Fundrise Review (2022): Invest in Real Estate With Just $10 (UPDATED: March 1, 2022)

Can you really profit from real estate with just $10?

Todd Lincoln, MBA
Investor’s Handbook
21 min readJul 8, 2021

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Fundrise Review 2022

UPDATED: March 1, 2022

Current Best Offer: Explore Fundrise properties (free) & start investing today (with just $10)

In this Fundrise review, I explain how the platform works and break down whether it’s worth it. I reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly, and explain who should join Fundrise and who should skip it.

I also analyze how much money you can really make with Fundrise.

As Founder & Chief Editor of Investor’s Handbook, I’ve tested hundreds of investing services, so I know how Fundrise compares to other options. Plus I’ve invested a solid chunk of my personal portfolio with Fundrise.

Let’s start off with a quick summary of my findings…

Quick Summary — Fundrise Review 2022

Fundrise is a crowdfunded investing platform that allows you to invest in a diversified portfolio of private real estate projects for as little as $10.

Here are the most important points from my Fundrise review:

Company Basics

  • Fundrise makes real estate investing accessible to the average individual investor by reducing complexity, costs, and fees, while increasing transparency and flexibility.
  • With over 170,000 active investors on the crowdfunding platform, Fundrise has completed $7.0B in real estate transactions, collected 244 projects (and completed 122 more), and distributed over $124M in dividends to their investors since 2014.
  • Fundrise invests in both residential and commercial real estate deals, such as single-family and multi-family rental properties, for-sale housing, hotels, retail space, shopping centers, and office buildings.

Who Is Fundrise Good For?

  • If you’re looking for portfolio diversification, safe exposure to a real estate portfolio, and steady, attractive, long-term returns, then Fundrise could be a great fit.
  • If you want to learn about real estate investing, Fundrise offers fantastic tools, resources, and education.
  • Fundrise is open to any U.S. citizen (or permanent resident) currently residing in the U.S. who is over 18 years old (non-accredited investors are welcome).
  • If you’re a sophisticated investor who wants to actively manage your real estate portfolio and maximize long-term returns, then Fundrise may feel a little too passive for your taste.
  • Fundrise is designed to be a long-term (5+ years) investment strategy. If you’re a short-term investor who values liquidity, then Fundrise (and a real estate investment in general) probably isn’t a fit for you.
  • If you want fast-paced, high-risk investments with huge upside, then Fundrise (and a real estate investment in general) probably isn’t a fit for you.

How Much Money Can You Make With Fundrise?

  • Between 2014 and 2021, Fundrise annual returns ranged from 7.4% — 23.0%, depending on the year and portfolio.
  • There are two main ways to make money on Fundrise: Dividend income paid on a quarterly basis and capital appreciation realized on long-term projects.
  • You can customize your Fundrise plan to tilt more towards steady dividend income or long-term capital appreciation, or a blend of both.
  • Fundrise aims to provide steady and attractive returns over the long term.
  • Staying on the platform longer leads to better returns, because a real estate investment has a lower return profile in its first few years due to the J curve.

How Much Does Fundrise Cost?

  • You can get started on Fundrise by investing as little as $10 in the Starter Portfolio.
  • Their most advanced plans require a $100,000 investment and unlock access to unique investments, greater diversification, additional account features, and priority support.
  • Investors pay a total annual fee of 1.00% on Fundrise (asset management fee of 0.85% + advisory fee of 0.15%)
  • Fundrise doesn’t charge any sales commissions, transaction fees, or carried interest fees for its plan-based offerings.
  • Depending on your account level, you can get up to a full year of advisory fee waived for every new investor your refer to Fundrise (plus 90 days waived for the person you refer).
  • You can sell your Fundrise investments and liquidate your account, but it comes at a cost. If you sell out after the 90-Day Introductory Period but before 5 years, there are penalties and delays.

Bottom Line: ★★★★★ 5.0

  • If you’re interested in a fun, educational, and passive way to invest in real estate, Fundrise is an excellent option, regardless of how much money you have to invest (the Starter Portfolio requires just $10).
  • Fundrise allows you to easily set your account to maximize short-term dividends, long-term growth, or a blend of both.
  • Fundrise has many happy investors (including me!) who have stuck with the platform and earned strong, steady returns over many years.
  • If you’re looking for a simple way to passively invest in private real estate for 5+ years, Fundrise is a fantastic place to start.

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

Fundrise Returns & Performance (Updated March 1, 2022)

Let’s get to the main question on your mind: Will I make money if I invest in Fundrise?

This is a complex question, and the answer is, of course, “it depends.” But let’s dig into their historical performance and see if we can get a clear perspective.

Between 2014 and 2021, Fundrise annual returns ranged from 7.4% — 23.0%, depending on the year and portfolio. Fundrise regularly publishes annual letters discussing their performance (see 2018, 2019, first-half 2020, and 2021).

Here’s their 2021 performance (by strategy):

  • Income: 17.98%
  • Growth: 25.12%
  • Balanced: 23.18%
  • All: 22.99%

From 2017 through 2021, Fundrise client accounts have performed well against the stock market and public REITs. Equally importantly, they’ve offered strong downside protection when the market underperformed:

Fundrise returns from 2017–2021; Source: Fundrise

Their extraordinary stability was illustrated during the COVID-19 crash of 2020:

Fundrise returns were remarkably stable during the COVID-19 crash of 2020
Fundrise returns were remarkably stable during the COVID-19 crash of 2020; Source: Fundrise

While the stock market declined -5% during the first half of the year and public REITs plummeted -15%, Fundrise actually gained 2.4%.

Fundrise eREIT Returns (Updated March 1, 2022)

Overall returns don’t tell the full story, because depending what you strategy you invest in, your returns will vary greatly.

Here is the historical range of returns for Fundrise eREITs that are currently in the “operating” phase (UPDATED: March 1, 2022):

  • Income eREIT (income): 6.0% — 9.7% per year (5.94% dividend yield)
  • Growth eREIT (growth): 12.8% —43.0% per year (2.56% dividend yield)
  • East Coast eREIT (balanced): 10.2% — 21.4% per year (0.70% dividend yield)
  • Heartland eREIT (balanced): 5.7% — 41.7% per year (3.47% dividend yield)
  • West Coast eREIT (balanced): 4.4% — 9.1% per year (4.87% dividend yield)

I only focused on “operating” funds because it’s important to understand the concept of the J curve in a real estate investment. Fundrise describes it like this:

A “J” curve investment is an investment that follows a pattern where realized returns tend to be lower — or even negative — in the early period of the investment, often as a result of both money and time being invested into creating value, with the majority of the return on that capital and work realized towards the later portion of the investment period.

This is because real estate property often requires an investment of time and money to acquire tenants, optimize the property, and ultimately sell the asset at a higher value than it was bought. Such upgrades hurt the profitability of the project early on (sometimes even making it negative), but can drive strong returns in later years.

This means that returns on the Fundrise investment platform tend to be better in the later years vs. the early years:

Fundrise investors should not only expect for returns to be lower than the platform average if they’re in their first year or two of their journey with us, but if they’re like us and like to think long-term, they might actually get excited about owning a portfolio that is heavily weighted towards properties that are in this early “incubation period” where we are building up the potential for higher returns in the future.

There’s also a difference in the returns for their income-focused investments vs. their growth investments:

The first year returns for the income investments are higher than the growth investments. After the end of the second year though, the growth investments have “caught up.” By the end of the third year, the growth investments have begun to see a “pop” in their value while the income investments have leveled out into a straighter line, resulting in the growth investments earning a greater total return over the life of the investment.

To summarize, Fundrise aims to provide steady returns over the long term. When the stock market and public REIT funds surge, Fundrise will be left behind. At the same time, when public markets crash, Fundrise is likely to strongly outperform (as they did in 2020).

Staying on the platform longer leads to better returns, since real estate investments have a lower return profile in their first few years due to the J curve.

So if you’re looking for fast results or a high-risk investment with huge upside, investing with Fundrise probably isn’t a fit for you.

But if you’re looking for portfolio diversification, safe exposure to a real estate portfolio, and steady, attractive, long-term returns, then Fundrise could be an excellent addition to your portfolio.

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

What is Fundrise?

Fundrise is a crowdfunded investing platform that allows you to invest in a diversified portfolio of real estate projects for as little as $10.

Put simply, they’ve made private real estate investing accessible to the average individual investor by reducing complexity, costs, and fees, while increasing transparency and flexibility.

Fundrise aims to make high-quality real estate investments directly available to everyone, without the traditional middlemen, fees, or complexity.

Fundrise appeals to investors who want to collect passive profits by investing in diversified real estate portfolio.

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

How Does Fundrise Work?

Fundrise aims to make real estate investing as simple as possible — and honestly, they’ve done a pretty incredible job.

All you have to do is set up and add funds from your bank account, and the Fundrise team invests in a portfolio of real estate deals that they research, acquire, and manage on your behalf.

To invest in Fundrise is simple: You create a Fundrise account, add some money (the Starter Portfolio only requires a $10 minimum investment), and select your strategy. They take care of the rest by allocating your money to a portfolio of real estate investments.

You can manage your account, portfolio, and returns all from their superb web and mobile platform.

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

What Is a Fundrise eREIT?

To understand how Fundrise eREIT works, you have to first understand how a REIT works (pronounced “reet”).

According to Investopedia:

A real estate investment trust (REIT) is a company that owns, operates, or finances income-generating real estate. Modeled after mutual funds, REITs pool the capital of numerous investors. This makes it possible for individual investors to earn dividends from real estate investments — without having to buy, manage, or finance any properties themselves.

The main attraction of a REIT is its tax-friendly structure: A REIT isn’t taxed at the corporate level, as long as it passes at least 90% of its income through to its investors in the form of dividends.

An eREIT or eFund is a type of REIT, and a term that was coined and trademarked by Fundrise to describe their non-traded, crowdfunded REIT platform.

While there are many types of REITs, Fundrise’s eREIT is public (open to all investors) but not traded on a public exchange. Instead, individual investors deposit their funds directly with Fundrise, who then invests their money in a portfolio of real estate projects.

In 2019, Fundrise published an in-depth comparison of investing in publicly traded REITs vs. their own eREIT platform and they argued that Fundrise offers lower fees and higher return potential.

Put simply, an eREIT is a marketing term specific to Fundrise’s platform. It’s a public REIT that isn’t traded on the stock market and aims for higher levels of transparency, investor control, and return potential (partially through lower fees) than other, traditional REITs.

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

How Do You Make Money With Fundrise?

There are two main ways to make money on Fundrise: Dividend income paid on a quarterly basis and capital appreciation realized on long-term projects.

Dividend Income:

  • Revenue from Fundrise’s real estate portfolio is paid to investors on a quarterly basis in the form of dividend income.
  • Dividends are “passive” or “residual” income, meaning you don’t have to sell your shares or do anything to collect dividend income from Fundrise.
  • Dividends are funded by the real estate portfolio’s revenue-generating activities, such as collecting rent or earning loan interest payments from debt investments.
  • If you choose, dividends can be automatically reinvested in your eREIT portfolio.
  • Fundrise offers an in-depth write-up on how their dividends work.

Capital Appreciation:

  • Capital appreciation is when the value of the owned properties increases over time.
  • Although appreciation may steadily increase as a property’s value increases, the capital isn’t actually collected until the property is sold and liquidated.
  • Fundrise always tries to invest in properties that will gain value over time, even if the property’s primary purpose is to generate steady dividends.

In general, across many asset classes, there is a trade-off between generating steady income vs. long-term capital appreciation. This can commonly be seen in the stock market, where investors often discuss income vs. growth strategies.

Some investors prefer steady dividend income today while others want more upside profits in the future.

The good news is you can customize your Fundrise plan to tilt more towards steady dividend income or long-term capital appreciation, or a blend of both.

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

Who Can Invest On Fundrise?

Fundrise is open to any U.S. citizen (or permanent resident) currently residing in the U.S. who is over 18 years old.

Unlike some other real estate investment opportunities, you do not need to be an accredited investor to invest with Fundrise.

What Type of Real Estate Does Fundrise Invest In?

Fundrise invests in both residential and commercial real estate, such as single-family and multi-family rental properties, for-sale housing, hotels, retail space, shopping centers, and office buildings.

Fundrise cites as example projects, “a land bridge loan in California’s Bay Area, to direct ownership of a last-mile delivery warehouse in Maryland, to a luxury apartment tower in Tampa, to an entire community of detached, single-family rental homes just outside of Houston.”

They rely on an internal team of analysts to source, research, conduct due diligence, and underwrite real estate deals. Their goal is to acquire “high-quality assets, focusing on locations and asset types with the potential for outsized growth.” Historically, they’ve accepted less than 1% of deals they consider each year.

Keeping with its philosophy of transparency, the company provides a complete list of all their assets, which you can sort by investment size or region.

You can dig into any specific project and see the details. For example, here’s a profile of their EVO Apartments in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Fundrise Investment Strategies

Fundrise categorizes their investment strategy based on their intended risk / return. There are five strategy levels (they sometimes break out Core vs. Core Plus), ordered from lowest to highest risk and potential return:

Fundrise investment strategies range from Fixed Income to Opportunistic
Fundrise investment strategies range from Fixed Income to Opportunistic; Source: Fundrise
  • Fixed Income: Debt-based deals for which they expect to collect interest payments.
  • Core: Stabilized commercial real estate that doesn’t require significant improvements and is located in areas or markets with strong demand and natural barriers to entry.
  • Core Plus: Similar to core, but offers slightly higher risk / return. Properties that usually need minor improvements to maximize profit-earning potential.
  • Value Add: Buildings that need substantial physical improvements or a change in the way the property is managed to generate acceptable returns.
  • Opportunistic: Properties that need a high degree of improvement and may also involve investments in new construction or land.

These strategies correspond to escalating risk and reward profiles:

Fundrise investment strategies offer higher risk and return potential
Fundrise investment strategies offer higher risk and return potential; Source: Fundrise

For conservative investors, Fixed Income is on one end of the risk / reward spectrum and provides immediate, steady, modest income with lower risk. On the other end of the spectrum, Opportunistic provides maximum returns in the future with high volatility and little profit early on.

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

What Accounts & Features Does Fundrise Offer?

Fundrise offers five account levels, each with a different initial investment and set of features:

  • Starter ($10 minimum): Simple experience and their lowest minimum investment; allows investors to test drive Fundrise before investing more.
  • Basic ($1,000 minimum): All of the essentials, including IRA investing, Investor Goals, Auto-Invest, Dividend reinvestment, and more.
  • Core ($5,000 minimum): Access to “Core plans,” which are goal-based, automated investment plans. Choose to focus on earning consistent dividend income, maximizing long-term growth, or a balance of both.
  • Advanced ($10,000 minimum): Access to “Plus plans”, which allocate some of your portfolio to more sophisticated real estate strategies.
  • Premium ($100,000 minimum): For accredited investors; access to private equity funds with long time horizons and superior returns; also priority access to the Fundrise investment team.

In addition to these basic account levels, Fundrise offers a range of features:

Finally, they support a range of account types. You can invest on Fundrise through any of the following accounts:

  • Individual account
  • Joint account
  • Entity account
  • Trust account
  • IRA

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

Fundrise Plans: Which Is Best?

Once you open a Fundrise account, you can pick between three investment options. Each plan is essentially your preferred investment strategy.

To summarize from above, there are two main ways you can make money in real estate investing:

  • Dividend income tends to be more immediate, consistent, and predictable, but lower return.
  • Capital gains take longer to realize and are higher risk, but offer better long-term returns.

Fundrise’s plans essentially let you pick between what type of risk / return you want to target: steady dividend income or long-term capital growth.

Fundrise offers three investment strategies that vary dividend income vs. capital growth
Fundrise offers three investment strategies that vary dividend income vs. capital growth; Source: Fundrise

Let’s look at each plan more closely:

  • Supplemental Income: Designed to generate immediate, steady dividend income with less long-term capital appreciation. Focused more on real estate debt deals than equity projects. Lower long-term returns at a lower risk.
  • Balanced Investing: A blend of income and growth investing strategies — this is essentially an even mix of the Supplemental Income and Long-Term Growth plans. Aims for modest dividend income with modest upside potential.
  • Long-Term Growth: Designed to generate long-term capital appreciation with less regular dividend income along the way. Focused more on real estate equity projects than debt. Higher long-term returns at a higher risk.

There’s no right or wrong approach to choosing a plan, it depends on what’s right for your financial goals and risk profile.

Investors with a long investment horizon may want to optimize for maximum returns and choose the Long-Term Growth plan. Others may want to collect steady dividends ASAP, and will lean towards the Supplemental Income plan.

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

What Are Fundrise’s Fees?

A big part of Fundrise’s value proposition to investors is that the company cuts out middlemen and charges lower fees.

Let’s take a closer look at their low-fees claim. Fundrise charges investors two primary fees:

  • Advisory fee of 0.15% per year: A $1,000 investment would pay $1.50 per year in advisory fee.
  • Asset management fee of 0.85% per year: A $1,000 investment would pay $8.50 per year in management fees.
  • Together, these two fees mean investors pay a total annual fee of 1.00% on Fundrise.
  • Fundrise doesn’t charge any sales commissions, transaction fees, or carried interest fees for its plan-based offerings.
  • On some specialized funds, Fundrise may charge fees like development or liquidation fees for work on specific assets. According to Fundrise, these are one-time fees that are industry standard and are rarely charged.
  • If you choose to invest using an IRA, there is a $125 annual fee, which you can get waived by maintaining a balance of at least $25,000 or by investing at least $3,000 per year.

One compelling feature is that Fundrise will waive their advisory fee (doesn’t include their annual asset management fee) for every new investor you refer to their platform. Depending on your account level, you can get up to a full year of advisory fee waived for a single referral. Each person you refer will receive 90 days without advisory fee.

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

Can I Sell My Fundrise Investments & Withdraw My Money?

Yes, you can sell your Fundrise investments and liquidate your account, but it comes at a cost. In many circumstances, there are penalties and delays.

Before we dig into the details of withdrawing your money from Fundrise, let’s step back and look at why they’ve put some redemption roadblocks in place.

If you’re familiar with personal finance, you know that investing in real estate is a notoriously illiquid investment asset, which means it’s not easy to get your money out quickly. Buying and selling buildings is a slow process, usually designed to unfold over many years.

While there are some publicly traded REITs that you can trade daily, Fundrise operates differently. It collects investor’s money and then invests in actual properties and projects that take years to appreciate in value. As a result, they try to discourage investors from jumping in and out of their funds.

Fundrise is designed to be a long-term (5+ years) investment strategy. They plainly say, “If you anticipate needing your investment back in the near-term, we don’t recommend investing with us.”

Keeping in mind that Fundrise is meant for longer-term investors, how can you sell your investments and withdraw your money if you need it in the short term?

  • Investors who want to withdraw their funds within the first 90-day “introductory period” should receive their full, initial purchase price.
  • Investors who want to withdraw their funds after at least 5 years should receive the full value of their shares.
  • Investors who want to redeem their shares after more than 90 days but less than 5 years will incur penalties based on how long they’ve been on the platform.

It’s also important to keep in mind that even after penalties, redemptions are only offered on specific schedule:

  • Fundrise says: “We typically review and process redemption requests quarterly. However, redemption requests for the Fundrise eFund follow a slightly different schedule. They are reviewed at the end of the month following a 60-day waiting period after the date of request.”
  • Fundrise has openly said that during a financial crisis they may freeze redemptions to stabilize outflows and steady investor emotions (they did this during the market crash in the first half of 2020).
  • You can read more about their redemption policies here.

The bottom line is that you can get your money out of Fundrise during the first 90 days or after 5 years. Outside of those timeframes, they make it difficult, applying penalties and delays, because they don’t want short-term investors jumping in and out.

If this scares you, the illiquid nature of investing in real estate may not be what you’re looking for. Or you might be more interested in a publicly traded REIT which can be bought and sold like a regular stock.

But if you want to invest in real estate, 5 years is a very reasonable minimum time horizon, and Fundrise’s redemption policies may help you keep patient and stay fully invested (maximizing your long-term returns).

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

Is Fundrise Legit? Or Is Fundrise a Scam?

I’ve done a lot of research for this Fundrise review and I invest with Fundrise myself. I can say with total confidence that the low-cost investment platform is legit and not a scam or ripoff.

They are one of the oldest and largest crowdfunding real estate platforms in the U.S. They offer high transparency around returns and performance, low fees, and the staff is responsive, friendly, and helpful.

The company has many happy investors and generally positive reviews.

Most of the negative reviews are customers who are upset because they can’t remove their money without fees and delays.

However, investing in real estate is meant to be illiquid. Fundrise is very open about that. If you don’t intend to leave your money with them for 5+ years, then don’t invest because you’re going to get hit with redemption penalties.

The other negative complaint I saw was that some investors said their returns didn’t match the 8–12% expectation the company promotes. I can’t be sure, but I suspect this is because these customers selected an income-focused plan (lower returns / risk) or they selected a growth-focused plan but weren’t on the investment platform long enough.

Bottom line: Fundrise isn’t a scam, but it’s not for everyone, especially investors who want quick and easy access to their capital or fast returns.

Fundrise Pros & Cons (UPDATED: March 1, 2022)

To get a better understanding of Fundrise, I read through dozens of expert analyses and real customer reviews. A few clear themes emerged:

Fundrise Pros

  • Industry leader with one of the longest track records in crowdsourced real estate investing
  • Low minimum investment (the Starter Portfolio only requires a $10)
  • Open to all U.S. investors (non-accredited investors are welcome; no net worth minimum)
  • Easy access to a highly diversified portfolio of real estate deals
  • Passive dividends are paid out quarterly
  • Access to commercial real estate
  • Low and transparent fees compared to traditional alternatives
  • 90-Day Introductory period allows you to get your invested money back within the first 90 days (with some limitations)
  • High returns (7.4% — 23.0% annual return between 2014 and 2021)
  • Customizable strategies based on experience, risk tolerance, and investment goals
  • High standards for their portfolio with thorough due diligence; usually accept less than 1% of deals they consider each year.
  • Even with just a $10 minimum investment, you buy into a pool of residential and commercial real estate deals, not just a single building or project; this provides diversity and improves risk and returns
  • Transparency around their performance and portfolios, with a list of all assets and detailed write-ups on individual property acquisitions
  • Tons of great education on the Fundrise platform and real estate investing in general (even more real estate basics)
  • Staff is responsive, friendly, and helpful
  • Clean and simple website / mobile app with an abundance of real estate tools and education
  • 9–12 months of advisory fee waived for each friend you invite (Advanced account level or higher; doesn’t include their annual asset management fee)
  • Supports the following account types: IRA, Individual, Joint, Entity, Trust
  • Excellent Getting Started tool to help you select which plan is best for you.
  • Low correlation to the stock market and other asset classes
  • Recently launched their Interval Fund, a flagship fund aiming to provide investors with greater diversification, lower overall costs, and improved access to liquidity
  • DRIP (dividend reinvestment plan) allows for passive reinvestment of quarterly dividends back into your Fundrise portfolio
  • Supports automatic recurring investments
  • Opportunity to buy shares in Fundrise (the parent company itself) through an “iPO” process
  • Redemption plans allow you to sell off your holdings early (usually with some penalties and delays)
  • Solid positive reviews from investors

Fundrise Cons

  • Your investment is illiquid because redemption restrictions make it difficult to withdraw your money before 5 years
  • Annual fees of 1.0% can eat into your profits (annual asset management fee of 0.85% + advisory fee of 0.15%)
  • Hidden fees (such as development and liquidation charges) aren’t clearly spelled out and could surprise you and eat into profits
  • You can’t choose individual properties or projects; you can only invest in an eREIT, which is a pool of properties
  • While you can get started with just $10 minimum investment, you’ll need to invest more to get access to additional features and priority support from the Fundrise investments team
  • The company has openly said it will restrict capital redemptions during an economic crisis
  • Dividends are taxed as ordinary income, rather than the 15% rate usually applied to qualified dividends from stocks (IRA accounts may be an exception)
  • Portfolios can reach 100 properties, which is fewer properties (and less diversification) than alternative large, public REITs
  • Non-accredited investors don’t have access to the Premium level
  • The company (and real estate crowdfunding, in general) has a limited history and no track record during an extended economic or real estate downturn (although they performed very well during the COVID-19 crash of 2020)

Overall, if you’re looking to passively invest in real estate, I feel the pros definitely outweigh the cons, unless you’re looking for a short-term or liquid investment. In that case, Fundrise wouldn’t be right for you.

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

Bottom Line: Is Fundrise Right For You?

Fundrise is the one of the oldest and largest crowdfunding real estate companies in the U.S.

If you’re interested in a fun and passive way to invest in private real estate, they can be a great option, regardless of how much money you have to invest. The Starter Portfolio only requires a $10 minimum investment, and there’s no need to be an accredited investor.

Fundrise unlocks unprecedented access to commercial and residential real estate, and allows you to easily set your account to maximize short-term dividends, long-term growth, or a blend of both.

A key takeaway from my Fundrise review is that the company is amazingly transparent and proactive with their investors, and they’ve consistently delivered solid historical returns with little volatility.

Between 2014 and 2021, Fundrise has performed extremely well, earning annual returns ranging from 7.4% — 23.0% with low volatility. This has kept pace with a period of strong performance in the stock market.

If you’re a sophisticated investor who wants to actively manage your investments and maximize long-term returns, then Fundrise may feel a little too passive for your taste.

Or, if you’re a short-term investor who values liquidity (the ability to easily remove your money), then Fundrise (and real estate investing in general) probably isn’t a fit for you.

Otherwise, I think Fundrise is a fantastic place to earn strong, passive returns from private real estate investing. Personally, I have a solid chunk of my money invested with Fundrise.

Overall, Fundrise has many happy investors (me included!) who have stuck with the platform and earned strong, steady returns. If you’re looking for a simple way to passively invest in real estate for 5+ years, Fundrise is an excellent platform.

Explore Fundrise Properties & Start Investing Today (Starting at $10)

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Investor’s Handbook
Investor’s Handbook

Published in Investor’s Handbook

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Todd Lincoln, MBA
Todd Lincoln, MBA

Written by Todd Lincoln, MBA

Stock-market investor, battle-scarred entrepreneur, and fireside philosopher. Creator of Investor’s Handbook: https://medium.com/the-investors-handbook

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