Cardone Capital Alternatives in 2026: The Exit You Don't Have

If you are here because of the litigation rather than the returns, the case itself is covered separately in The Cardone Capital Class Action in 2026, including what the court-approved notice says about how a class member would actually recover.

Start with what you are actually trying to escape

Most "alternatives to X" articles are a yield table with affiliate links under it. That is useless here, because yield is not what sends people looking for a Cardone Capital alternative. Three structural features are, and all three are in the fund's own filings rather than in anyone's opinion.

1. The hold period, and the absence of a way out. The Form 1-K states the company "expects these properties will appreciate over the expected hold period of seven (7) to ten (10) years." There is no redemption programme. The FY2025 statement of changes in members' equity shows redemptions of $2,000 against $31.7M of equity. That is not a liquidity mechanism, it is a rounding error. Whatever you put in, you have committed for the better part of a decade, and the exit depends on the manager choosing to sell the properties.

2. The promote. Cardone's published fee structure is a 1% asset management fee, a 1% transaction fee on acquisitions and dispositions, and a 20% promote on distributable cash flow. The FY2025 filing quantifies what that means in practice: it discloses that the impact of the Class B provisions at April 30, 2026 "would be to distribute $2,315,344 to Class B unit holders" once the stated 80% threshold condition is satisfied. Class B is the sponsor side.

3. A certified securities class action with a trial date. On March 27, 2026, Judge John F. Walter of the Central District of California certified Pino v. Cardone Capital, LLC as a class action under Rule 23(b)(3), covering anyone who acquired an interest in Cardone Equity Fund V or VI through their public offerings. A jury trial is scheduled for March 9, 2027, with a pretrial conference on February 12, 2027. Susman Godfrey was appointed class counsel. The exclusion deadline passed on July 14, 2026.

These are allegations that have been certified for trial, not findings of wrongdoing. Nothing has been proven, and Cardone Capital disputes the claims. But a certified class action with a trial date is a fact about the risk profile of the manager, and it is the kind of thing a reasonable person weighs before committing capital for ten years.

The number that reframes the decision

Read the two-year balance sheet movement together rather than one year at a time.

Members' equity fell 39.9% in two years. The arithmetic is closed and checkable: the 2025 decline of $8,347,344 is exactly the net loss ($5,255,548) plus distributions ($3,089,796) plus $2,000 of redemptions. The 2024 decline of $12,703,630 is exactly the net loss plus distributions. Nothing is hidden. It simply is not what "10X your money" sounds like.

The fair counter-argument, which the filing itself makes. The fund states its properties "showed a book loss for 2025 and 2024 due primarily to non-cash depreciation and amortization." That is true and it matters. GAAP net loss is a poor proxy for cash performance in real estate, because depreciation is a non-cash charge on an asset that may be appreciating. Occupancy finished 2025 at 82% to 97%, which is an operating business, not a collapse. Anyone telling you the fund is "losing money" in the everyday sense is overreading the income statement.

What survives that counter-argument is the balance sheet, not the income statement. Distributions of $8.5M have been paid cumulatively while the accumulated deficit reached $33.9M, and equity is down 40% in two years. Distributions funded from something other than earnings are a return of capital as much as a return on it, and the investor cannot test that thesis by selling, because there is no redemption programme and the hold is seven to ten years. That combination, not the loss line, is the reason to look elsewhere.

How I ranked the alternatives

One axis dominates: can you verify how you get out, and has that mechanism been tested recently? A published redemption policy is a promise. A redemption programme that actually cleared last quarter is evidence. The difference between those two things is the entire lesson of 2025 and 2026 in this sector.

Secondary axes: minimum investment, whether a promote exists at all, whether the sponsor reports to the SEC on a schedule you can read, and whether the asset class is genuinely comparable to South Florida multifamily.

1. Listed apartment REITs, if you wanted multifamily exposure

This is the honest structural comparison, and I want to be direct that we earn nothing from it. If your goal was to own a slice of professionally managed apartment buildings, the public markets have offered exactly that for thirty years.

• Liquidity: daily, on the NYSE, at a price you can see before you commit.
• Promote: none. You pay an expense ratio embedded in the company's operations, not 20% of the upside.
• Reporting: 10-Q every quarter, 10-K every year, audited, with the properties itemised.
• Yield, as of August 2026: Mid-America Apartment Communities (MAA) around 4.63% on an annual dividend of $6.12 per share; Camden Property Trust (CPT) around 3.9%, with 14 consecutive years of increases. Sector average for residential REITs is approximately 4.14%. Check a live quote before acting, because these move.

The trade-off is real and worth stating: listed REITs are marked to market every day, so you will watch the value swing in a way a private fund's quarterly valuation never shows you. Some investors genuinely prefer not seeing it. That preference is a real preference, but it is a preference for not knowing the price, not for lower risk.

2. Fundrise Flagship Real Estate Fund, for a private structure with a tested exit

• Minimum: $10.
• Liquidity: quarterly tender offers. The relevant evidence is that through 2025 the Flagship Fund executed sizable tender offers every quarter without triggering pro-ration or gating. Liquidity here is contractually limited but demonstrably real, which is a materially different thing from a policy that has never been stress-tested.
• What to know before you go: Fundrise's legacy Equity REIT suspended its redemption plan on October 1, 2025. That is a different vehicle from the Flagship, Income and Innovation funds, which continued processing quarterly redemptions, but it tells you the sponsor will gate when it decides it needs to. The Flagship also added $100M of SOFR+525bps leverage in February 2026, which is a real increase in the risk profile and is disclosed in a footnote rather than a headline. Our Flagship fund review has the full read.

3. Arrived, for single-family exposure with a thin but genuine secondary market

• Minimum: $100 per property.
• Liquidity: a secondary market that went live in November 2025, open for a one-week window each month, with a six-month minimum holding period and a 1% fee on early redemptions.
• The honest caveat: a peer-to-peer market for shares in one specific house is thin by construction. Order volume is not the same as liquidity at a fair price, and what you can actually get depends on who wants that particular property that week. It is a real exit, not a guaranteed one.
• Disclosure that cuts against us: Arrived has no affiliate programme. We earn nothing if you use it. It is on this list because it fits the brief.

4. The one to strike off your list

Most "Cardone alternative" listicles still recommend RealtyMogul's Apartment Growth REIT as the non-accredited multifamily option. As of 2026 it is not an option.

On April 21, 2026, RealtyMogul's board approved suspending the share repurchase programme, disclosed in a Form 1-U, stating the suspension was to "preserve liquidity and financial flexibility as the Company actively manages through a period of portfolio transition." The company ceased repurchasing shares and stopped accepting repurchase requests submitted on or after that date. The suspension covers both the Income REIT and the Apartment Growth REIT, and the Apartment Growth REIT also closed to new investors.

If your reason for leaving Cardone is that you cannot get your money out, moving it into a REIT that suspended repurchases four months ago solves nothing. Our MogulREIT analysis covers how that fund got there.

Side by side

If you are already invested and cannot leave

This is the situation most people asking the question are actually in, and the honest answer is that your options are narrow.

• The class action already covers you if you bought into Equity Fund V or VI through the public offerings. The class was certified March 27, 2026 and the exclusion deadline was July 14, 2026. If you did not opt out, you are in it, and you do not need to do anything to remain a class member. The case is Pino v. Cardone Capital, LLC, 2:20-cv-08499, Central District of California.
• Read the annual filings yourself, every year. Cardone REIT I files a Form 1-K annually and a Form 1-SA semi-annually on SEC EDGAR under CIK 1882616. They are free, they are audited, and they contain the equity movement above. You do not need anyone's newsletter, including ours, to see it.
• Do not average down to fix a liquidity problem. More capital in the same vehicle makes the illiquidity worse, not better.
• Judge distributions against the accumulated deficit, not against your expectations. A distribution paid while the accumulated deficit grows is partly your own capital coming back.

Sources

• Cardone REIT I, LLC, Form 1-K for FY2025, filed April 30, 2026, SEC CIK 1882616, audited by Kaufman, Rossin & Co., P.A.
• Pino v. Cardone Capital, LLC — class action notice and case site, Central District of California, case 2:20-cv-08499
• Pino v. Cardone Capital, LLC — Ninth Circuit opinion, June 10, 2025
• RealtyMogul Apartment Growth REIT, Form 1-U, share repurchase programme suspension
• Cardone Capital non-accredited fund page, $5,000 minimum

Internal links: Cardone Capital Review 2026 · Fundrise Flagship Fund Review · Arrived Homes Review · MogulREIT NAV Crash · Non-Traded REIT vs Publicly Traded REIT · Fundrise Alternatives

Last updated: August 11, 2026. All Cardone REIT I figures are transcribed directly from the audited Form 1-K filed with the SEC on April 30, 2026 and recomputed by us; the balance-sheet arithmetic is shown so you can check it. Litigation facts are taken from the court's certification order and the official class notice, and are allegations certified for trial rather than findings. Platform terms and yields change, so verify on the provider's own page before acting. This is analysis, not investment advice.

Related, and built the same way from the filings: DiversyFund in 2026, a flagship fund entering its winding-up period with under $88,000 of cash.