Diversify with Online Real Estate Investing

When it comes to real estate, breakaway success is found at scale, and Fundrise’s goal is to scratch that itch. Does the Fundrise platform stand up to the hype? That’s what I was determined to find out.

 I’ve always been a do-it-yourself investor – especially when it comes to real estate.  My wife and I own three rental properties, and the condo that we live in is the result of a successful fix and flip over two years.

 It goes without saying that real estate is both an essential part of our wealth building strategy and something that we’re particularly interested in. It’s a strategy that is, above all, focused on long-term growth.

 Over the past one and a half years we’ve interviewed Ben Miller the CEO, twice. First, when Fundrise just started and was only available to accredited investors and a second time after they opened up their platform to normal people – we invested soon after. They’ve since scaled massively, paid me a ton of dividends and relaunched their entire platform as “Fundrise 2.0“.

So, I thought it was long overdue that I broke down what they are, why you should care and what they do well (passive income). Let’s get nerdy!

What is Fundrise and why should you care?

Fundrise is a crowdfunded platform that allows average investors access to real estate returns they could not access on their own or through a traditional REIT. Their bread and butter are real estate deals that are overlooked by large institutional investors and out of reach for most individuals.

Investing with Fundrise is available to non-accredited investors. Simply put, that means that anyone can invest with them, you no longer need to be insanely wealthy.

And what is a REIT? A REIT, or Real Estate Investment Trust, is a company that owns or finances income-producing real estate.

Most REITs are similar to Fidelity’s FRESX in that they manage many billions of dollars in assets and thus have to invest a significant amount of money. So, to be able to invest in new deals and manage the fund’s existing investments they typically need to make larger bets. They simply don’t have time to chase smaller properties.

Often large REIT investments aren’t even directly in real estate assets but companies like Public Storage. Because what’s even easier than going out and finding real estate deals worthy of investing in? Investing in companies that do that already. Such is the case with FRESX whose largest holding is just the Public Storage company. Sounds like a shitty deal as there is

Such is the case with FRESX whose largest holding is the Public Storage company. Seems like a shitty deal as there is little value added here considering a REIT is so much more expensive than just buying some of Public Storage yourself – for less. The problem is that this is pretty common and there just aren’t many REITs that are strong picks if you’re looking to buy into the rental market.

Individuals, on the other hand, are mostly investing in smaller properties ($100k – $200k in value) that are in higher demand making it harder to generate a reasonable profit. It’s also more difficult, and expensive, to manage 100 properties as opposed to 10. That’s why the vast majority don’t go down this road.

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