Peer Street, a real-estate debt provider aiming to make financing more accessible for wealthy investors and institutions, has filed for bankruptcy due to reduced mortgage demand and scarcer venture-capital funding, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The El Segundo, Calif.-based online platform, which counts venture-capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz and World Innovation Lab as backers, plans to sell itself as part of a chapter 11 filed on Monday. The company entered bankruptcy with both assets and liabilities of up to $100 million. It plans to keep operating while looking for buyers for its loans and other holdings, according to the filing. Rising interest rates have caused demand for mortgages to drop significantly, reducing Peer Street’s revenue, Chief Restructuring Officer David Dunn said in a sworn declaration filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Peer Street was founded in 2013 with an aim of giving individual investors access to an asset class that typically has been difficult to tap into, while also providing capital to real-estate lenders and their borrowers. The company gets its loans from private lenders and brokers, and also originates, sells and services loans. Peer Street has originated $5.4 million in mortgages so far this year until its bankruptcy filing, down from $385 million last year and $696 million the year before.
