Is it normal that one took $2,500 and asked nothing about my income?

$2,500 got my attention because that's a real entry point for someone who doesn't want a second job. What I'd add is check the minimum for additional purchases, it's often much lower, like $500, so you can start small and add.

Worth knowing the platform matters as much as the minimum. Some crowdfunding platforms wrap a non-traded REIT and charge their own fee on top of the sponsor's. Rural stuff barely shows up in any of these portfolios, incidentally, they're mostly big metro industrial, residential and data centers.

So if I'm reading this right, the accredited test isn't a quality signal at all, it's just a gate on which legal exemption the sponsor used?

@solder correct, and that's the part most people get backwards. Accreditation is a statement about your ability to absorb loss, not about the offering being good. Some of the worst-documented deals I've read were accredited-only, precisely because there was no registration process forcing disclosure. The subscription agreement in a Reg D offering can also contain arbitration clauses and transfer restrictions you'd never see in a registered product.

Curious how people think about $2,500 in a non-traded REIT against $2,500 sitting toward a down payment on a duplex. Different worlds, same money. My units teach me something every month, which is worth something, but they also call me at 11pm.

@cairn the duplex isn't $2,500 though, it's $2,500 plus the other $40,000 plus the credit and the reserves. That's the whole point of these for someone at the beginning.

On @solder's question, the mechanics behind it are worth spelling out, because it changes what diligence you're responsible for.

A registered offering goes through SEC review and produces a prospectus with prescribed content, including the fee table, the estimated use of proceeds, risk factors, and audited financials with an independent auditor's opinion. State securities regulators may also review it, and some states have historically imposed suitability standards like a cap on the percentage of net worth an investor can put into non-traded REITs. Those vary by state, so check yours.

An exempt private offering has no such review. The disclosure document is written by the sponsor and their counsel with anti-fraud rules as the floor. Financials may be audited or not. That gap is what accreditation substitutes for. The regulator's logic is that an investor meeting the threshold can hire their own diligence or absorb the outcome.

Which means in practice the private route shifts real work onto you: reading the PPM, checking the sponsor's track record across full cycles rather than since inception, understanding the valuation policy and who appraises, and knowing what happens if the sponsor's key people leave.

@cairn, the comparison you're drawing has a piece nobody has named. The duplex gives you control and financing, so a 25% down payment produces exposure to the whole asset. A non-traded REIT gives you the fund's leverage, typically somewhere in the 30% to 50% loan-to-value range depending on strategy, and you can't adjust it. Neither is better. They're different amounts of borrowed money and different amounts of your time, and the REIT's borrowing decisions are made without you.

The state suitability caps are real and people trip over them at the subscription stage. I've read offering supplements with a page of state-specific language, some limiting investment to 10% of liquid net worth. Your paperwork gets rejected and nobody explains why.

Coming from building things, the part I find odd is that I can't see the assets. On a job I can walk the slab. Here I get an appraisal summary and a property list with square footage.

@girder most sponsors publish a full property schedule in the annual report, address level, with occupancy and acquisition date. It's not the same as walking it but it's more than the marketing deck shows. Took me a while to find that it exists.

@rigging the thing I'd actually decide first is your holding horizon. If there's any chance you need that money in under five years, the entry minimum is the least interesting number in the offering.