Since we founded Fundrise nearly a decade ago, we’ve pushed to evolve our business with one fundamental aspiration in mind: To make the world’s best alternative investments available to every individual investor. True democratization.

Transforming the status quo in one of the most entrenched asset classes in history — private market real estate — requires near-constant innovation: in technology, in our application of financial solutions, and in the ways we help the general public view their own portfolios. And we’ve made meaningful progress: Fundrise manages more than $1.5 billion on behalf of our more than 150,000 active investors, making us America’s largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform.

Today, I’m pleased to share another change to the Fundrise platform. One we believe will unlock an entirely new level of accessibility.

We are relaunching the Starter Portfolio, now specifically designed for new investors.

Over the past year, we’ve seen an influx of interest in alternative investments from young investors in particular. This is a group that is passionate about investing and hungry to learn more. Time is one of their most valuable assets (all hail the miracle of compound interest).

Accordingly, the new Starter Portfolio offers:

  • Our lowest investment minimum ever: A $10 minimum opens the door for millions of new investors to begin growing their portfolio immediately. (The Starter Portfolio previously required a minimum of $500.)
  • Access to our Flagship Fund: Investors will be allocated entirely to our Flagship Fund, which already owns over $250 million worth of real estate assets around the country, ranging from the red-hot single family rental market to larger last mile e-commerce logistics centers.
  • A focus on investor education: We’re working with some of the best known personalities in the financial education space to develop programs aimed at demystifying the world of alternative investing.
  • Quarterly liquidity, penalty-free: Fundrise is still unequivocally designed for long-term investors. However, the structure of our Flagship Fund makes it possible for us to offer a penalty-free redemption process every quarter should investors be forced to unexpectedly liquidate.

Over the years, we’ve consistently noticed that the investors drawn to our platform are unusually patient, resilient, and future-focused. Just because an investor doesn’t yet have a large net worth to put toward private market real estate doesn’t mean they don’t understand the value that long-term thinking and planning can yield when given the time to flourish. Because, as it turns out, a small investment added to a small investment added to a small investment, etc., will eventually add up to quite a lot — especially with the potential of a healthy annual return compounding in the mix.

Small investors were historically blocked from investments in real estate. Real estate investing in the private equity world is typically built around managing a small number of massive transactions on behalf of a few institutions.

The barrier to entry is high, in part, because this kind of investing usually involves dozens of time intensive, manual (i.e. expensive) processes. Enter the transformative power of technology. Our proprietary software enables us to efficiently manage millions of transactions on behalf of hundreds of thousands of investors today at near zero marginal cost. We believe the new Starter Portfolio will open up our platform to millions more.

Our goal is to provide a tailored experience for investors of all net worths and experience levels, whether you’re investing tens, thousands, or millions of dollars. All told, Fundrise offers five account levels: Starter, Basic, Core, Advanced, and Premium. As always, investors can upgrade to a higher account level at any time as their account balance grows.

While today’s announcement primarily benefits the rising generation of new investors, more experienced and higher net worth investors shouldn’t feel left out. We have more innovations in development that I hope to share with you in the coming months. I can’t say much about those now, other than that they are aligned with our core purpose of using our technology to bring the best alternative investments in the world to as many investors as possible.

Onward,

Ben Miller

Fundrise CEO