EquityMultiple Review

EquityMultiple Ratings at a Glance

Who is EquityMultiple?

EquityMultiple is an online real estate investing platform that employs the best aspects of wealthtech to empower hands-on investors to build their own portfolios. EquityMultiple offerings are primarily focused on commercial real estate and preferred equity deals with quick returns and regular pay-outs. In fact, EquityMultiple has a number of offerings that will yield dividends in less than 18 months. 

The focus on quick payouts is just one of several ways that EquityMultiple sets itself apart from other alternative investment websites. Most real estate crowdfunding platforms have investment minimums between $25,000 and $50,000. By contrast, EquityMultiple has many offerings with buy-ins as low as $5,000. 

Perhaps most importantly, EquityMultiple’s founders have set out to design a customer-focused platform that is as easy to use as it is profitable for investors. Low buy-ins, quick pay-outs and diverse offerings? It sounds like a dream come true; but can EquityMultiple deliver?

How Does EquityMultiple Work?

EquityMultiple is an online real estate platform that offers crowdfunded real estate investments. On the surface, this doesn’t seem too different from the multitude of other platforms that are already out there. However, where the EquityMultiple business model differs is in the hands-on approach it takes to its offerings. 

While most platforms simply perform due diligence on their offerings before putting them online, EquityMultiple takes a much more active hand in its investments. Most of the offerings on EquityMultiple are structured, underwritten and managed by EquityMultiple itself. That means that rather than just putting investment offerings online, EquityMultiple has skin in the game with all its investors. 

Another thing that makes EquityMultiple a stand-out platform is it has so many offerings with quick turnarounds. Lots of EquityMultiple offerings are designed to pay off in less than 18 months. So, in contrast to other crowdfunding platforms that require investors to wait several years for a dividend, EquityMultiple has a strong focus on investors looking to stay liquid, but still see their money grow in the near term. 

EquityMultiple prides itself on having a wide range of investment offerings, which means each of them have a different fee structure.

Aside from this, EquityMultiple requires all investors to pay an annual administrative expense fee, which goes toward the cost of creating tax documents, filing fees and any payments necessary to cover the creation of the investment entity. This fee ranges from $30 to $70. Because of the diversity in its offerings, each will have a different fee structure that is clearly laid out in the investment prospectus. All things considered, the quoted fees are in line with those of similar operations and not high enough to scare potential investors off. 

Part of EquityMultiple’s mission is to create a user-friendly, high-functioning investor experience, and this commitment is obvious in using the company’s website. Signup is incredibly simple, and EquityMultiple also requires you to complete a recapcha image challenge and verify your email address before gaining access to your membership. This may seem like a small step, but it’s a great first line of defense against spammers and bots looking to join the site so they can cause havoc. 

Once the signup is done, investors must provide verification of their accreditation before they can actually get all the way under the hood and look at the available offerings or performance of past deals. 

Even without signing up, it’s very easy to navigate the site and everything an investor would want to know is laid out in a very clear fashion. The tabs for the “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQs), “About us” and “How it Works'' pages are right at the top of the site and direct investors to clear, concise information about EquityMultiple. There is no mystery here, and that’s a good thing. 

Investor education is an important aspect of any real estate investing platform for the simple reason that potential investors are unlikely to invest on a platform if they can’t understand how it works. EquityMultiple gets that, and it provides a wealth of comprehensive educational resources as a result. 

Perhaps the most valuable of these resources is the platform’s blog, which is chock full of articles covering a full range of investment topics. The top section is reserved for “suggested reading” and the first piece is titled “Intro: Investing in Commercial Real Estate With EquityMultiple.” Here, investors will get a full primer on not only how commercial real estate investing works but also why investing with EquityMultiple is such a unique customer experience.  

If things still aren’t clear, a chat icon follows investors throughout the entire site, inviting them to ask any questions they have that don’t appear on the page. EquityMultiple earns high marks here because it’s an interaction with a person and not a bot. This is a small detail but an important one because it speaks to EquityMultiple’s commitment to making sure its investors understand how the platform works.  

It’s also very instructive that EquityMultiple investor education efforts prominently feature the one piece of information investors want to know most of all: the track record of the portfolio. On the landing page for the website, potential investors can click on the Resources tab and the first thing to pop up is EquityMultiple’s performance history.

After all, if you’re a potential investor and you don’t like these numbers, you’re not going any further, right? That EquityMultiple seeks to give you the numbers right away is very refreshing, and it speaks to both the success and the transparency of its business model. 

The resources tab also features other valuable information like testimonials, a glossary of real estate terms and a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) tab that is full of great information. Overall, EquityMultiple’s investor education features everything you’d need to know to feel comfortable investing with it. Perhaps the only thing keeping this from being a 4-star section is the lack of any visual medium such as webinars, YouTube videos and Zoom (NASDAQ: ZM) lessons. 

EquityMultiple’s customer support is very good and features everything you would expect from a website of its caliber. The personalized chat icon discussed in the customer education section is the most obvious evidence of this, but both the email and phone numbers for the company are at the footer of the website’s landing page. It’s also refreshing that EquityMultiple includes separate email addresses for general inquiries and technical issues for the website.

As discussed above, it’s really nice that EquityMultiple lets potential investors jump to its performance history right from the splash page. Seeing as how EquityMultiple has an average 17.4% internal rate of return earned on more than $316 million of investor funds, it’s no wonder it puts that information front and center. Bear in mind that this is the combined rate of return on all its investments, some of which are preferred equity and opportunity zone funds. The planned internal rate of return for your chosen investment may differ.

Where EquityMultiple really shines is the speed of the returns, which earns them another ½ star. Many of its offerings will yield dividends in less than a year. In fact, if you look at its closed offerings, you’ll find deals that paid off in as little as 4 months. EquityMultiple also has innovative offerings like its own short-term notes, which would certainly yield more earnings than a savings account. 

This is of course all with the caveat that no investment comes without the risk of loss, and in spite of EquityMultiple’s solid performance history, it’s still possible for investors to lose money. 

EquityMultiple Alternatives

There's no question that EquityMultiple is a reputable platform with a solid history of performance, but it may not be the best solution for everybody. Here are some of the top alternatives to EquityMultiple worth checking out.

It’s no secret that crowdfunding platforms have become an increasingly popular source of real estate funding, and that’s led to a huge influx of online platforms of late. Every platform has a different angle, but EquityMultiple has chosen an incredibly unique one. It offers a wonderful combination of diverse investments, low buy-ins, quick turnarounds and a high-functioning website.

It all comes together to create an incredible investing platform that the self-directed investor can easily get behind the wheel and drive. At the same time however, it’s got enough information and customer support for the novice real estate investor to do the same thing. 

Another area where EquityMultiple earns praise is that because it manages and underwrites most of its own deals, it’s in the same boat with its investors. If you lose money, it loses money, too. That can only serve to increase investor confidence in the quality of EquityMultiple’s offerings. Put all this together and you’ve got a 4.5-star real estate investing platform. 

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