Capital Square DSTs, From Their Own Form D Filings: 135 Offerings, an 8.4%-8.5% Sales Load, and the Deals That Pay Related Parties Most

Who Capital Square is, and what a Form D is

Capital Square Realty Advisors is a Richmond, Virginia sponsor of Delaware statutory trusts (DSTs): trusts that own one property or a small portfolio and sell fractional beneficial interests to investors who are completing a 1031 exchange, so they can defer capital gains tax on a property they sold. Each DST is a separate private offering to accredited investors, and each files a short notice with the SEC called a Form D. The Form D is not a prospectus. It is a structured form with a few numbers the sponsor has to fill in: the total offering amount, how much has been sold and to how many investors, the sales commissions, any finders' fees, and the amount of the gross proceeds "used for payments to any of the persons required to be named as executive officers, directors or promoters" (in the dataset, "related persons"). For Capital Square those named persons are consistently Capital Square Realty Advisors, LLC, CSRA Manager, LLC and Louis Rogers, the founder, plus other officers.

That makes the Form D the one public, comparable document for every DST a sponsor sells. It is what we used here. The dataset is by issuer name, so a Capital Square DST filed under a name that does not start with CS1031 or CSRA would be missing. Treat 135 as "at least".

How much, and when

Source: each DST's latest Form D or D/A on EDGAR; CrowdfundedWealth dataset. Grouped by the year of the first filing because most filings give no date of first sale.

The shape is the 2021-2022 boom and the rate shock after it. In 2022 Capital Square filed Form Ds for 23 DSTs listing $1.2 billion, the largest being CS1031 Parkland Apartments ($105.7 million, December 2022). In 2023 it filed four. The 2026 filings (three active-adult or senior-living deals in Texas and Richmond, a townhome community and CS1031 Colony at Centerpointe Apartments, $42.95 million) suggest the pipeline is back.

A caution that matters: these are offering ceilings, not money raised. Capital Square files each Form D before the first sale ("yet to occur" on 116 of 135) and almost never updates it: only 10 were amended, and only 17 report any sales, $31.9 million in total. The one clean snapshot is CS1031 Woodshire Apartments, whose March 2019 amendment reports $14.1 million sold of a $22.1 million offering to 38 investors. Anyone who tells you how much Capital Square "raised" from Form D alone is guessing.

The load: 8.5%, then 8.4%

Source: CrowdfundedWealth dataset. Commission percentage = sales commissions reported on the Form D ÷ total offering amount. Most 2014-2015 filings, with commissions of about 2.5%-3.4%, name no broker-dealer firm on the form.

On a $1,000,000 exchange into a Capital Square DST filed today, the Form D implies about $84,000 of selling commission inside the offering. That is the broker-dealer's compensation, paid out of the investors' money before any property income; our 141-filing comparison of DST sponsors' loads puts Capital Square in the upper half of the ten sponsors compared, behind CAI Investments, Passco and NexPoint and well above ExchangeRight's 5%. Finders' fees are $0 on every one of the 135.

The number nobody quotes: payments to related persons

Beyond the commission, the Form D asks how much of the proceeds the sponsor estimates will go to its own people and entities: acquisition fees, financing fees, reimbursements, and in some structures payments for the property itself. For Capital Square the median is 4.27% of the offering. On most deals it is 3%-6%. Five are different:

Sources: Form D filings, accessions 0002039618-24-000001, 0001800536-20-000001, 0001911880-22-000001, 0001958797-22-000001 and the CS1031 Zero Coupon DFW Hospitality Form D of August 26, 2025 (links in the dataset). Each figure is marked on the form as an estimate. None of these filings includes an explanation in its clarification field.

We do not know what the $10.5 million on Valley Ridge is. A build-for-rent DST can buy newly built homes from a developer; if an affiliate of the sponsor is that developer, or if the DST repays a sponsor bridge loan, the purchase price can show up here. That would not be improper in itself, but it is the single most important thing to understand before investing: when half of the money goes to parties on the sponsor's side of the table, the price they set for the property is the investment. The private placement memorandum has an "estimated use of proceeds" table and a conflicts section; ask for both, and ask who sold the property to the DST and for how much.

Before you put a 1031 exchange into a Capital Square DST

• Ask for the load in dollars, from the memorandum: selling commission, dealer-manager fee, acquisition fee, financing fee and reserves, as a percentage of your equity, not of the offering. The Form D gives the commission and the related-party total; the memorandum splits them.
• Ask whether any related party sold the property or is being repaid a loan out of the proceeds, especially on the build-for-rent and zero-coupon deals above.
• Ask how much of the offering was actually sold and when it closed; the Form D will not tell you.
• Know the exit. A DST cannot raise new money or refinance easily; most end in a sale or a roll into a REIT's operating partnership (a 721 exchange). See what a DST-to-REIT 721 roll does to your exit.

FAQ

All figures are from Form D and Form D/A filings on EDGAR, read on September 28, 2026; percentages, totals, medians and the grouping by year and by property type are our arithmetic. Property types are read from the DST names. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.