New York’s real estate world is filled with tales of ordinary people who bought property decades ago and saw values skyrocket to the millions. Seth Weissman is seeking investors to get in early on the next hot neighborhoods.

The veteran of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and hedge fund Perry Capital LLC started CityShares, which enables participants to reap rewards from increasing apartment demand in gentrifying areas. Investors who pledge at least $100,000 to one of the program’s neighborhood-focused funds become partial owners of a group of buildings and share in the rental income. The first pool is more than halfway toward its target of $5 million, which will be used to buy properties in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant.