073: How Technology is Changing Real Estate with Craig Cecilio

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Craig Cecilio is a principal in DiversyFund, Inc. and the founder and CEO of California Coastal Funding Group, Inc. He has worked in the real estate industry for nearly 20 years. Over the course of his career, he has participated in the development of over 1,000 single family residences in California as either a joint venture equity partner, lender or sponsor.

Mr. Cecilio also owns a California-licensed real estate lending business for residential renovations and ground-up construction (residential and multi-family) in California coastal markets such as San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles and San Francisco, a loan servicing business and a real estate crowdfunding website known as Diversyfund.com.

Since 1997, Mr. Cecilio has financed nearly $1 billion of real estate assets, having raised over $100 million in debt or equity for real estate transactions in the last three years, and has developed and managed over $25 million of residential property (renovations and ground-up). Mr. Cecilio also manages a real estate bridge loan fund that pre-funds many of the transactions later sold the DiversyFund investor platform.

Mr. Cecilio is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Key Points

  1. Crowdfunding, simply put, is real estate syndication leveraged with technology
  2. Who should invest in real estate through crowdfunds
  3. Using crowfunding opportunities to learn about real estate
  4. What you need to do to be SEC compliant
  5. Investing through crowdfunding vs. investing in real estate on your own

Lightning Questions

  1. What was your biggest hurdle getting started in real estate investing, and how did you overcome it?
    • The typical hurdles of raising capital were the same for Craig as anyone else doing the same thing – developing the track record as a first time crowdfunding platform.
  2. Do you have a personal habit that contributes to your success?
    • Craig is forward thinking and approaches every problem with solutions.
  3. Do you have an online resource that you find valuable?
    • Craig gets a lot of his information from new sources and networking.
    • Craig uses Investopdia for definitions.
  4. What book would you recommend to the listeners and why?
  5. If you were to give advice to your 20 year old self to get started in real estate investing, what would it be?
    • Buy more real estate!

Resources

DiversyFund