX allows accredited and non-accredited investors to buy equity shares of individual commercial real estate assets and trade them, without fees or required holding periods, on LEX’s fully-licensed securities platform.
The property, 286 Lenox Avenue, is a commercial office and retail property located in New York’s Harlem neighborhood. Built in 2019, it spans 18,759 leasable square feet and has three existing tenants, including a branch of Wells Fargo bank. Beginning today, shares of 286 Lenox are available on LEX’s platform at an opening price of $250 per share. The Offering Circular for the offering is available here. The initial offering aims to raise $2.15 million in equity.
“This is a historic moment for commercial real estate investing. Making the $17 trillion dollar commercial real estate market accessible to everyone is a process, and opening up the LEX marketplace to all investors is a huge step,” said Drew Sterrett and Jesse Daugherty, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of LEX Markets. “Our mission at LEX is to empower wealth creation by solving real estate’s access and liquidity problems. We’re proud to be building the future of real estate investing with a world class team of real estate industry veterans and technologists. 286 Lenox is a key moment in time moving us out of concept and into growth-stage of our company.”
LEX will continue to diversify its offerings across geographic markets and asset types. 286 Lenox follows the successful beta launch of a $24 million commercial property in Portland, ME (now trading under ticker: GWYGU which initially was offered to a small number of private, closed-beta users only). Starting now, these assets (and all future assets) are available on the LEX platform for all investors.
Today, LEX is opening its platform – previously invite-only beta – to the public. More than 10,000 investors have already signed up to join LEX and will be taken off a waitlist and given full access to the product. LEX allows both accredited and non-accredited investors to buy, sell, and trade shares of commercial real estate assets on LEX’s fully-licensed securities platform, which leverages matching technology from Nasdaq. These shares may also offer quarterly distributions through a tax advantaged structure.
LEX’s mission is to empower wealth creation by solving real estate’s access and liquidity problems, providing access to high-quality individual commercial real estate assets for investors, and offering owners of the underlying income-producing properties a base of permanent capital while still allowing them to maintain operational control.
“As owners, we see tremendous value creation opportunity through LEX. We’re excited to be on the forefront of this new opportunity and to open the investment to investors from all walks of life,” said Alexander Smith and Joey Cohen of Regal Capital Acquisitions, 286 Lenox Ave’s managing partners.
LEX offers owners of commercial real estate assets the ability to raise capital by securitizing a portion of their property, allowing them to recapitalize equity and receive cash from a newly-formed permanent capital vehicle. Owners can optimize their capital stacks, allowing them to crystallize promotes and carried interest while increasing investment performance and replacing limited partner investors, term capital, preferred equity and/or mezzanine debt. With a distributed model, LEX allows owners to keep full operational control while acting as the GP/Managing Member of the new public capital, and to continue to receive management fees for the asset. With a new infusion of capital, owners and existing partners are able to add value to their assets through improvements, market repositioning, and lease-ups.
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. The platform utilizes the same proprietary trading technology used by 70+ global securities markets around the world. Property owners retain operational control of their properties and benefit from a new way to unlock equity by taking buildings public.
