June 8, 2023

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Founded by Carter Malloy in 2018, AcreTrader uses crowdfunding to remove the traditional barriers to farmland investing, providing investors, buyers, and sellers unique access to land, data, and tools that create a streamlined, highly efficient experience.

Farmland is one of the largest U.S. real estate sectors, valued at more than $3 trillion. However, access to this investment class has historically been challenging for individual investors. Since its launch in 2018, this business model has transformed the farmland investment space, bridging the existing gaps between investors, farmers, and landowners, completing farmland investments to-date across 40,000 acres totaling approximately $400 million. 

Malloy explained to GAI News in a prior interview that each parcel is put into a unique LLC and investors can purchase a share, “basically an IPO for an individual farmer,” he said. With minimal initial investment cost, the purchase can provide returns from two sources: increased land values and annual rents paid by a farmer.

“Through our online platform, investors buy a portion of a unique LLC that owns a parcel of land – this can be done in just a few minutes electronically,” said Malloy. “AcreTrader handles all aspects of administration, payments, management, etc., making it a truly passive investment.”

Last year, the company announced it expanded its Series B to more than $60 million, after having expanded revenues by a factor of five, tripling its customer base, and doubling the amount of land going live on its platform. The company also announced the launch of its land brokerage platform AcrePro, making it even easier for agents, buyers, and sellers to assess, sell, and purchase land, and has plans to soon launch a first-of-its-kind geospatial analytics platform.

The latest development for the company is the announcement of a new strategic alliance with Gridline, an alternative asset platform that is revolutionizing private market investing, that offers a new approachable way for registered investment advisory (RIAs), family offices, and other wealth management professionals to invest in U.S. farm and timberland assets. 

“Gridline is passionate about giving entry to asset classes that were previously inaccessible to the majority of investors,” said Carter Malloy, founder and CEO, AcreTrader. “We share the same focus on ease of use through a fully digital experience, making it easier for advisors and investors to seamlessly onboard, deploy capital, manage distributions, and performance reporting.”

Gridline’s expertise in providing investors with diversified portfolio exposure to historically exclusive and prohibitively expensive private market opportunities caught AcreTrader’s attention when it was seeking ways to to expand access to farm and timberland. And both together and individually, through this collaboration, AcreTrader and Gridline will work to make investing in high-quality alternative assets more achievable. 

“Because most farmland sales occur in private transactions, having a strong network in the industry is critical to sourcing high-quality investment opportunities,” said Logan Henderson, CEO, Gridline. “In addition to providing a robust pipeline of opportunities, AcreTrader delivers valuable diligence insights that will inform Gridline’s portfolio construction via Acres, its industry-leading technology and dedicated team that has directly purchased and managed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of farm and timberland.”

Malloy concluded, “Combining forces with Gridline is a natural step forward as we pursue our mission of empowering our customers to buy and sell land smarter with advanced technology, data and expertise.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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