Parked land money in a bridge fund for eleven months and it came back on time

I've been hunting a specific kind of parcel for about two years, 40 to 80 acres, road frontage, within an hour of a growing secondary market. That money has to be liquid because when the right one shows up I have maybe three weeks to be credible.

So it sat in a savings account earning something, and I watched inflation eat the edge off it while nothing came up.

What I did instead. 120k into a short duration residential bridge fund. Average loan term nine months, weighted average LTV 68 on as-is value, no construction, no ground-up, no second liens. Redemptions quarterly with 45 days written notice, no lockup after the first quarter, and a stated cap I read four times. Distributions monthly.

I held it eleven months. Net 8.4 percent annualized, so roughly 9,200 on the 120k after fees against maybe 4,800 if I'd left it in the savings account. Then a parcel came up in February, I filed the redemption notice in the first week of the quarter, and the full amount hit my account 51 days later.

The thing I was nervous about is the thing that would have broken it. If a lot of investors had filed the same quarter I'd have been pro-rated and I'd have missed the parcel. I decided I could live with that because I'd have kept hunting, and because a nine month average loan term means the book turns over fast enough to generate real cash for redemptions. A fund with three year loans and quarterly liquidity is a different proposition wearing the same label.

What I'd keep. Matching the fund's loan duration to my own time horizon rather than reading the redemption terms and assuming they'd hold. The terms are a promise. The loan maturity schedule is what actually pays the promise.