I was talking to someone the other day that had the experience of talking to Fundrise in search of capital for their real estate development. In short, I didn't get a lot of confidence as a potential investor in Fundrise that the staff are seriously underwriting projects. I'm all for making real estate investing more transparent and accessible, but I think services like Fundrise and the other crowd funders count on a spectacular number of casual investors to fixate solely on projected returns, and not have any real knowledge of the deals they are investing in. I remember talking to people at Peerstreet after MMM's endorsement, and no one that worked at Peerstreet had been through a workout or foreclosure that the associate I spoke with knew of! That seemed pretty irresponsible to me.
I think if you want income and risk, invest in a mortgage reit. It really worries me that all of these crowd services have never operated through a decline.