The Best Real Estate Crowdfunding Sites for 2024

Real estate is a very well understood but often poorly executed way of building wealth. It only takes one episode of an HGTV house-flipping show to know that it doesn’t take a genius… but even geniuses can mess it up with bad execution.

If you’re a buy-and-hold investor, you’re less likely to mess it up but then you run into the “death by a thousand paper cuts.” There are maintenance, repairs, finding tenants, kicking out deadbeats, 2 AM plumber phone calls, cleaning, … you get it

If you read a book about real estate investing, it all sounds so simple. And it is simple. But it’s not easy.

As they say, the devil is the details.

That’s why so many people invest in real estate investment trusts (REIT). A REIT offers exposure to real estate without any of the work. Vanguard’s REIT Fund charges you only a 0.12% expense ratio and you get exposure to a variety of commercial real estate companies. That’s only $12 on every $10,000 invested!

What if you don’t want to own a fund that only invests in storage facilities, office parks, and malls? What if you want to invest in vacation rentals? Or single family homes? Until recently, you were out of luck. You could try to find a real estate syndicate in your area but that’s not without its risks.

The best option may be a crowdfunding real estate investing platform.

Best Real Estate Crowdfunding Sites Summary

🔃UPDATED: Updated in January 2024 to update some of the details around several platforms.

Fundrise – Good for Diversification

Fundrise is one of the best crowdfunding real estate investing platforms for non-accredited investors because they offer a package of their individual investments in a vehicle they call an eREIT. Being an accredited investor is usually one of the biggest roadblocks to investing in a real estate platform, Fundrise offers an alternative for those who don’t meet that high bar.

The eREITs follow an investment strategy, available in their offering documents. They’re like regular REITs except the minimum is a low $10. Unlike regular REITs that trade on the open market, these are not publicly traded. You can only redeem your shares quarterly. They’re more liquid than a syndicate, less liquid than a mutual fund.

We have a full review of Fundrise.

Learn more about Fundrise
(This is for both accredited and non-accredited investors)

Arrived – Single Family Homes

Arrived is a platform that lets you buy shares of rental properties and collect rent while Arrived acts as the property manager. You are part owner of the property so you also get any property appreciation whenever the home is sold. It’s a great way to diversify into rental properties ($100 minimum) without any of the headaches of managing the property yourself.

The hold period is anywhere from 5-7 years and there’s no secondary market so when you buy the shares, you’ll have to hold them for the entirety of the hold period. The stated return is generally in the 5-7% range.

Our review of Arrived goes into greater detail.

Learn more about Arrived
(This is for both accredited and non-accredited investors)

Yieldstreet – Variety of Real Estate Assets

Yieldstreet is a platform that offers a variety of investment offerings which includes, but is not limited to, real estate. You can invest in a multi-asset class fund (non-accredited investors) that spreads your investment across several asset classes or you can select individual offers – which will have their own yields and terms.

The multi-asset class fund (Yieldstreet Prism Fund, not available in NE or ND) has just a $2,500 minimum while the individual offerings will have a $5,000 minimum investment. There is a third option, investing in short term notes (3-6 months), which has a $2,500 minimum but is only available to accredited investors.

It’s free to sign up for Yieldstreet so you can sign up and look around for yourself. Or, if you wish to learn even more, our Yieldstreet review goes into greater detail.

$500 Bonus Offer: For a limited time, Yieldstreet is running a new account promotion where you can get up to $500 when you open an account and deposit funds. You get $50 for deposited $1,000 all the way up to a $500 bonus if you deposit more than $10,000.

Learn more about Yieldstreet
(This is for both accredited and non-accredited investors)

Streitwise – Low Minimum Investment

Streitwise is a real estate investment trust that advertises 8.4% returns with a low minimum investment. It’s open to non-accredited investors.

The fee structure issimple – 2% fee on assets under management. When you review the fees of other deals, you’ll often see that fees like that are tucked into the amount being raised (in the form of acquisition fees, financing fees, performance fees, etc.) as well as the disbursements. Having a simple 2% fee of the assets under management is a lot clearer of a structure than others.

Since it is a REIT, they distribute dividends quarterly and are required to distribute 90% of their taxable income annually to maintain that structure. You should expect to hold your investments in Streitwise for a period because there is a 1-year lockout and a redemption window each quarter. You also have the option of reinvesting dividends if you so choose.

The minimum investment is $5,000 and we have a full review of Streitwise here.

Learn more about Streitwise
(This is for both accredited and non-accredited investors)

AcreTrader – Best for Farmland

Did you know you can invest in farmland?

AcreTrader is a new real estate platform that specializes in farmland. They research all the deals, select less than 5% of them, and acquire the farms through an LLC. You can earn income through rent as well as see appreciation in the land itself. Did you know that 40% of U.S. farmland is rented or leased?

The minimum investment amount is usually between $3,000 to $10,000. This varies between investments based on the price per acre and the total cost of the farm.

They charge just 0.75% of the farm’s value as an annual management fee plus any closing costs on each deal. The typical hold period is 3-5 years though some deals are 5-10 years, you can sell your shares on the marketplace. And you can do this in a self-directed IRA!

It’s a fascinating asset class that you won’t be able to get on any other platform. Read our full Acretrader review for more details.

Learn more about AcreTrader
(This is for accredited investors)

If you want to see more farmland deals, another startup is FarmTogether. I know less about them than AcreTrader but they’re similar platforms. Also for accredited investors and their deals typically have a $10,000 to $50,000 minimum. You get cash yields on a quarterly, semi-annual, or annual basis. It’s also free to join so you can sign up just to see their deals. We have a detailed review of FarmTogether here.

To compare the two, we have this – AcreTrader vs. FarmTogether.

HoneyBricks – Best for Tokenized Real Estate

If the term “tokenized real estate” caught your eye, HoneyBricks offers an SEC-complaint investment option for folks who are familiar with crypto. With HoneyBricks, you can invest in fractional commercial real estate, much like other platforms listed here, but you can do so with both crypto and fiat currencies. You can also be paid in crypto too – they support 5+ tokens.

While it supports crypto, this is not an investment in crypto. It is simply leveraging much of the same technology (and accepting crypto as payment) to give you access to real estate investments. In the end, it’s still real estate investing.

The only liquidity limitation is that you must hold the tokens for at least 12 months.

Read our full review of HoneyBricks for more!

Learn more about HoneyBricks
(This is for accredited investors)

CrowdStreet – Best for Commercial Real Estate

Crowdstreet specializes in individual commercial real estate investments with a variety of hold periods (the current investment opportunities as of May 2021 were anywhere from 2 years to 9 years) with very attractive target investor internal rate of returns (high teens to low 20s). These are investments in specific properties, rather than a fund that diverisifes, so you must be an accredited investor.

They’ve launched nearly 500 deals with close to $2 billion in capital raised so they’ve been active since their founding in 2014. Minimum investment is typically $25,000 but some deals require at least $100,000 depending on the size.

Learn more about CrowdStreet
(This is for accredited investors)

RealtyMogul – Access to Commercial Real Estate

RealtyMogul launched in 2013 and offers accredited and non-accredited investors a way to invest in commercial real estate. Accredited investors can invest in specific deals while non-accredited investors can contribute to two REITs. They don’t deal with any residential deals and look to invest in targeted commercial real estate deals that the average investor won’t have access to.

Whereas the larger REITs focus on large corporations like Simon Property Group (mall owner/operator) and Public Storage (huge storage facility operator), RealtyMogul looks to invest in apartment communities, retail centers, and Class A office buildings.

The minimum investment size for individual projects is $5,000 and their REIT, the Income REIT, has a minimum of $5,000 as well. You can check out our full review of RealtyMogul to learn more.

Learn more about RealtyMogul
(This is for both accredited and non-accredited investors)

EquityMultiple – Debt & Equity Investments

Equity Multiple offers debt and equity investments that exclusively focuses on institutional commercial real estate. They also have syndicate loans and they’re backed by an existing national real estate advisory firm (Mission Capital), which helps with the pipeline of deals.

The minimum is $5,000 and the fee structure is designed to align their interests with you, the investor, and based on the type of investment. There’s typically a 0.5% annual fee, to cover administrative costs, plus 10% of the profits after you’ve received all of your initial investment back. In preferred equity and debt deals, they also take a servicing fee in a “spread” between the interest rate charged to the borrower and what is paid out to you. Finally, in all deals, they will collect a portion of the total amount raised. This fee structure is typical, you have to review specific deal terms to know the specific numbers in each.

Our full review of EquityMultiple goes into greater detail, check it out if you want a deeper look.

Learn more about EquityMultiple
(This is only for accredited investors only)

Groundfloor – Short-term High-Yield Debt

Groundfloor is a platform in which any type of investor, you do not have to be accredited, can invest in short-term high-yield debt that is secured by real estate. Rather than owning equity in a property, you are simply owning debt that can have terms as short as 12-18 months. It’s based out of Atlanta and has been around since 2013.

If you’re familiar with peer-to-peer lending platforms like LendingClub, this is similar in that you can invest in loans with as little as $10. Unlike peer-to-peer lending platforms, which are unsecured notes, these loans are secured by the properties themselves and the typical loan-to-value ratio is 40-70%.

Here’s our full review of Groundfloor to get more details.

Download the Groundfloor Mobile App
(This is for both accredited and non-accredited investors)

The Rest of the Pack

As more sites pop up, I will continue to take a look at them and how they are different.

This list are companies or sites I haven’t looked at closely but since I’ve heard of them, I wanted to make sure you did too. Email me if you want me to take a closer look at any one of them:

• Small Change – They invest in commercial and residential real estate projects based on their “change metrics” like mobility (walkability, bike-ability), sustainability (green building, adaptive reuse), and economic vitality (job creation, affordable housing). There are per-project minimums and they have options for both accredited and non-accredited investors.
• Uprise – Back vetted residential real estate loans (hard money loans) in $5,000 increments and they prefund their deals. You can see their open deals without creating an account. (This is only for accredited investors only)
• ArborCrowd – Backed by the Arbor Family of Companies (Arbor Realty Trust, Arbor Commercial Mortgage, AMAC), you get access to large commercial investment opportunities. A recent $12.7mm deal for a multifamily property in Alabama projected an IRR of 16-18% with a 3-5 year old period. The deals tend to be on the larger side and the minimum investment amount is $25,000. (This is only for accredited investors only)
• Senior Living Fund – Senior Living Fund is a platform that specializes in senior housing and they project rates of return in the 13%-21% range. They fund and develop new senior housing communities but they don’t offer too much in the way of details. I’m sharing it because it’s a good example of specialization but I don’t know much else about them.

Should You Invest in These Deals?

What if you’re unsure of these new platforms? Do they represent a good option?

We caught up with Professor Ralph Lim, Associate Professor of Finance and Economics at the Jack Welch College of Business at Sacred Heart University. We asked him a few questions and he was gracious enough to provide some insight:

When it comes to investing, how much of one’s portfolio should include real estate?I suggest about 10% to 15% of one’s portfolio be placed in real estate-related investments. This assumes an investor with average risk tolerance. Those with low-risk tolerance (e.g., very conservative investors) should probably not have anything in real estate.

Do you believe this new class of real estate investing is something people should pursue? Why or why not?

The new option to invest in notes secured by real estate appears to be a somewhat more conservative option of including real estate in one’s portfolio. Typically notes secured by real estate have priority over real estate equity owners. This is similar to the concept of priority of debt over equity.

So, in this case, the investor would appear to hold debt that is backed by the underlying real estate. The investor is not holding a real estate equity position. However, it is mandatory that investors read the prospectus or offering circular carefully before committing to this option.

How do these new options compare with existing investing options?

Instead of holding an equity position in real estate, this new option offers an investor an opportunity to invest in the debt portion. The risk is less than equity ownership, but so is the potential for gain. Investing in debt typically limits the investor to interest income and the return of principal.

Typically, debt investors do not participate in potential equity gains due to any underlying real estate appreciation. Of course, please read the prospectus or offering circular.

With crowdfunded real estate sites, there are a lot of different investment options. Some are debt, as Professor Lim has mentioned, and others are equity. Some are a mix of both, so it’s always important to review the prospectus or offering circular to know what you’re investing in.

What have your experiences been so far with crowdfunded real estate investing sites?