Updated April 2019. This post tracks my experiment comparing a and the . In Fundrise, we have a start-up that bought a concentrated basket of roughly 20 properties chosen from the private market. In Vanguard, we have a one of the largest real estate ETFs in the world that owns a passive slice of 184 public-traded REITs. I invested $1,000 into both in October 2017 and plan to let them run for 5 years.
Fundrise Starter Portfolio background. Despite the name, the is actually a simple 50/50 mix of two eREITs: the Fundrise Income eREIT and the Fundrise Growth eREIT*. This private eREIT works within recent crowdfunding legislation that allows all investors to own a basket of individual real estate properties (not just accredited investors with high net worth). The minimum deposit is $500. You must buy shares directly from Fundrise, and there are liquidity restrictions as this is meant to be a long-term investment. Here’s a recent map of locations for the holdings. Most are apartment complexes, condominiums, and hotels.
* Due to increasing popularity and the limited nature of this product, Fundrise has created the Income REIT II/III funds and Growth REIT II/III funds. My portfolio is invested in the REIT I and REIT II series of funds, but new investors will get the REIT II and REIT III series. Thus, your returns may look somewhat different than mine.
Vanguard REIT ETF background. The (VNQ) is one of the largest index funds to invest in publicly-traded real estate investment trusts (REITs). You can purchase it via any brokerage account. You have the liquidity of being to sell on any day the stock market is open. A single share currently costs about $88, not including an trade commission. You are holding a tiny slice of (tens of?) thousands of office buildings, hotels, nursing homes, shopping centers, apartment complexes, and so on. Here are the recent top 10 holdings:
Expenses. The Fundrise Starter Portfolio has an 0.85% annual asset management fee and a 0.15% annual investment advisory fee (1% “all-in” total). The Vanguard REIT ETF has an expense ratio of 0.12%, but each public REIT also has their own internal costs to manage their properties. Due to scale, I would expect the net effect of fees to be significantly higher for the Fundrise assets than for the Vanguard ETF. We will see if Fundrise can provide higher net returns for this concentrated holding.
Five-year time horizon. Both Fundrise and VNQ usually announce dividend distributions on a quarterly basis. Vanguard updates the NAV daily, but Fundrise only updates their NAV quarterly. Fundrise NAVs are only estimates as there is no daily market value available (similar to your house). Therefore, I plan on holding onto this investment for 5 years at the minimum. This will allow the investments to “play out” and also avoid any early redemption fees. I will withhold final judgement until both investments are cashed out, but will provide quarterly updates.
Fundrise Portfolio performance updates. Screenshot of my most recent statement:
- 10/20/17: $1,000 initial investment – 50 shares @ $10.00/share Income eREIT and 48.78 shares @ $10.25/share Growth eREIT.
- 1/9/18: 2017 Q4 dividends of $17.98 received and reinvested.
- 4/11/18: 2018 Q1 dividends of $16.13 received and reinvested.
- 7/11/18: 2018 Q2 dividends of $17.60 received and reinvested.
- 10/10/18: 2018 Q3 dividends of $19.10 received and reinvested.
- 1/10/19: 2018 Q4 dividends of $20.08 received and reinvested.
- 3/31/18: Total Fundrise value $1,147 (includes reinvested dividends).
(2019 Q4 dividend of $18.34 was announced on April 10, 2019 but I haven’t received the month-end statement yet, so I’m just going with the March statement numbers.)
Vanguard REIT ETF performance updates. I own VNQ and the mutual fund equivalent (same underlying holdings) in my retirement portfolio, but will be using Morningstar tools to track the performance of a $1,000 investment bought on the same date of 10/20/17.
- 10/20/17: $1,000 initial investment – 11.9545 shares at $83.65/share.
- 12/27/17, VNQ distributed a gain of $0.012 per share, return of capital of $0.37 per share, and a dividend of $0.88 per share.
- 3/26/18: VNQ dividend of $0.71 per share.
- 6/18/18: VNQ dividend of $0.73 per share.
- 9/24/18: VNQ dividend of $1.14 per share.
- 12/14/18, VNQ distributed return of capital of $0.23 per share, and a dividend of $0.72 per share.
- 3/29/18: VNQ dividend of $0.62 per share.
- 3/31/19: Total VNQ value $1,105 (includes reinvested dividends).
Here is the historical chart with monthly data points. Again, I wouldn’t put too much stock into the short-term movements as the accuracy of the Fundrise NAV is inherently limited, but this is the best information that I have available.
Every month or so, Fundrise sends me an e-mail with an update on a new property that they have acquired, or a property where they have exited. Both Fundrise and the ETF are completely passive holdings, meaning I have no control over what they buy or sell.
Bottom line. I’m doing a buy-and-hold-and-watch experiment where I compare investing in real estate via Fundrise direct investment and the largest REIT index ETF from Vanguard. I’ll provide occasional updates, but more important is what happens over 5+ years.
You can learn more about . This is the second time I have invested with Fundrise. Last time I decided to test out a withdrawal in my .
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