According to this Desert Sun article, Alta Verde Group, the Beverly Hills-based developer of homes inside Escena, Monte Sereno and Coral Mountain, turned to crowdfunding to fund part of it’s new Linea development. Linea is a neighborhood of 14 all-white, Modernist-inspired homes, designed by Alta Verde’s Anthony Poon, coming to South Palm Springs with prices starting at $2.5 million. They will be built with white slatted structural steel and each 5,000-square-foot residence will include 90 lineal feet of glass.
Linea is also the first development in California backed by investors using Fundrise, a real estate crowdfunding platform. Fundrise, a Washington, D.C. startup, allows accredited individuals to invest as little as $5,000 in real estate projects. The investment for the Alte Verde project sold out in less than 30 days, said Brandon Jenkins, Fundrise’s chief operating officer. In its three-year life, Fundrise’s investors have partially funded around 100 projects, mostly in commercial real estate on the east coast. Jenkins estimates that fewer than 20 percent of Fundrise-backed projects have been developments of single-family homes.
According to Linea’s listing on Fundrise.com, Fundrise investors will cover around 13 percent of the project’s debt, or $1.5 million of the $11.4 million project. The rest of Linea’s capital will come from the developer and senior debtholders.
Alta Verde’s three desert projects — Escena and Monte Sereno in Palm Springs and Coral Mountain in La Quinta — have proven successful so far. The company came to the desert in the midst of the housing market’s downturn and began acquiring underwater projects, then produced homes that routinely sell for $700,000 or more. Alta Verde has won top building industry awards for several of their designs.
Please use the following link to read more in this article by Rosalie Murphy, courtesy of The Desert Sun: