Fundrise

"Getting your money back is vert difficult. There are forms they provide, but lot of issues and bugs. For example, I still have an account with money invested, but both the form and folks I contacted directly say my account doesn't exist. Now I just have money floating around in the Fundrise app with nobody being able to see it or determine it exists and they won't believe my screenshots or that I can see it for myself. There are many other alternative methods of investing than this complicated process."

"I invested in Fundrise by transfering from my traditional IRA. Had money in 3 years (ending Dec 23) and my balance after 3 years in their conservative option is less than what I put in. I recognize this was not a good three year period for residential real estate and don't fault them for that. The software is decent. What I have a problem with is the redemption process. Fundrise initiates redemptions once per quarter. So request in October, they process on Jan 1. Then they first send your funds to Millenium Trust, charging about 1%. Then Millenium charges $100 and makes for a very slow process by requiring up to 10 days to process a check once they've received the transfer request. In hindsight, I would look for a publicly traded company or fund instead of investing in Fundrise."

"It is frustrating to see the negative reviews. If folks want a liquid, guaranteed rate of return, put your money in a bank. If you want access to the residential real estate market and don’t have the funds or guts to flip houses or manage properties, Fundrise is really the only game out there. Public REITS are mostly commercial real estate (which by the way is still down 20% from ATH). I invested in Fundrise prior to becoming a homeowner with the hopes of getting a little exposure to residential real estate. Sadly, all the people cashing out are probably forcing Fundrise to sell properties at a loss, which means they have to be marked to market, compounding the problem. Hopefully they turn around their investor education because being forced to sell isn’t good for the rest of us. I’m still buying, believe it or not because I want that diversified exposure. Just make sure to size your investments appropriately (for me that is 5% of my investable assets). The rest are in publicly traded funds and a large amount of risk free bonds and cash. Could Fundrise do a better job managing expectations? Sure. But don’t blame the company when the market goes sideways for a few years. And no, housing isn’t ’skyrocketing’ right now. Interest rates have severely affected some pockets of the market (my own home is down 15% from its peak in 2022). Expecting real estate to always go up is nuts. If you want safe assets, stick to treasuries or keep your money in a high yield savings account."

"I made my first investment with Fundrise in late 2021. I made steady contributions culminating with an account balance around $5k. I didn't risk a lot of money because the platform is still fairly new, and private RE investment is like a lot of things, riddled with layers of fees. After two full years, I'm glad that I didn't risk much money. My return was negative as of Q3 2023. Redeeming your shares is not straight forward. You have to put in the request and wait a full quarter. On top of that, I was hit with various redemption fees, taking my total return even further negative. I liked the app and the research publications. But in the end, you have no control over performance and less transparency than you get investing in stocks and bonds. I will not be recommending Fundrise to any friends or family."

"I began investing in Fundrise in 2019, telling friends what a great investment it was, even though we're locked in for three years. I made a few bucks, would've done much better had I invested those funds in the stock market but wanted to try a REIT program. A few weeks ago I requested my complete portfolio from Fundrise but got an alert that it would be REVIEWED in January. I'm now at 0:0 and feel it's their responsibility to simply send my money back rather than continue losing it as they've been doing with me and other customers. It ISN'T THEIR MONEY, I waited the 3+ years (per initial agreement) to pull my investment out; they are not honoring their the agreement I signed on with. I would never have committed funds, nor recommend them to anyone, considering how they're treating me and their other investors."