Microventures for non-accredited investors (crowd-sourced real estate and crowd-sourced direct equity investments)

I stumbled upon these microventure opportunities searching for other ways to invest funds for income generation. I’ll go ahead and give a shout out to Investorjunkie for their microventures reviews, the link to the crowd-sourced real estate article is here.

A quick summary review is that Fundrise, Rich Uncles, Realty Mogul and GroundFloor to one extent or another offer non-accredited investors to invest in Commercial, Residential and Single-Family Real Estate opportunities throughout the US. By way of definition, according to the efcr (electronic code of federal regulation) website an Accredited Investor among other things is:

• Any natural person whose individual net worth, or joint net worth with that person’s spouse, exceeds $1,000,000;

• Any natural person who had an individual income in excess of $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with that person’s spouse in excess of $300,000 in each of those years and has a reasonable expectation of reaching the same income level in the current year;

• Any organization described in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, corporation, Massachusetts or similar business trust, or partnership, not formed for the specific purpose of acquiring the securities offered, with total assets in excess of $5,000,000;

This list is not inclusive of all considerations, see ecfr.gov for more details. Opportunities to invest in potentially higher yield opportunities has thus been limited for the non-accredited investor. Fundrise was one of the first crowd-sourced real estate opportunities for non-accredited investors.

For the crowd-sourced real estate opportunities, the funding mechanisms differ from eREITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) to debt investments. The minimum investment amounts are relatively low, from $5 t0 $1000 (and open to all investors). This type of investment fits well with the Prosper (peer to peer lending) investment opportunity where funds are theoretically always invested and thus perpetually earning interest or dividends.

Another newer microventure for both accredited and non-accredited investors is crowd-sourced direct equity investments. I could only locate two sites thus far. One features investment in funding for new video game ideas, Gambitions.com. This is the non-accredited investor opportunity. The other for accredited investors is Seedinvest.com. Note that investments at this level offer extremely high-risk vs reward opportunities so if you choose to pursue consult your team, legal and or financial professional. I’ll keep an eye out for more non-accredited opportunities in this area.