Crowdfunding Hits the Wine Country

Individual investors will get a chance to make a play in Napa Valley through crowdfunding for the first time starting today when RealCrowd and Madison Marquette start offering a chance for accredited investors to buy into Napa's Oxbow Public Market.

The offering could raise about $6M in equity for Oxbow Public Market, a marketplace with 25k SF of leasable area that brings together restaurants, shops and artisan food and wine. Individual investors can make minimum investments of $50k in the property using the RealCrowd platform.

Private real estate investing firm Madison Marquette, which recently joined Oxbow developer The Carlin Co to recapitalize the property for further expansion, plans to post the offering today.

Madison Marquette president Eric Hohmann says the investment opportunity creates a way of drawing on a "virtually unlimited" pool of investors looking for a way to invest in Napa's luxury wine country.

The targeted return of the Oxbow investment is 14%, with a 7% to 7.6% targeted annual cash return. The estimated hold time is five to seven years.

RealCrowd CEO Adam Hooper tells us investing in real estate is part of a balanced and diversified portfolio, but many investors haven't had access at this scale before.

Since RealCrowd launched in late 2013, the company's network has grown to more than 20,000 members seeking to leverage the new regulatory environment that lets them take advantage of these investment opportunities, he says.

That has led to more than $65M invested through the platform and provided access to more than $1.5B in total investment opportunities, Adam says.

With Oxbow, it's a community retail hub in Napa, Adam tells us, and "I don't know of a better way to help expand and grow that community than to have investors with literal buy-in to the success of the project."