May 22, 2019 - Los Angeles, CA -- PeerStreet, a marketplace for investing in real estate backed loans, has announced the appointment of Deepa Salastekar as the Vice President of Institutional Sales. Ms. Salastekar joins PeerStreet to expand the company’s relationship base of institutional partners across all investment types available through PeerStreet.
As PeerStreet’s Vice President of Institutional Sales, Ms. Salastekar will lead the strategy and communications for the growing number of financial institutions seeking to invest in fractional or whole loans on PeerStreet. She brings more than 20 years of experience in capital markets, including nine years as a Senior Vice President at Pacific Investment Management Company in Alternative Sales, eight years at Bear Stearns & Co, Inc. as a Managing Director in Fixed Income Institutional Sales of Derivatives, and most recently as Co-Head of Securities for Inveniam Capital Partners, a platform focused on blockchain-enabled tokens for private debt. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BA from Rutgers University.
“We are currently experiencing great demand from investors of all stripes, including institutional investors, and we are lucky to be able to bring someone of Deepa’s caliber on board to manage this growth,” said Brew Johnson, co-founder and CEO of PeerStreet. “We can’t wait to see where her leadership takes us.”
Ms. Salastekar’s experience in building businesses across institutional and retail channels demonstrates her expertise in sales and product development in fixed income markets and alternative investments. Her background will be essential in executing on a strategy to develop sales, marketing and investor relations functions for PeerStreet’s institutional audience. With a career focused on mortgage credit sectors and private credit, she brings valuable insight to PeerStreet’s capital markets team to meet and facilitate institutional demand.
“While institutional investors have liked investing in mortgages originated by private lenders, it was challenging for them to get both volume and diversification, especially in markets like fix and flip and Residential for Rent because the markets are so fragmented,” said Ms. Salastekar. “PeerStreet immediately resonated with me because it solves real problems for institutions by making it dramatically easier to access and diversify across investments in fragmented markets.”
Ms. Salastekar is the latest executive hire to an expanding team of capital markets professionals. She joins Louis Nees, PeerStreet’s Head of Capital Markets, who joined the company in September 2017 after 30 years of experience on Wall Street, most recently as CEO of Walter Capital Opportunity. The team is further supported by Bob Brown’s rich investment banking experience—with tenures at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, including an extensive history of advising C-level executives in the financial services and FinTech sectors. Several key hires have been made over the previous year as PeerStreet enters its fifth year in business and continues its rapid growth. In March 2019, the company surpassed $2 billion transacted on the platform.
Los Angeles, CA, April 8, 2019 -- PeerStreet, a platform for investing in real estate backed loans, today announced that it is updating its Automated Investing product functionality to make it even easier for investors to diversify on PeerStreet. The company has lowered its minimum investment to just $100 for “small balance reinvestments” when using the Automated Investing feature. This update also expands the investment types available for Automated Investing to include Cash Offer Loans and 30-Day Notes, which have shorter-term note rates than the platform’s typical bridge loan investment options.
Automated Investing is a popular feature among PeerStreet’s thousands of individual investors—well over half of all investments are made through Automated Investing. These changes further an important part of the PeerStreet ethos: to help investors diversify and maintain control of their portfolios. To prevent idle cash in PeerStreet accounts, customers can now automatically reinvest as little as $100 in new investment opportunities on the platform (the reinvestment minimum was previously $1,000). This better enables investors to quickly turn interest payments into active investments.
In addition to this lowered reinvestment minimum, investors can now select Cash Offer Loans and 30-Day Notes for Automated Investing as well. Now all current investment types that are available on PeerStreet can be invested in through Automated Investing.
“We’ve answered the call from customers who have been asking for these Automated Investing features, which can help people diversify their portfolios with greater ease than ever before,” said Brett Crosby, co-founder and COO of PeerStreet. “These changes are designed to help more people get access to the investments they want.”
With Automated Investing, investors on the platform can reserve their spots in investments that meet their specific criteria with just a few clicks. PeerStreet gives these investors the ability to review each investment reservation that is made on their behalf, and cancel within 24 hours for any reason. Investors can specify how much they want to invest at any time, both by product category and individual investment opportunities.
This announcement aligns with PeerStreet’s commitment to taking the hassle out of investing in real estate debt and providing better access to this asset class—access that was previously difficult for most investors to achieve. This upgrade comes on the heels of the company’s announcement in March that it had over $2 billion transacted on the platform and $1 billion in assets under management, as well as a recent expansion into Residential for Rent loans.
LOS ANGELES, Calif.--March 28, 2019-- PeerStreet, a marketplace for investing in real estate backed loans, is honored to announce that it has won Comparably’s 2019 Culture Awards in multiple categories, including Best Places to Work in Los Angeles and Best Outlook for 2019. PeerStreet’s recognition by Comparably is one of several award wins by the firm in the past year, including being named one of the “2019 Best Places to Work in Financial Technology” by American Banker, and among the CB Insights Fintech 250 in 2018. “We are excited for what this year will bring for PeerStreet as we continue to rapidly scale our platform. We’ve now surpassed $2 billion transacted and $1 billion assets under management, and the goal is to continue the amazing work our team is doing while ensuring that PeerStreet remains a place our current and future employees enjoy and are proud to work for,” said Brew Johnson, CEO of PeerStreet. Brew Johnson founded PeerStreet alongside co-founder and COO, Brett Crosby. In December 2018, Brew was also recognized in Comparably’s Best CEO for Diversity category, which was awarded based on the company’s ongoing commitment to diversity, inclusion and a positive work environment as core values. Brew is also the recipient of the 2017 HousingWire Vanguard Award.Comparably, a compensation, culture and career monitoring website, recently released its first quarter 2019 Culture Awards. Based on employee sentiment, these lists recognize companies of all sizes across the nation that have been positively reviewed by their employees for both their outlook for the company’s future and a variety of topics relating to workplace culture. "The pride PeerStreet employees have for their organization is proven time and again with their positive ratings on Comparably," said Jason Nazar, Comparably CEO. "Their placement on our Best Places to Work in Los Angeles and Best Company Outlook lists is an outstanding accomplishment, and is further proof of the company's commitment to building great workplace culture and changing the landscape of the real estate debt market."This news also comes on the heels of PeerStreet’s recent launch of its Residential for Rent offering, which is the latest expansion of their offerings to PeerStreet lenders. The team at PeerStreet has grown alongside the business, this year having reached 191 full-time employees and continuing to expand its staff across all business areas.
Los Angeles, CA, March 20, 2019 -- PeerStreet, a platform for investing in real estate backed loans, today announced the launch of a new loan product for private lenders: Residential for Rent loans. Residential for Rent loans have a 30-year term so borrowers can secure long-term financing for residential rental properties. This launch is in response to key market conditions: as more people struggle to finance buying a home, the rental market has continued to grow.
Because of the longer-term nature of Residential for Rent loans, PeerStreet is currently offering investment in this product to its pool of institutional investors—a group with a proven appetite for this asset class. For PeerStreet’s network of private lenders, this presents an opportunity to do more business with their borrowers, in addition to attracting new customers who need long term financing rather than short term bridge loans.
“We’re very excited to be expanding our marketplace by offering Residential for Rent loans. This is a natural progression for us as a company as we increase our volume of transactions with institutional investors,” said Brew Johnson, co-founder and CEO of PeerStreet. “Our move into this asset class is important to continue to support the growth of our private lending partners and help them better serve their borrowers.”
With this product launch, PeerStreet takes a big step in developing an even more robust real estate marketplace, expanding its reach beyond short-term bridge loans. The company is not only introducing this product to an active audience, but they are continuing to position its platform for even more growth in 2019.
“Supporting this new product is incredibly valuable for the PeerStreet marketplace as a whole,” said Brett Crosby, co-founder and COO of PeerStreet. “More lenders means more loans, which makes it easier for investors to diversify their portfolios. That benefit brings more investor demand, and in turn, enables lenders to attract more quality borrowers. It is a virtuous cycle that builds upon the platform and enriches the marketplace.”
PeerStreet developed its platform to enable expansion across many loan types, beginning with Residential Bridge loans, expanding to Multifamily Bridge loans, Small Balance Commercial Bridge loans and now, Residential for Rent loans.
PeerStreet, an award-winning platform for investing in real estate backed loans, has announced the hiring of two executives with extensive experience in the financial services and real estate sectors: Ellen Coleman and Bob Brown. Ms. Coleman joins as Executive Vice President of Finance, and Mr. Brown joins as Executive Vice President of Finance & Corporate Development. Ellen Coleman brings more than 15 years of experience in corporate treasury within the mortgage industry. Her track record in both treasury operations and debt capital raising demonstrates proven success with building finance and treasury teams, cash management and wire operations, and establishing new processes to support business objectives, particularly for enabling growth. Her skill set is an ideal fit for PeerStreet as the company scales and expands both the overall platform as well as its finance and credit operations. Before PeerStreet, Ms. Coleman held positions as Managing Director at Countrywide Financial Corp, Treasurer at Stearns Lending, and Executive Vice President and Treasurer at both Nationstar Mortgage and Homeward Residential, Inc.“Joining such a fast-growing company that’s disrupting the industry I’m so familiar with is an incredibly exciting opportunity,” said Ms. Coleman. “This is a finance team that's already proven to be very strategic, and I’m thrilled to help lead us into our next phase of growth.”Bob Brown’s 17-plus years of investment banking experience—with tenures at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers—includes an extensive history of advising C-level executives in the financial services and fintech sectors. His expertise spans capital markets, corporate finance, and strategic M&A, with experience across a broad range of transactions and capital instruments, including common and preferred equity, senior and subordinated debt and lead-managing IPOs. Prior to joining PeerStreet, Mr. Brown was a Senior Managing Director in FBR’s Financial Services Investment Banking division. “As PeerStreet continues to build and expand its institutional relationships, the timing lined up perfectly for me to join the team and take part in supporting our massive growth,” Bob said. “My background in corporate finance and capital markets is right at home here and I’m excited to help PeerStreet with the next big push.”Ms. Coleman and Mr. Brown join an impressive roster of executives with extensive experience in credit, real estate, finance, law, capital markets and technology. Several key hires have been made over the previous year as PeerStreet enters its fifth year in business and continues its rapid growth, including Greg Galusha (Head of Commercial Real Estate), John Devereux (Chief Real Estate Officer), Nicole Hopkins (Head of People Operations), Tom Kuhr (Head of Product Marketing), and Louis Nees (Head of Capital Markets). PeerStreet now employs over 185 full-time staff, and doubled its office footprint this February to accommodate the company’s momentum and accelerated growth plans. “These are particularly exciting hires for us, because they build upon the strong financial foundation we’ve already set, while better preparing us for our growth trajectory—in 2019 and beyond,” said Brew Johnson, co-founder and CEO of PeerStreet. “We’re at a place now where we need this level of specialized, senior talent, and we’ve found that with Ellen and Bob.”
Los Angeles, CA, February 25, 2019 -- PeerStreet, a marketplace for investing in real estate backed loans, was recently named as one of the 2019 Best Places to Work in Financial Technology. The awards program was created in 2017 and is a project of SourceMedia and Best Companies Group.This annual survey and awards program is designed to identify, recognize and honor the best employers in the financial technology industry. Companies recognized on this year’s list operate in and serve companies and consumers in a wide range of financial services, including banking and mortgages, insurance, payments and financial advisory.This recognition follows PeerStreet’s continuing growth as a dominant force in transforming the real estate investing industry. Just a few short years after its public launch, PeerStreet is proud to appear on the American Banker’s Best Places to Work in Financial Technology list for the second consecutive year. PeerStreet is also included in CB Insights Fintech 250 list of fastest-growing fintech startups and the HousingWire Tech 100. In 2018, PeerStreet was also named a best place to work by the Comparably Awards, including in the Overall Best Companies and Best Companies for Diversity categories.“We experienced massive growth for PeerStreet last year. We surpassed $1 billion transacted on our platform in 2018 alone, and continued to develop new products for our investors and lenders. We are incredibly proud that with this growth, PeerStreet has remained focused on maintaining a collaborative and inspiring place to work for our team,” said Brett Crosby, co-founder and COO of PeerStreet.“Every one of the companies named to Source Media’s Best Places to Work in Financial Technology list demonstrated a culture focused on supporting and engaging employees,” said Richard Melville, Group Editorial Director at SourceMedia.
LOS ANGELES, Calif.--February 6, 2019-- PeerStreet, an award-winning platform for investing in real estate backed loans, today announced a powerful new integration with Liquid Logics, a market-leading loan origination software (LOS) platform. This integration is another milestone in PeerStreet’s mission to build a stronger, more modern, and more transparent marketplace for both private lenders and accredited investors.Now, approved lenders can submit loan information and documents directly to PeerStreet for evaluation — and potential sale — with a single click. This streamlines the loan submission process, reducing the risk of human error and enabling lenders to focus on making more loans and maintaining client relationships.“By creating this seamless integration, the loan submission process is easier. And when that process is easier, there are more opportunities for lenders to sell their loans to a diverse pool of investors,” said Brew Johnson, co-founder and CEO of PeerStreet. “That stands to benefit our entire marketplace: more loans from our lender network means more opportunities for PeerStreet investors to better diversify their investment portfolios. That demand for diversification then increases the overall demand for investments in loans, which further fuels lenders who in turn work with more high-quality borrowers. It is a virtuous cycle that benefits all participants.”Liquid Logics is an ideal partner for such an integration, with their best-in-class technology and renowned LOS platform. “We’re very excited about this partnership, as it solidifies next-generation technologies in the FinTech space by merging loan origination directly into PeerStreet’s investor marketplace,” said Sam Kaddah, founder and CEO of Liquid Logics. “With this partnership, Liquid Logics helps lenders achieve faster and more efficient lending cycles by connecting them to additional sources of capital from PeerStreet — allowing them to do more business and to do it better.”This system integration is the first of more potential LOS integrations to come for PeerStreet this year, as the company looks to build on its momentum. In 2018 alone, PeerStreet surpassed $1 billion invested on their platform.
New York, NY, October 22, 2018 -- PeerStreet, a marketplace for investing in real estate backed loans, is honored to announce that it has been named to the second annual CB Insights Fintech 250 list, a prestigious group of emerging private companies working on groundbreaking financial technology. This comes on the eve of PeerStreet’s third anniversary of opening to the public. PeerStreet opened to all accredited investors on October 30th, 2016 at Money 20/20, an annual conference which is happening this week in Las Vegas. Both PeerStreet founders Brew Johnson and Brett Crosby are in attendance. In a few short years, PeerStreet has demonstrated substantial growth and become a dominant force in transforming the real estate investing industry. Thousands of retail customers are actively investing on the platform alongside various major institutions. The inclusion of PeerStreet in CB Insight’s Fintech 250 List two years in a row further demonstrates the appetite for technology-driven investing solutions.PeerStreet is being recognized as a leader in real estate investing for the platform’s innovative approach to making real estate debt an accessible asset class for retail investors. The loans offered for investment are vetted by private lenders who know their communities well, and then again by PeerStreet’s own team using big data and market research.The platform prioritizes a user-friendly interface and offers transparency into the details of each loan and underlying property. PeerStreet’s $1,000 minimum per investment allows for diversification in real estate investments. PeerStreet also provides added convenience for investors by integrating with personal finance platforms, including Betterment, Wealthfront and Personal Capital, in addition to offering a self-directed IRA for investors seeking the benefits of tax-deferred investing. “Our goal is to level the playing field between Wall Street and Main Street, and to bring this unique asset class to all investors, both through access as well as ease of investment,” said Brett Crosby, co-founder and COO of PeerStreet. “We are honored to be recognized by CB Insights on the eve of our third-year anniversary of opening to the public, and we look forward to continuing to introduce new and seasoned real estate investors to PeerStreet.”The CB Insights research team selected the Fintech 250 companies based on several factors, including data submitted by each company and their Mosaic Score. The Mosaic Score, based on CB Insights’ algorithm, measures the overall health and growth potential of private companies. Through this evidence-based, statistically driven approach, the Mosaic Score can help predict a company’s momentum, market health and financial viability. “After we named the inaugural Fintech 250 in 2017, they went on to raise $23 billion, including 30 rounds of over $100 million,” said CB Insights CEO Anand Sanwal. “Twenty-two of the Fintech 250 have already exited with half via IPO. This year, we've added 113 new companies to the Fintech 250 using the CB Insights Mosaic algorithm, and the group is broad, covering everything from insurance tech to consumer banking to capital markets tech. We look forward to the success of this year's group.”
LOS ANGELES, Calif.--September 10, 2018-- PeerStreet, an award-winning platform for investing in real estate backed loans, today announced the addition of a new investment option, Cash Offer Loans. Cash Offer Loans are a new investment option that provides PeerStreet investors with a shorter duration than typical bridge loans. Cash Offer Loans add to the investment options available on the PeerStreet platform. The range of options are designed to help investors achieve diversification to fit their particular profile of risk, return and liquidity preferences. Investors can find investments with differing yields based upon such investments’ risk profiles and terms that run from as short as 30 days to 36 months.For homebuyers, Cash Offer Loans provide a better chance of purchasing their next home by effectively enabling them to make an all-cash offer to homesellers. By investing in these loans, PeerStreet investors are helping families buy the homes they love in the communities they want to live in without having loan contingencies on their purchase. PeerStreet is able to offer these investments to its investors because of its relationship with innovative real estate technology companies that offer purchase programs for homebuyers.“We’re very excited to offer this new loan investment to our investors,” said John Devereux, Chief Real Estate Officer at PeerStreet. “We’re committed to progressing innovation in real estate, and when we see innovations happening in other areas - such as homebuying - we think about how to potentially bring the benefits to our users, at the same time as contributing to the improvement of the industry as a whole.”“Our goal has always been to level the playing field between Wall Street and Main Street when it comes to real estate investing,” said Brett Crosby, COO at PeerStreet. “So we want to bring as much variety and diversification to our investors as we can and help them invest in real estate backed loans effortlessly - Cash Offer Loans is our newest addition to this end.”
LOS ANGELES, Calif.--June 12, 2018-- PeerStreet, a marketplace for investing in real estate backed loans, is honored to announce that it has won Comparably’s 2018 Culture Awards in the following categories:
Comparably, a compensation, culture and career monitoring website, recently released its 2018 Culture Awards. Based on employee sentiment, these lists recognize companies of all sizes across the nation, including Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Salt Lake City and Washington, D.C., helping to drive positive culture change. "On behalf of our entire team at PeerStreet, I'm honored to accept these awards," said Brew Johnson, CEO of PeerStreet. "I couldn't be more proud of the company we're building and the culture we've developed, even as we continue to grow. Our goal is to transform real estate lending and investing, so we’ve built an inspiring culture and transformative teams to take us there."Brew Johnson founded PeerStreet alongside co-founder and COO, Brett Crosby. In his role as CEO, Johnson plays a critical role in driving the direction of the company and its commitment to democratizing access to real estate debt as an asset class for investors. The management team at PeerStreet built the company with diversity and inclusion as core values of its collaborative, and dynamic corporate culture - a continuing priority as it scales its mission of making the entire real estate lending ecosystem more transparent and efficient. "Comparably takes a data driven approach to show how specific demographics of employees rate their leadership and companies to make workplaces more transparent and rewarding," said Jason Nazar, Comparably CEO. "PeerStreet's inclusion in four of our leadership awards showcases its CEO and executive team as among the best of the best, providing a positive framework for others to follow."Recent accolades for PeerStreet include being named one of the “10 Best Startups to Work For in Los Angeles” and one of the “Top Fintechs to Work For”. Beyond culture, PeerStreet is recognized as a leader in the industry winning numerous awards and being included in prestigious lists such as the CB Insights Fintech 250 and HousingWire’s Tech 100. The company is growing quickly and hiring for talent across multiple functions. Learn more: https://www.peerstreet.com/careers
