Doorvest Real Estate Investing Platform Review

Doorvest Ratings at a Glance

Doorvest Product Offerings

Have you ever wanted to own a rental property? Doorvest wants to help you do it. This real estate investing platform is dedicated to helping would-be landlords identify, purchase and manage single-family homes as investment vehicles. Although most people may think of apartment owners when they think of landlords, the truth is that building a solid portfolio of single-family home rentals can be just as profitable. 

Why would you want to own a single-family home as an investment vehicle, you ask? 

Because the ability to generate passive income on appreciating assets is one of the most important steps on the road to financial freedom. It’s also one of the highest and hardest steps to climb. 

Unfortunately, most would-be landlords or rental homeowners face several significant obstacles in finding single-family homes to buy as investments. First, scouting properties takes a lot of time and if you’re not already wealthy, you may not have the free time necessary to do that legwork. Second, there is the price question. Depending on where you live, the single-family home market might be too overheated for you to buy one and then rent it out at a profit. 

The time issue becomes even more of a factor when you start talking about shifting your focus to more affordable real estate markets. Then there is the question of whether a lower-priced property will generate sufficient rental income to cash flow for you. That’s why finding a Goldilocks property that’s just right is so hard. Doorvest was established to help you with every aspect of finding and managing your single-family home investment profitably. 

How Does Doorvest Work?

Most real estate investing platforms have different offerings you can buy into via syndication deals or other partnerships with investors. You can peruse these offerings and then pick out the one you like. Doorvest offers a much more custom experience. They have a network of contacts who source single-family rentals in the following cities and submarkets:

• Houston
• Atlanta
• Dallas
• San Antonio
• Oklahoma City
• Columbus
• Cincinnati

All of these markets have several things in common. They have affordable average prices for single-family homes and a strong rental market for those homes. That means that investors should feel confident in the strength of the real estate asset. Doorvest helps you find Goldilocks properties in these markets for prices ranging between $220,000 and $400,000.

Then Doorvest supervises any needed renovations and manages the property for you. In the meantime, your tenants pay your mortgage and other ownership expenses and the leftover proceeds become passive income. Doorvest also offers a one-year guarantee on the first year’s rent, regardless of tenant turnover. So, if the tenant or resident it selects for you defaults within the first year of your investment, the platform will help find you a new tenant and guarantee you income in the meantime. 

If you want to work with  Doorvest, simply sign up for the platform and answer a few questions. It allows you to select your preferred investing style. You can choose between investments focused on the following:

• Appreciation: You value appreciation over cash flow.
• Cashflow: You prefer investments that generate income over investments that deliver profits when you sell them.
• Balanced: You like a combination of appreciation value and cash flow.
• Open: Doorvest will present opportunities of all investment focus areas to you.

Then you post a $100 deposit. Once that’s done, you’ll get an appointment set with a member of the Client Partners Team. They will get more detailed information about your preferences and begin presenting investment opportunities. Then Doorvest will begin presenting you with different options based on your price, size, location and investment focus preferences. Depending on when the renovation of the home is set to be complete, you can own a rental home with Doorvest between 1 - 3 months. 

When you find a property you like, Doorvest will purchase it, complete any needed renovations and find you a tenant. It also guarantees the first year of tenant income. Once the renovations are complete and the tenant is placed, you purchase the home from Doorvest and its team will continue serving as your property manager. 

It will handle rent collections and day-to-day management. You’ll be able to access all of this information or get the latest statistics on your property through your Doorvest account. This really is top-to-bottom, vertically integrated investing. 

The entire idea behind Doorvest and its business model is outstanding. Most investors lack the time, resources and contact network to find suitable single-family home rentals outside of their immediate real estate markets. The list of investors who want to be actively involved in renovating and managing a property in another market is even shorter. 

The fact that Doorvest can do all this for investors after letting them basically pick and choose the property they want (within limits) means it offers investors an almost unprecedented level of customization in picking single-family home investments. Add that to the guarantee of rental income for the first year of the investment, and you have a very appealing package for investors. 

The only potential downside of the Doorvest package is the buy-in. Most of their deals are penciled to cashflow or perform for investors with a 20% down payment. Considering their average property costs between $220,000 and $400,000, that means you’ll need a minimum of $45,000 to complete a deal through the platform. As wonderful as the business model is, that’s still a lot of money. 

Granted, it’s much less than the $200,000 you would have to put up as a down payment on the average single-family home in New York or Los Angeles, but it’s still a lot of money. Doorvest’s home price threshold also has a lot to do with the geographic location of its investment offerings. The platform began in Houston before spreading to other areas with similar market fundamentals. 

Needless to say, investors who have $45,000 cash to invest have many options, including real estate investment trusts (REITs) or other syndication deals that can potentially generate passive income. So, if you’re going to invest with Doorvest, it’s because you have a strong preference for the control it gives you in choosing your asset and owning it free and clear. All things considered, Doorvest deserves a strong 4-star rating for its offerings. 

Security is an ever-present concern for both investors and operators of real estate investment platforms. Doorvest certainly does a professional job of providing all the security you would want and expect as an investor. The site is protected by a current Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, and there is a two-step email verification before you can complete the signup. 

Overall, investors who are familiar with internet investing platforms will be pleased with the security measures Doorvest takes to protect data and personal information. It strikes a good balance between accessibility and security that’s not so high that simply logging in becomes an issue for investors. This is a 4-star effort.

Doorvest’s great strength is the enhanced level of control it offers to investors in picking their own property and then being able to own it free and clear. When you work with Doorvest, the property you buy is yours. You’re not a limited partner in an LLC, and there are no general partners making decisions for you about when to liquidate the asset. Unfortunately, all that freedom of choice comes at a price. 

$45,000 is a steep buy-in, especially when you’ll only be owning one property. For the same buy-in (or even less in some cases), you can become an equity partner in many highly diversified funds that operate in multiple markets at once. Obviously, there is less investor control with that, and you don’t have a minimum hold period with Doorvest that you might with REITs or other real estate syndication deals. 

There is also a 10% management fee going forward if Doorvest manages your property. When you consider that it doesn’t charge a leasing fee and it budgets deals to cashflow for you even with the management fee included, 10% is not excessive. 

You’ll also be free to choose your own management company after the first year of the investment. However, the risk of a tenant moving or failing to pay the rent remains. $45,000 is a lot of eggs to put in one renter’s basket. The customization is great, but the elevated risk level and buy-in balance that out on the minus side. Doorvest gets a 3-star rating for fees as a result.

Overall, the Doorvest user experience is excellent. The idea of being able to choose the size, location and price of your investment all through one platform is more than appealing. Using the platform itself is incredibly simple and even if you’ve never done anything like this before, the level of personal attention you get from Doorvest is high enough that you’d be very confident about your investment. 

This is one of Doorvest’s biggest strengths. With REITs and other funds, you don’t know too much about what’s going on because you’re not in the driver’s seat. You just own a fraction of a portfolio, and you may or may not have a secondary market to liquidate your investment early if the need arises. 

Doorvest offers you complete flexibility (after just one year) to sell your property back to Doorvest, put it on the open market or even switch management companies. These are not the kind of decisions you get to make as a limited partner in a portfolio. Combining that freedom of choice with a very user-friendly platform creates an outstanding user experience. The 5-star rating for user experience is well warranted.

Doorvest vs. Competitors

Doorvest’s business model is unique among real estate investing platforms that deal with single-family homes. Other platforms such as Arrived Homes may offer investors the ability to buy into individual single-family homes as partners or entire portfolios of them, but Doorvest’s vertically integrated approach of sole ownership is unique. 

Doorvest offers investors an appealing combination of service, flexibility and user-friendliness. Having a team of well-connected real estate professionals scouting deals and bringing them to you, then managing your chosen asset while you collect the profits is a wonderful concept. This represents a significant leap forward in the way many real estate investing platforms operate. 

That’s especially true when you factor in the three-month guarantee on rental income. As the world of real estate investing platforms continues to develop, it’s a sure bet that some of them will be keeping an eye on Doorvest. If you’re an investor who wants a single-family rental home in the Southeast but don’t have the time or resources to scout and manage it, Doorvest could be just what the doctor ordered. 

The only thing holding Doorvest back from a 5-star rating is the high buy-in price in relation to other offerings that give investors a more diverse portfolio of assets. With that said, you’d have to put up something in the neighborhood of 20% to make any single-family home rental work as an investment. 

So with that in mind, the recommended $45,000 buy-in may not be an issue for you. If it’s not, give Doorvest a look. You might like what you see. Overall, it is worthy of a 4-star rating. 

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