Advertiser disclosure

Yield Crowd Review 2021: Pros, Cons and How It Stacks Up

Yield Crowd is an online platform that offers investors access to alternative investments in commercial real estate via Tokenized corporate bonds trade-able on the Stellar distributed ledger. Investment minimums typically start at $1,000 but is only $1 during promotional phase.

Jason Karl, David Spano | Nov 4, 2021

Most or all of the products featured on here are from partners who compensate us. This may influence what products we write about and how the product appears on this page. However, we do our best so that this does not influence our evaluation. Our Here is a list of our partners and here's how we make money.

The investing information provided on this page is for educational purposes only. CrowdInvestmentReview.com does not offer advisory or brokerage services, nor does it recommend or advise investors to buy or sell particular stocks, securities or other investments.

Our take

4.5

yieldcrowd.com rating

The bottom line:

Yield Crowd allows investors to participate in institutional real estate for a highly diversified U.S. real estate portfolio investment, including retail, multifamily, hospitality, and other asset classes. Open to non U.S. investors only.

Yieldcrowd

Fees

0% - 4.5%

Zero trading fees, zero bank fees. Up to 4.5% Credit Card fees may apply

Minimum

$1

$1 min investment allowed

Promotion

None

No promotions at this time

LEARN MORE

On yieldcrowd's website

Pros & Cons

Pros

Access to institutional real estate backed investments
More liquidity. Individuals can trade their shares on the Stellar decentralized exchange.
Investments backed by assets, which may protect against loss in event of default.

Cons

$1000 minimum investment typical (only $1 during promotion)
U.S. investors not allowed (yet)

Best Online Brokers

Full Yield Crowd Review

While some fractional real estate sites allow you to purchase equity of commercial real estate properties, Yield Crowd instead funds the debt taken on to finance those investments.

Yield Crowd launched its first offering in 2021, which is a U.S. real estate offering, backed by bonds which are used to fund its institutional real estate investments. It has branched into a variety of underlying asset classes, including Retail ,Hospitality, Multifamily and residential property deals. Investors earn both interest payments of 9% in year 1 (updated from 5% in Jun 2022) and return of the principal investment over the life, plus appreciated Token value based on a set schedule of 3% per year (with increases over time - although there’s always a risk of default).

While most deals are for accredited investors only, Yield Crowd launched a tokenized bond regulation S offering, which is open to all non U.S. investors with a minimum investment of $1000 ($1 during promotion).

As of November 2021, more than U.S. $50,000,000 of assets back the tokens.

Yield Crowd is best for

Non U.S. investors looking to diversify their portfolio into U.S. real estate assets.
Investors who are comfortable locking up their cash, but are keen on transferability.
Investors looking for passive income-producing investments.

Yield Crowd at a glance

Investor minimums

Minimums typically begin at $1,000 (currently $1 during promo).

Redemption options

No redemption program. The Company may buy back up to 5% of the Bonds per year to increase liquidity. Investors may trade with other investors on the Stellar exchange.

Fees

Zero management fee. Zero trading fees. Zero bank fees. Up to 4.5% credit card fees if Credit Card used.

Investment selection

Institutional class commercial real estate. Typical properties cost between $5m to $25m. Retail, Multifamily, Hospitality classes.

Website transparency

This is our judgement of how easy it is to find critical information on the Yield Crowd website, including platform fees, account minimum and redemption options (if offered).

Investment transparency

This is our judgement of how easy it is to find critical information about investment offerings, including investment fees, risks, risk mitigation efforts, the process for vetting investments and how investment returns are distributed to investors.

Yield Crowd features you should know

Minimum investment:

The company says the minimum investment is typically $1,000.

Investments offered:

Yield Crowd focuses on a bond offering on the Stellar distributed ledger named YIELD. The corporate bonds receive their income from a U.S. diversified portfolio of real estate assets.

Each investment offering is featured on the company’s website with important details, including the total offering size, minimum and maximum investment accepted, duration and expected annual investment return. Yield Crowd also details why the company likes the investment, the expenses, risks (and how it is attempting to mitigate those risks) and expected time schedule for repayments.

Asset-based investments:

All offerings on Yield Crowd are backed by underlying assets such as real estate, which gives the company a way to potentially recoup defaulted loans. Still, the return of your investment is not guaranteed, and all investing involves risk, including the possibility of losing your principal investment.

Fees:

Yield Crowd does not collect an annual management fee. Instead, they make a spread on the yield paid to investors, compared to what the company can generate. The Sponsors have generated high returns over 154% per year. Yield Crowd does not charge any trading fees through its partner opentrades.org, nor does it charge any bank fees. The only fees that it charges are if an investment is purchased on a Credit Card. Credit card fees can be above 4.5%. These expenses are deducted from initial interest payments. These fees are disclosed on the individual offering pages.

Offering is for non U.S. investors only:

YIELD bonds are not available to U.S. investors.

Offers a self-directed IRA:

You can not invest in Yield Crowd through a U.S. self-directed IRA. This is because U.S. investors are not allowed.

Illiquid investments:

Once you commit purchasing YIELD bonds, the investment can’t be redeemed for the duration of the offering, except by trading with someone else on the Stellar decentralized exchange. So once your money is in, you’re committed to seeing the investment through, or finding a trading partner.

Limited availability of investments:

Each Bond offering is open for investment for a limited period of time on a first-come, first-served basis, so you may walk away empty-handed, even if you come to the site ready to invest.

» Compare before investing: Best real estate crowdfunding platforms

Is Yield Crowd right for you?

Yield Crowd offers individual investors an opportunity to invest in private structured real estate bonds, similar to offerings usually reserved for hedge funds and institutional investors.

One caution:

A rule of thumb is to invest no more than 10% of your portfolio in alternative investments such as the ones Yield Crowd offers. It's generally considered wise to focus the bulk of your portfolio on index funds or mutual funds, which give you broad and diversified exposure to the stock market.

» Ready to start investing? Best online brokers for stock trading

How do we review real estate platforms?

Our comprehensive review process evaluates and ranks companies that allow non U.S. customers to invest in real estate. Our aim is to provide an independent assessment of providers to help arm you with information to make sound, informed judgements on which ones will best meet your needs. We adhere to guidelines for editorial integrity.

We typically collect data from providers through questionnaires which have great detail, and perform testing and observation through first hand demonstrations by the providers. The questionnaire answers, combined with demos, interviews with the providers and our specialists’ research using hands on methods, power our assessment process that rates each provider’s performance across more than 15 factors. The output produces star ratings from poor (one star) to excellent (five stars).