Real estate investment firm Fundrise says it aims to break down barriers to the real estate investment market by allowing people to invest in real estate across the United States, without having to buy property and with as little as just $10. The company says its platform has 1.2 million users, with more than $2.4 billion under management. Ben Miller, co-founder and CEO of Fundrise, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.

Closing Bell

Fundrise Offers Real Estate Investment Opportunities For Just $10

real estate investment from fun dries, aiming to break down the barriers to the real estate investment market by allowing people to invest in real estate across the US Without having to buy property and with as little as just $10. Well, the company says there are 1.2 million users on the platform and that it has more than $2.4 billion under management. So joining me now is Ben Miller, co founder and Ceo of Fun dries. Ben, it's good to see you, So talk to me a bit more about your platform, how it works and how it's allowing users to invest in real estate with as little as $10. So fun dries is a way to invest in real estate, the way you buy a stock online or a book on amazon before Sunrise, you couldn't buy real estate the way professionals do. You have to be a large institution or a super high net worth investor. And now because of our technology, Sunrise made it possible to invest for as little as $10. It's pretty impressive here. I know you got some new funding, you're looking to expand and so what else is in the works? Well, so we, What's happening right now is the stock market is down 20 or 30%. Kryptos down 60 or 70%. And fun dries real estate up 3- 5%. So what's happening is that real estate real assets are vastly outperforming the financial markets and people are starting to see why you diversify into real estate. So we're seeing huge demand for investors from our, from our investors, we've been buying about a billion dollars in real estate so far this year to really expanding. And I think that this market is waking people up to why you would want to invest in real estate. Especially now with interest rates up. So much. So clearly we see a lot of interest in the housing market of late. We're starting to see the housing market cool a little bit better. And as interest rates start to rise, how does that impact your company? Well, so yeah, interest rates have doubled and that means housing is much less affordable and what happens when housing is not affordable to buy? People decided to rent. So we own the sunrise investors own something like 20,000 apartments and housing units across the sunbelt. What we're seeing is rents are up because people who were going to buy instead are renting, so that's driving up rents driving up demand. And really that's one of the main reasons that in a recession, real estate, such a good asset shelter is a basic need. And it picks up inflation. So as a result, our rents are up and the stock market's down well in terms of markets that seem hot right now, I'm just curious the pulse that you have on the real estate market as we start to see if it's even a potential recession, then people start to pull back a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I'm expecting a recession that my expectation is the Federal Reserve Will will raise rates into September and that will put rates around where they are today, which is five or 6%. And then they're going to stop before the election. They're not going to want to keep raising rates ahead of the election and come november after the election. That's really going to be the moment. Where do we see if inflation is come down or not? And if it hasn't come down rates going to go back up, we're going to go into recession and if rates basically do basically inflation does come down, then we might be behind the worst of it behind us. And that's basically the open question. But I think our real estate at least housing in the Sunbelt people are moving there, it's really affordable, there's a lot of migration, a lot of job growth and work from home. And so we have sort of good tail winds and for most circumstances. All right, we got to leave it there. Ben Miller, co founder and Ceo of Sunrise. Ben, thanks so much for coming on the show