And now as a company making history with the first
of its kind I. P. O. Lex
is a commercial real estate platform where anyone can own
and trade shares of individual buildings. You heard that
? Right? And today the company took a building
public. It's the first ever real estate I.
P. O. Open to all us investors and
shares of the building located in new york's Harlem neighborhood
. The price at$250 and can be traded on
Lexus platform as well as otc markets here to discuss
more about lex and how the platform works. The
company's co founder and Ceo Drew Sterrett Drew, thanks
so much for joining us, wondering if you can
break down exactly what lex does and how this works
. Especially with this I. P. O.
That opened today. Congrats by the way, thank
you very much, exciting day for us here at
lex. Um but I guess the easy way to
break it down is we created a brand new asset
class to allow all investors to be able to buy
, sell and trade individual commercial real estate assets while
being actual equity owners in the buildings. So capturing
all of the benefits of direct real estate ownership and
then also have the ability to sell at any point
in time on an open trading venue while also being
fully aligned with the real estate sponsor. And each
one of these securities are registered with the DTCC cues
. If Cell C. N. S. To
imagine your traditional equities markets, that all sounds great
. I want to talk about how the shares work
as far as trading goes, shares of lex buildings
, they're traded on an alternative trading system. Can
you double all deeper into that? Sure. An
alternative trading system also known as an 80 S.
Is one level below a national stock exchange. So
it is under the auspices of the SEc and Finra
. They have traditionally been used as dark pools.
We actually took a very different approach where we use
light fools. So we show full depth of order
book, allowing investors to have full transparency into exactly
what they're purchasing on the asset level. But also
the market dynamics as well. Do we mentioned the
Harlem building that I. P. O. Today
tell us more about it. What do you like
? What should people know about lex and this building
? So we deal with core and Core Plus assets
and we allow real estate owners to do equity recaps
on assets that they already own. So for us
it's working with well issued uh well then issued sponsors
where they have alignment in the asset themselves, so
they're actually retaining the majority of the equity and then
on a go forward basis, investors are actually pro
out of perry pursue. So that means side by
side with the owners and the operators. So they
only investors get paid when the G. P.
Gets paid. Um So basically no money is taken
out and you are side by side with the institutional
investor and sponsor of the asset itself? Yeah.
And anything else you can share about this building in
particular in Harlem why this one for lex risk,
A really big part. We deal with core and
core Plus assets. We felt very comfortable with this
asset, since we see a lot of upside um
for the Harlem market, the tenants include Wells Fargo
as the anchor tenant, and then to medical nursing
office, um, companies who take up the rest
of the building. And so given the risk profile
, the upside the cash flow, it seemed like
a no brainer investment. And we did full underwriting
and it's really exciting to deal with really quality product
. Your company's mission is to also make the commercial
real estate market more accessible, democratized if you will
, for everyday people talk more about how you plan
to do that and how you think that lex could
change the dynamics of this sector? Well, it's
really interesting, right? We're becoming a society where
almost forced to rent instead of purchase houses and different
real estate ourselves, especially in the major cities.
And so this actually allows people to invest in their
communities receive cash flow, the tax benefits of direct
real estate ownership. And even though they may not
be able to purchase houses themselves, It's also a
great tool for long term wealth creation and also access
to an asset class that has been kept for the
.01%. And also in those cases, it's also
been in illiquid markets, I think so many people
can relate to that, especially in this volatile industry
. That's true stare at Ceo of lex. Thanks
so much for joining us here on Cheddar News.