Six years in, the sponsor called a special dividend and I lost the reinvestment timing entirely

I went in on a diversified non-traded REIT in late 2018, $150K, stated NAV held around $10.30 for the first three years and distributions came through reliably at 5.6%. That part matched what I was told. Then in Q3 2022 the sponsor declared a special dividend, $0.47 per share, which sounds fine until you realize it pulled forward income I had been deferring and triggered a taxable event I had no room for that year. My accountant figured the after-tax drag on that single distribution at roughly 90 basis points annualized when you spread it across my remaining hold. I also had a 1031 deadline that month and the cash from the special dividend hit my account with about nine days notice, which was useless for exchange purposes and just sat there getting taxed. The NAV came down 4.1% in the next two quarterly appraisals, not dramatically, just enough that when I finally got a partial redemption approved in early 2024 at the then-current NAV of $9.81, the six-year total return net of fees and taxes was somewhere around 18%, which is barely 2.8% annualized and does not account for what I would have done with that $150K in 2018 if I had not needed something I thought was simpler than it turned out to be. The illiquidity I understood. The unilateral distribution timing I did not.