In December 2019, we announced the launch of The Neighborhood Investment Company (Nico) with the mission to localize wealth creation and broaden access to neighborhood equity. A few months later we introduced our first investment opportunity — Nico Echo Park, the world’s first Neighborhood REIT™,  making it possible for people who love their neighborhood to build a long-term financial stake in their community by investing in local real estate.

As we were preparing to launch in March 2020, the COVID pandemic was getting scary. This period of fear and uncertainty was accompanied by a historic disruption to both the economy and everyday life. It brought the world to a standstill along with many of our plans. 

While the last two years have encouraged us that new models for inclusive community wealth building are more important than ever, we’re also faced with the truth that we haven’t reached the ambitious targets we set for ourselves to scale Nico Echo Park.

With that said, we’ve made the difficult decision to pursue a path that will effectively wind-down Nico Echo Park. Over the coming weeks, we’ll work to build support from our stockholders for this transaction, and if it is approved we’ll deliver a positive financial return to those who took a risk on this new model.

Nico Echo Park was founded on the belief that inclusive neighborhoods are the cornerstone of a healthy society, and financial inclusion is critical. We strongly believe that there is room for similar models to succeed in the future and hope we can share some of our learnings with the community of people looking to increase financial inclusion. So, we’re publishing a white paper outlining our findings from three years of building and operating the world’s first Neighborhood REIT — it’s called “Preliminary learnings from the first Neighborhood REIT™”.

Moving forward, Nico plans to continue our work to develop and launch new economic models for place-based community wealth building that advance financial inclusion and opportunities for democratic ownership. We remain determined to evolve the relationship between people in communities like Echo Park and investment capital towards an abundant and aligned future. 

Sincerely,

Max Levine

Co-founder and CEO