The concept of changing into an actual property investor for as little as $5 could seem too good to be true.
And for a lot of customers of Landa, a proptech firm that promised simply that — it has been.
Landa emerged from stealth in August 2022, saying a complete of $33 million in funding and a pledge to assist on a regular basis Individuals entry residential actual property funding by means of fractional shares.
CEO Yishai Cohen and former CTO Amit Assaraf based Landa in 2019 in an effort to make actual property funding extra inclusive. The app’s solely necessities had been that customers be over age 18 and U.S. residents. They might begin investing with simply $5, and purchase and promote shares in addition to see real-time updates on their properties from the Landa app. (Assaraf left the corporate in December of 2023, in line with his LinkedIn profile. He has not responded to requests for remark.)
Right this moment, Landa’s funding portal website is down and its app is inoperable. Customers declare they’ll’t entry their funds and haven’t been paid dividends in months. The startup is embroiled in litigation, together with a lawsuit from its early enterprise investor Viola.
One early person informed TechCrunch that Landa stopped paying dividends to him on his shares in January. When he requested Landa about it, they “punted the query,” he stated.
“I repeatedly emailed them about it and simply obtained deflecting solutions, nothing actual,” the person stated. “Then a number of months after that, the app grew to become unusable. It might not open.”
The person then requested if he might delete his account, which he had opened in 2021, and promote the shares. However he discovered Landa had disabled his capability to promote shares.
“They’ve primarily frozen me out of my funds and simply shut down the app,” the person stated. “The place is the cash? Why received’t they return it to me?”
Over 130 complaints have been filed in opposition to Landa to the Higher Enterprise Bureau, with dozens of individuals echoing comparable allegations. As an illustration, on Could 1, one person who filed such a criticism shared that they had invested over $8,000 by means of Landa and stopped receiving dividends final fall. The person stated Landa customer support replied to their emails by saying that the corporate is “engaged on it.”
In mid-April, when TechCrunch requested Landa in regards to the concern — together with the standing of its downed website and whether or not the corporate itself had shut down — CEO Cohen stated: “After all not. The location can be again up.”
When requested why the app was not working and why customers had not acquired dividends in months, Cohen’s terse reply nonetheless appeared to seek advice from the web site, blaming the servers: “It’s unrelated to dividends. It’s from our servers. We’re on it.”
Upon additional prodding, Cohen on April 18 shared the next assertion: “We’re conscious of the problems at the moment affecting our platform and product, and wish to guarantee all traders that we’re actively working to revive full performance as quickly as potential. We now have stored traders knowledgeable by means of all updates, together with the server entry concern. We recognize the continued assist of our traders and resident neighborhood, and stay dedicated to delivering on our imaginative and prescient of creating actual property investing accessible to everybody.”
Cohen didn’t reply to our request for a standing replace on Could 20. Buyers NFX and 83North didn’t reply to our a number of requests for remark.
Embroiled in a lawsuit
It’s not simply customers who’re upset with Landa. The corporate’s main lenders are suing.
Viola Credit score and L Finance filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Courtroom in opposition to Landa in November 2024, accusing it of “quite a few defaults” on greater than $35 million price of loans they prolonged to the corporate. (Viola can also be an investor in Landa by means of its enterprise division.)
The lenders additionally accused it of lacking property tax funds that led to the pressured sale of these properties, neglecting properties, and even failing to gather rents.
The lawsuit — first reported by actual property business publication Bisnow — states that after over a yr of trying to get Landa to honor their commitments, the lenders eliminated Landa as supervisor of the properties and appointed an impartial property supervisor and a chief restructuring officer.
After additional negotiations failed, the collectors later requested the courtroom for, and had been granted, an injunction blocking Landa from accessing financial institution accounts, interfering with their makes an attempt to restructure the enterprise, and reclaiming cash they are saying is owed — together with proceeds from property gross sales.
Regardless of the injunction, the lenders returned to courtroom in January 2025, claiming Landa informed tenants to ship lease funds to a special checking account not coated by the ruling. They found this whereas making repairs to 1 property’s septic system. Additionally they accused Landa’s CEO of attempting to promote or refinance some properties.
The courtroom ordered Landa to clarify itself. As an alternative, in early March, Landa requested the courtroom for a restraining order in opposition to Viola Credit score and L Finance, claiming the impartial supervisor was “put in unlawfully.”
Choose Jennifer G. Schecter was not happy. In March, she ordered either side to discover a resolution “that’s good for your whole shoppers.” She denied Landa’s request for an injunction and ordered the corporate to pay practically $100,000. A number of weeks later, Landa filed a proper countersuit. The case remains to be pending.
Difficult mannequin
Landa is only one of a number of startups that emerged lately providing fractional actual property investing. It is usually apparently not the one one which has struggled — particularly after mortgage rates of interest started hovering in 2022.
Fintor raised thousands and thousands of {dollars} earlier than seemingly pivoting to supply an “AI Agent to automate finance and actual property operations with human stage efficiency.” Dallas-based Nada, which supplied index-like actual property funding merchandise referred to as “Cityfunds,” permitting non-accredited traders to purchase right into a metropolis’s house fairness market with as little as $250, additionally seems to have pivoted. Its web site now promotes a brand new tagline: “Entry house fairness to finance something.”
Arrived was maybe the highest-profile of the bunch — and the one one which appears to be actively working underneath the identical mannequin. In Could of 2022, TechCrunch reported that Arrived raised $25 million in a Sequence A funding spherical together with Bezos Expeditions, to permit individuals to purchase shares in single-family leases with “as little as $100.” In accordance with its web site, the startup has so far paid out over $13 million in dividends and curiosity and has 766,000 registered traders.
As for these individuals who invested with Landa, the way forward for their cash seems unsure. As of Could 23, Landa’s investor portal web site nonetheless redirects to a “come-back-soon” upkeep message.
