RealtyShares buys Acquire Real Estate platform
San Francisco-based online real estate investment marketplace RealtyShares has acquired rival Acquire Real Estate for an undisclosed amount. Acquire's former CEO, Josh Klimkiewicz, will become director of commercial business development, while CTO Gerry Polucci has been appointed as director of engineering. RealtyShares tripled business during Q2 2017, compared with the same period the previous year, originating almost $140m in real estate projects. RealtyShares has 120,000 registered investors and to date has deployed more than $500m in various real estate deals.
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--RealtyShares, a leading online marketplace for real estate investing, today announced the acquisition of technology-first, marketplace platform Acquire Real Estate, an innovative rival that has set a bar for product development within the industry.

Both companies took different paths toward building successful online real estate investing platforms. RealtyShares has excelled at scaling operations and offering diverse investment opportunities. The company boasts more than 120,000 registered investors and has surpassed $500 million deployed for real estate projects across nearly 1,000 deals in 39 states. It has quickly gained traction by making investing and financing across the capital stack easier than ever, fueling a record second quarter where they tripled business over the prior year by originating almost $140 million in real estate projects.

Led by CEO Josh Klimkiewicz and CTO Gerry Polucci, Acquire focused on developing industry-first products to serve its commercial sponsors and investors, keeping the platform at the forefront of innovation despite better-funded rivals. It was the first real estate marketplace to introduce a real estate exchange, investor profiles, a dynamic investment calculator and self-directed IRA investing. Both Klimkiewicz and Polucci will join RealtyShares as part of the acquisition, spearheading integration from the company’s East Coast office.

“RealtyShares and Acquire share a vision that technology will make real estate investing easier and more accessible, uniting bold thinkers to set an innovative tone for the industry,” said RealtyShares founder and CEO Nav Athwal. “Josh and Gerry are a perfect culture fit for our company. They bring the intuition, tenacity and experience we need to remove friction from the real estate investing process and help RealtyShares redefine this industry.”

Klimkiewicz is a Harvard graduate with an extensive commercial background including the acquisition, disposition and structured finance of over $6 billion in real estate transactions as vice president of capital markets at CBRE. He began Acquire in 2014 after 8 years with the commercial real estate behemoth.

“Like RealtyShares, we saw a real opportunity to use technology to close the gap and create a better process for raising capital,” said Klimkiewicz. “We targeted commercial equity day one, specifically middle market projects with equity checks between $5 million and $10 million, recognizing that there was just no efficient way for institutions or investors to participate in those types of deals without innovative solutions. By taking the time to understand our community, we were better able to address needs and build products that truly solved problems.”

Klimkiewicz will serve as the director of commercial business development while colleague Polucci will join as a director of engineering. Polucci’s background is atypical within real estate. He is an entrepreneur, product leader and software architect with more than 30 years of software engineering experience across a number of industries, including healthcare, storage management and technology.

“I saw a lack of audacity,” said Polucci. “Technology can transform our industry, but people with real estate backgrounds saw complex problems in their industry as intractable. Our team possessed a unique perspective, which allowed us to identify and tackle those challenges directly.”

Klimkiewicz and Polucci join a company leading the charge to bring innovation to one of the largest asset classes in the world, driven by other key additions over the last few months. In May, RealtyShares named Former Cushman & Wakefield CEO Edward Forst to the board of directors and Senior Vice President of Marketing Kristina Wallender joined in June after working with market innovators Amazon and Ticketfly.

About RealtyShares

RealtyShares is transforming the real estate investment landscape by connecting borrowers and sponsors to debt and equity capital from accredited and institutional investors, across an array of financing products. Private investments are highly illiquid and risky and are not suitable for all investors. Through the RealtyShares website, these investors can browse investment opportunities, perform due diligence, invest online and gain 24/7 access to an investor dashboard to watch how their investments are performing. RealtyShares offers securities through North Capital Private Securities Corporation, member FINRA/SIPC. For more information on how to become a real estate investor or to seek capital through the RealtyShares marketplace, please visit www.realtyshares.com.