Scott Baltic at Commercial Property Executive provided some excellent insight on how the recent SEC JOBS ruling could benefit the commercial real estate industry…

To date, the largest crowdfunding markets have been the largest CRE markets, namely California, New York, Florida and Texas, says Jilliene Helman, CEO of Realtymogul.com. “The dominant product types have been multifamily and retail, however we have also financed office, self-storage, industrial and hospitality real estate. We tend to focus on existing properties with some value-add component.”“Title III will make it easier to finance smaller real estate projects, but will have less of an impact on the broader CRE market,” Helman continues. “Because there is a $1 million annual cap per issuer, you will not be able to raise substantial amounts of money via non-accredited investors.”

In another quote…

In his experience, says Marshall Saunders, co-founder and managing partner of SaundersDailey, Minneapolis, crowdfunding has been used mostly for multi-family projects (along with a few single-family fix-and-flip deals), typically about four to 40 units in size. He expects that to change, based on “two huge gaps in real estate and investment.”

First, he points out, a $5 million to $20 million project can get funded right away, but projects in the range of roughly (depending on the market) $200,000 to $1.2 million are often too large for one individual and too small for traditional CRE funding, so that niche is underserved.

It will be interesting to see if residential real estate investments such as wholesales and flips, will also benefit from this influx of new investors.