Crowd Street Reviews 160

I have 6 investments within the CS universe across a variety of CRE deals. Most of my experiences have been ok, however customer support for a deal that turns out to have been done by an SEC reporting company is pathetic at best and e-mails to CS have gone into a black hole with no answer. The real issue is the sponsor which claims they can not deal with us and we have to go read their 10-Q quarterly filings, which are just this side of useless. I have told that CS should tell us upfront as part of the sales process about these sorts of hurdles to discover what is going on with a deal so an investor can avoid this situation if warranted. The current lack of response from CS about this particular deal is concerning and aggravating.

I’ve had mixed success with crowd street. , Federal self storage and rreaf holdings are very good sponsors that pay over 12-15 pct yearly. However the other 4 I invested in are horrible. All these other people on here complaining about lack of customer service is dead right. They ghost you once they have your money. Even the sponsors won’t call you back. I would stay away from this crowdfunding site. I will say both fundrise and realty mogul will pay you and return your calls. Those are both way better companies.

Great selection of vetted deals and sponsors to diversify your portfolio. Realize the income and tax benefits of owning real estate without the hassle of owning and managing properties. I highly recommend CrowdStreet!

This company is on a solid growth path to take over private real estate investment firms by offering smaller investment opportunities to their investors through crowd-funding. They do all the vetting and heavy lifting for you as an investor.

CrowdStreet is an unbelievable platform providing me with access to unique and interesting deals I couldn't otherwise get access to. I have invested in numerous CrowdStreet deals over the last 5+ years. The website is incredibly easy to use and the customer service is exceptional. I chose to write a review and share my experience in part because of the incredibly positive experience I have had with the team.

CrowdStreet is great at getting your money. Once they've gotten your money and they've gotten their percentage, your hear mostly crickets. Investors are kept largely in the dark.
I've invested in 7 projects of theirs going back four years. None have paid a dime so far. Two have required a "capital call" (more money from investors for the project to stay afloat.)
CrowdStreet does NOT advocate for their investors after the investment is made, and does NOT require meaningful reporting from project sponsors. As a result, mostly what you get is "happy talk" BS which tells you nothing. I'm very nervous about my investments.

After monitoring crowdstreet deals for a least a few years, I have found good deals far and few between, and when I find a deal it becomes oversubscribed quickly, and then you are waitlisted. This gives you very little time to fill out documents, especially if your trying to get verification. I completely agree with the other review - THERE IS NO DEFINED TIME TO GET YOUR DOCUMENTS IN. There should be at least 24 hours. This promotes good will, good business sense, and repeat business even though it may cost crowdstreet a little in the short run.

As a 4 year investor, I won't be making any more investments with Crowdstreet.

Latest issue... a sponsor I invested with mailed a check to my previous mailing address. Check was then cashed (not by me).

Sponsor doesn't respond to emails requesting info, failed to update their records with correct mailing address, claimed they were sending a new check, and now 6 weeks later, tells me it the original check was cashed fraudulently and there's nothing they can do.

Crowdstreet needs to help facilitate payments and communication, but the only response from Crowdstreet when there are issues is a shoulder shrug and "not our problem" attitude.

Sorry Crowdstreet - but this is your problem.

The biggest problem in crowdstreet is funding the money to the investment company. They ask us to send funds by ACH or wire. First of any only businesses can initiate ACH transaction and so if you are a personal investor, this is out of question. The next option is wire the funds and so every time you invest, you have to spend $40. They (Crowdstreet) charges anywhere from 1-2% fees from the other company and they don't provide even basic funding mechanism for investors to fund the required money. They will not even respond to your queries since every time you call their 800 number, you leave a voicemail and no one answers back. Even by email they don't answer your questions. Their customer support is deplorable. The platform concept is good but for personal investors, the entire experience is really really horrendous.

Tried it out again today to attend their zoom call. Their folks never take our questions and answer them - Have proof of all submitted questions. They say you are pre-approved and by the time you are e-signing the docs in about 20 minutes, you get email indicated you are waitlisted - This is complete BS and waste of people's time. They have no mechanism of controlling or notifying the interested subscribers. It's a matter of time other competing crowd sourcing platforms come to play to stop the hegemony of such horrible investing platforms

Update : Few weeks after I posted the above review, two of the crowdstreet's executives including customer executive had a long hour meeting to discuss the above feedback. I was told they would look into this and revert back but no one ever did. I was also surprised to learn that they themselves did not know that non-business (personal Trusts or anyone) can't initiate ACH transactions through any financial institution - which is exactly what I mentioned above. In terms of the bidding process, they were going to do changes to streamline this as well.

Update : 4th July, 2021
While I have recently read about the new streamlined process of ensuring oversubscription is handled appropriately, I have yet to try out the new system. I asked them about ACH support and yet again disappointed, they still do not support this and ask investors to either wire funds (which cost $35-$40 for any domestic outgoing wire) or initiate ACH transaction (please remember you can only this IF YOU HAVE A BUSINESS ACCOUNT - without which THIS is not possible at all - no matter who says what). All other competing sites - realty mogul, upside avenue, equity multiple, fundrise (More like a REIT) and many others DOES NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM. They merely take your bank name and automate the ACH transaction directly from the receiving investment party (rather than you - the sender having to initiate this). Very disappointed that crowdstreet continues to NOT SUPPORT this very basic mechanism for funding money.

In my experience, CrowdStreet oversells their due diligence effort/support and expected returns and then under delivers on both.

If an investment goes south, they then basically don't provide any support whatsoever and basically say "you are on your own, we are just a platform." After making 8 diversified investments (1 medical, 2 apartments, 3 hotels, 2 assisted living), 2 are performing according to plan, 2 are under construction, and 4 are underperforming, with 1 of these being a complete write-off

Based on my experience, you are much better investing with FundRise, Realty Mogul, Realty Shares, Peer Street, or more traditional REITs than CrowdStreet.

They have poor customer service. For every query you have to wait 12-24 hrs to get a reply via email. No phone desk to talk to them.

Lately they have too many customers to invest. They seem to have used this to their advantage to minimize their transparency in the selection process on who can invest.

They lack clear communication. They send email that you are pre-approved and upload driver license so they can send funding instructions. As soon you upload license they send email you are waitlisted.

No transparency in what is your turn on waitlisted queue.

This is a great way to invest in Commercial Real Estate. They care about their members and organize all of my investments for me. I'm very satisfied with this service.

I have run into repeated issues trying to submit an offer using my SDIRA account. Despite having two funded investments using this account with CrowdStreet, they freeze my ability to make the offer because they are lacking account information. Rather than contact me outside a deal offering window to get the needed info, they essentially blocked me from getting into popular offerings. It’s very poor customer service despite having several hundred thousand dollars invested.

CrowdStreet is the best in class for online CRE investing.
Good deal flow. Variety for risk and return options.

Great education on commercial real estate and informative webinars. I have been investing on the platform for over four years. There seems to be a good amount of deal flow with great variety. I especially like the funds that are offered by CrowdStreet. Great way to passively invest in the commercial real estate world.

Great platform. Very professional.

The selling part of the site is amazing, very clear and helfpul. The follow up is a bit looser and the forum for sharing issues is a bit toothless. Many sponsors fail quite considerably in the plan and there is - at present - not a great way for LPs to communicate with each other about this to raise issues with sponsor.

There should be a LP rating system (LPs ONLY, not CS) to rate them, Not one deal I have done has come anywhere NEAR the pro forma.

i own 10 projects over the past year. After a learning curve the process improved.
The moderators of the webinars need to dress and present as more professional and business oriented.
The sponsors are mostly poor at even quarterly updates. I have found them to be responsive to questions but seems crazy that they need to answer similar questions repeatedly when more regular reports would solve the problem.

Good site to find private equity deals. However, you need to do YOUR due diligence. CS is a marketplace for deals, and although they have their own process to filter out sponsors, they do not undertake the risk, you do. It’s not like Costco where you can return a defective product to the store vs the manufacturer. Look around the site, review track records, and talk to the sponsors and make sure what they write in their offering documents is plausible.

Great platform, plenty of deals. They are also improving quality of sponsors over the last couple of years.