Real estate investment platform Cadre fully launched its newest offering this week as it continues to push to change real estate investment. Called Cadre Secondary Market, this platform will allow all of Cadre’s members to sell their investment in any Cadre-listed assets after a year (instead of having to hold it until fully disposed).
For Cadre co-founder and CEO Ryan Williams, this is an important step in his firm’s efforts to democratize real estate: “We said, let’s also let those same folks [who invest on Cadre] have liquidity, because that’s another barrier to entry. An individual investor doesn’t have the liquidity levels of a wealth fund or institution, and will maybe need to pull it out faster.”
Simply put, Cadre provides access for individuals and institutions to invest in large commercial real estate properties. Cadre’s team analyzes and vets potential investment properties, selecting about two percent of all buildings submitted to offer to its investor customers. Cadre promises to fully provide any equity that a building’s operators require via a $250 million “backstop” that the firm maintains—but so far, all projects have reached their full investment naturally.
Indeed, many assets end up fully committed within a couple of days of listing. With the introduction of its secondary market, Cadre hope to relieve some of this bottleneck that investors have experienced—while acknowledging the minor risk that this might increase volatility.
This latest platform offering is the next step in Cadre’s overall success story. The firm currently has over $1 billion under management and has been included in Forbes’ FinTech50 since 2016. Williams himself has been recognized, with an inclusion on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 last year and a net worth around $160 million.
However, not everything is going smoothly for Cadre or for Williams. Williams’ co-founders have become somewhat notorious as of late: White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner and his brother Josh. Kushner's involvement in Cadre—which Williams and his team assert is totally passive—has given the firm somewhat of a stain in a time when questions have arisen about whether or not Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump stand to personally benefit from recent “opportunity zone” tax breaks.
Williams has ultimately brushed off the concerns surround Kushner’s involvement, preferring to focus on Cadre’s continued growth. However, in speaking with Forbes, Williams did allude to the fact that he ultimately has little control over Kushner’s participation: “We don’t have any real mechanisms unless it’s criminal or gross negligence. I can’t force anybody, really, to sell their equity.”
