INTERVIEW WITH NAV ATHWAL, REALTYSHARES CO-FOUNDER NOLAND ARARACAP
You mention that all investments are passive. Does this mean that your investments are
mostly buy and hold opportunities?
When we say passive, what we really mean is that the Investor does not have to worry about any of the usual
headaches that come with owning, operating and managing real estate (i.e. tenants, taxes, insurance, repairs,
etc.). Rather, the investor is investing passively just like they would in a stock or bond and the Investment
Manager handles managing and operating the investment. However, the type of investment can be anything
from a stabilized apartment building in San Francisco, to a short term fix and flip investment in Florida. B ut,
regardless of the type of investment, to the investor it is still a passive headache free real estate investment.
How does an investor monitor the
performance of their investment?
They
can
through
monitor
an
Dashboard”.
easy
the
to
performance
use
“Investor
Through this dashboard,
investors have the ability to monitor their
real estate investments, cash distributions
and returns. The dashboard also serves
as a repository for all of their investment
and
tax
Investors
documents,
can
also
including
K-1’s.
manage
their
investments in the dashboard, including
their cash distributions, returns and all
paperwork. We’re like a Scottrade or ETrade but for real estate.
How did you come up with the idea for RealtyShares?
My co-founder and I met while in grad school at UC Berkeley - I was at the law school and he was at the Haas
MBA School. Upon graduation in 2009, we immediately started looking for real estate investment opportunities
in the Bay Area. However, we found that raising capital for these investments was extremely inefficient. In fact
high quality Investment Managers spend more than 40% of their time trying to raise capital for great deals
rather than focusing on what really matters – the real estate itself. At the same time, investors lack access to
quality real estate