The idea of becoming a real estate investor for low as $ 5 may look great to be true.
And for many users of Landa, a propatech company that just promised – here has been.
In August 2022, Landa emerged secretly, announced a total of $ 33 million in funding and pledges to help Americans access to residential real estate investment through partial shares.
CEO Yishai Cohen and former CTO Amit Asarf established Landa in 2019 in an attempt to make real estate investment more inclusive. The only requirements of the app were that the users were over 18 years of age and more than American inhabitants. They can just start investing with $ 5, and can buy and sell shares and can also see real -time updates on their properties from the Landa app. (Asarf left the company in December 2023, according to his LinkedIn Profile. He has not responded to the requests of the comment.)
Today, Landa's investment portal site is below and its app is inactive. Users claim that they cannot use their money and have not been paid dividends in months. Startup is entangled in litigation, including its early enterprise investor Viola's lawsuit.
An initial user told Techcrunch that Landa stopped paying dividends on his shares in January. When he asked Landa about it, he “questioned,” he said.
The user said, “I repeatedly emailed them about it and just replied, nothing is real,” the user said. “Then a few months later, the app became unusable. It will not open.”
The user then asked if he could lift his account, which he opened in 2021, and sold the stock. But he found that Landa had disabled his ability to sell shares.
“They essentially put me out of their funds and simply closed the app,” said the user. “Where is the money? Why will they not return it to me?”
More than 130 complaints have been filed against Landa for better Trade Bureau, in which dozens of people resonate similar allegations. For example, on 1 May, a user who filed such a complaint shared that he had invested more than $ 8,000 through Landa and stopped receiving dividends to the previous decline. The user said that LANDA customer service responded to its email that the company “was working on it.”
In mid-April, when Techcrunch asked Landa about the issue-it also includes its downdated site status and whether the company itself closed itself, CEO Cohen said: “Of course not. The site will return.”
Asked why the app was not working and why users did not get dividends in months, Cohen's answer still seemed to refer to the website, blaming the server: “It is unrelated to dividend. It is from our server. We are on it.”
As moving forward, Cohen shared the following statements on 18 April: “We are currently aware of the issues affecting our platform and product, and all investors want to assure that we are actively working to restore the entire functionality.
Cohen did not respond to our request for the status update on 20 May. Investors NFX and 83north did not respond to many of our requests for comments.
Complicated in a trial
These are not just users who are disturbed by landa. Primary lenders of the company are prosecuting.
Viola Credit and L Finance filed a lawsuit against Landa in the New York State Supreme Court in November 2024, accusing loans of more than $ 35 million extended to the company of “several lapses”. (Viola is also an investor in Landa through his enterprise division.)
Lenders also accused it of missing property tax payment, which led to forcibly sales of those properties, ignoring assets, and even failed to collect rent.
Case – The first reported by Real Estate Industry Publication Bisno – suggests that after more than one year of receiving the land to honor their commitments, the lenders removed Landa as the manager of homes and appointed an independent property manager and an chief restructuring officer.
After further conversation failed, the creditors later asked the court, and provided, from reaching the bank accounts, they have been asked to intervene in their efforts to restructure the business and recover money – including income from property sales.
Despite the prohibition, the lenders returned to court in January 2025, claiming that Landa told the tenants that they had not been covered by the ruling to send rent to a separate bank account. He discovered this by repairing the septic system of a property. He also accused Landa's CEO of trying to sell or refinance some properties.
The court ordered Landa to convince himself. Instead, in early March, Landa asked the court for a preventive order against the Viola Credit and L Finance, claiming that the independent manager was “illegally installed.”
Judge Jennifer G. The Sheter was not happy. In March, he ordered both sides to find a solution “This is good for all your customers.” He denied Landa's request for an prohibition and ordered the company to pay around $ 100,000. A few weeks later, Landa filed a formal countersuit. The case is still pending.
Challenging model
Landa is one of many startups that offers partial real estate investment in recent years. This is clearly not the only one that is struggling – especially after the hostage increase in 2022 after the interest rates.
Finteor “appears to offer millions of dollars before pivying” to automate the operation of finance and real estate with “human level performance” to automate the operation of finance and real estate “. “The Dallas-based NADA, which offers real estate investment products called” Citifunds “, allows non-recognized investors to buy in the city's domestic equity market, which is low as $ 250, it also appears to be a piveted. Its website now promotes a new tagline:” Use a new tagline: “Using Home Equity.”
The arrival was probably the highest-profile of the bunch-and only one that operates actively under the same model. In May of 2022, TechCrunch reported that a series, including the Bezos campaign, were raised $ 25 million in a funding round to allow people to buy shares in single-family fare with “$ 100 as low”. According to its website, startups have to pay over $ 13 million in dividends and interest and have 766,000 registered investors.
For those investing with landa, the future of their money looks uncertain. By May 23, LAND's investor portal website still redirects for a “come-back-Son” maintenance message.