Like every other type of investment, real estate investment has changed significantly over the past several years. To remain successful, real estate investors must keep up with new ways of funding and conducting deals. One of the most promising developments for investors is the advent of crowdfunding. In crowdfunding, groups of people come together, usually through online platforms, to fund a project. This system distributes the risk and reward of an investment between many lenders, rather than just to one individual lender.

Crowdfunding has significant potential for real estate investors looking to put together money for a deal. However, crowdfunding isn’t as simple as putting together a deal and hoping people are interested. If you want to fund your deal with real estate crowdfunding, you need to stand out from the crowd. Here are five great ways to get crowdfunding investors interested in your real estate project.

Tell Your Story in an Engaging Way

Though investors are primarily interested in making money, you must “hook” them in order to explain how your deal can be facilitated. One of the best ways to do this is to tell the story of your project in a way that will make them want to learn more. Maybe your investment property is a vintage warehouse you want to save and modernize by converting it into luxury lofts, or a commercial property deal you think would be perfect for a growing startup. Whatever it is, tell the story of the deal and of your own experience in an engaging way that will resonate with people who view your crowdfunding page. If you “hook them” – get them interested right off the bat – they’ll stick around long enough to find out what makes your real estate deal a great investment.

Use Interesting Visuals

Like anyone else, investors like visual aids as opposed to walls of text and numbers. Include plenty of pictures of the property you plan to invest in, videos of yourself talking about your plans for it and an architect or artist’s rendering of what your plans might look like when completed. Even a simple graph showing property value data in the surrounding area can be useful as long as it conveys relevant information and breaks up the monotony of plain text.

The more complicated the project, the more visuals. It’s that simple. If you’re looking for crowdfunders to provide funding for your single-family new construction project without renderings, surveys, appraisals, engineering, etc., you’re living in a different reality. Investors are very sharp. Provide them with every insight you can offer on your deal so they can win, and so can you.

Show Your Numbers and Get Them Right

Before you even think of putting together a crowdfunding campaign, you need to have all the numbers lined up for your project. Know exactly what the property will cost you, how much any repairs or renovations will be and what you can expect to pay in taxes and fees. You will also want to have reliable estimates created of how much you can reasonably make on the deal, as investors will want to see your plan for turning a profit.

In today’s market, there are many new and pro investors who are making buying mistakes. More specifically: their “Total Project Cost,” which is a simple addition of acquisition price and renovation costs, exceeds 70 percent of their After Repair Value (ARV). The key to avoiding that error is to stay true to your formulas and true to your numbers. In the event an inflated market corrects, even a small drop in sales price can cause problems to your bottom line. As the fed increases interest rates, overall affordability will decrease, transitioning homeowners who expected to purchase in the $500,000s to the $450,000s. If you didn’t buy right, this can become a problem, quickly.

What’s the lesson here? Know your numbers and be unforgiving about your buy box.

Be Honest About Challenges

Being the borrower who says everything is always peachy and contractors are in love with you, leaves investors wondering about the reality in which you live. Nothing turns an investor off more than seeing a project being billed as a guaranteed moneymaker. Investors know that nothing is ever perfect, so it’s a good idea to be forthcoming about any issues the property may have. Perhaps the real estate market in the area has been in a bit of a slump lately, or perhaps the project will take a long time to complete. Be honest about any issues you think may affect the investment. Investors will find this refreshing and be more likely to trust you based on your admissions that the deal isn’t perfect.

Get Results

All of us know investors love proven track records. If you succeed on one crowdfunding venture and your investors earned a solid return, you’ll find it much easier to secure funding for your next venture. For this reason, it might be worth starting your crowdfunding efforts with small deals you can easily secure funding for elsewhere. These small ventures will give you a history of delivering on your promises, and a group of investors who will be eager to work with you again. Treat your investors properly, and they will do the same for you. It can be a beautiful circle.

As more investors look to online platforms to find opportunities, crowdfunding can be one of the best ways to grow your real estate investment business. Investors who succeed on crowdfunding platforms can fund deals easier and more quickly than those who are still stuck dealing with banks and hard money lenders. Make yourself stand out and give lenders good reasons to fund your project. You can reap the benefits of crowdfunding in your own real estate business.