1031 Crowdfunding Review and Complaints (2026): $156.6M Sold of $468.7M Sought, and the 9% Sales Commission Their Own Filings Disclose

The one-sentence version

1031 Crowdfunding is a legitimate, long-running DST marketplace for wealthy 1031 exchangers, and the two things a prospective investor most needs to know are that the headline "$2.8 billion" does not describe the offerings it sponsors, and that the word "crowdfunding" in its name does not describe who is allowed to invest.

First: this is not crowdfunding

We are starting here because it is the single most common misunderstanding, and the search volume tells us people arrive expecting something else.

Real estate crowdfunding, as most people use the phrase and as platforms like Fundrise, Groundfloor and Arrived operate it, means Regulation A+ offerings open to non-accredited investors at low minimums with mandatory public reporting. You can invest $10, and the issuer must file audited annual reports the public can read.

1031 Crowdfunding operates under Regulation D. Every one of the 17 offering entities we examined files Form D, not Form 1-A. That has three consequences that matter more than any fee schedule:

1. You must be accredited. Net worth above $1 million excluding your primary residence, or income above $200,000 individually or $300,000 jointly for the last two years. The firm's own materials say the securities are "intended for accredited investors only."
2. The minimum is $25,000, not $10. And for an actual 1031 exchange, the practical minimum is whatever your relinquished property's proceeds were — typically far more.
3. There are no audited public financial reports. Reg D issuers file a Form D notice and nothing else. Whatever you learn about performance comes from the sponsor, in a private placement memorandum, under a confidentiality expectation. Nothing is checkable on EDGAR the way a Fundrise or Groundfloor number is.

None of that is a criticism of the firm — it is how virtually the entire DST industry works, and DSTs exist to solve a specific tax problem that Reg A+ products cannot solve. But if you found this page by searching "crowdfunding," the product is not what you were looking for — our minimum investment table shows what is actually available at $10 to $500, and the best platforms for non-accredited investors covers who can take your money at all.

The $2.8 billion and the $151 million

The firm's marketplace page advertises "$2.8B In Total Equity Raised", "$8.1B In Combined Real Estate Transactions" and "2,800+ 1031 Exchange Transactions Completed."

We pulled every Form D filed by the entities EDGAR's full-text index associates with "1031 Crowdfunding" — 16 offerings spanning 2018 to 2026 — and read the totalOfferingAmount, totalAmountSold and totalNumberAlreadyInvested fields from each filing's primary XML document.

$151.6 million, not $2.8 billion. The advertised figure is roughly 18.5 times the total these filings report.

Now the part that a fair review has to say, because it is almost certainly the explanation: those two numbers are not measuring the same thing.

1031 Crowdfunding is a marketplace. It lists DSTs sponsored by third parties alongside its own, and it acts as a broker for exchangers into other sponsors' deals. Equity raised through the platform into other people's offerings would not appear in the Form Ds of entities named "1031CF." The firm also describes its founding team as bringing "125 years of combined experience," so a career-spanning total is plausible too.

So we are not calling the $2.8 billion false. We are saying it is unverifiable from public filings, and it does not describe the offerings the firm itself sponsors. The $151.6 million does. If you are being sold a 1031CF Portfolio DST or a Bridge Fund, the second number is the relevant track record, and it is the one you can check yourself in ten minutes.

The fill rates are the real finding

Look down the "% filled" column. This is the part we have not seen written anywhere.

Six of seventeen offerings are under 10% filled. Between them they sought $170,650,000 and raised $3,112,309 — under two cents on the dollar.

Some of that is easily explained and should be discounted:

• 1031CF Real Estate Private Credit Fund filed its Form D in April 2026, four months before we looked. A brand-new offering at $0 is a starting line, not a failure.
• Senior Housing DST 11 at 44% filed its most recent amendment on August 4, 2026. It is actively raising — and the sponsor has since launched Senior Housing DST 12 (first Form D September 8, 2026), which took in $5,000,000 from two investors in its first week.
• Form D amendments are filed annually or on material change, so a figure can lag reality. Every number here is as-last-reported, not as-of-today.

But some of it is not explainable that way:

• Birchview DST filed in September 2021 and its Form D still reports $0 sold from 0 investors on a $19.5 million offering. Five years.
• Aspen Valley DST reports $479,696 from a single investor against a $14 million offering.
• 1031CF Bridge Fund II reports $672,524 from 5 investors against $25 million — while Bridge Fund I raised $12.6 million from 62 and Bridge Fund III raised $35.4 million from 156. The middle fund is the outlier, sitting between two that worked.
• 1031CF Portfolio 3 DST reports $1,089,962 from 4 investors against $37.15 million, while Portfolio 4 raised $26.5 million from 71.

Why this matters to an investor and not just to an analyst: a DST that does not fill has a smaller equity base carrying the same property, the same debt and the same fixed offering costs. Under-raised deals are where concentration, cost-per-dollar and sponsor-support risk live. A sponsor's average outcome is far less informative than the spread between its best and worst deals — and here the spread runs from 97.6% to 0%.

Who actually invests here

$156,621,349 across 575 investors is an average of $272,385 per investor.

That single number tells you what this platform is. It is not a retail app. It is a distribution channel for people who have just sold appreciated real estate and are facing a capital gains bill, who have 45 days to identify a replacement property and 180 days to close, and who would rather buy a fractional interest in an institutional asset than find and manage another building.

That profile is covered in our guide for accredited investors, and the tax mechanics are in the 1031 exchange guide. For that person, a DST is a genuinely good instrument, and the deadline pressure is real. It is also exactly the pressure that makes DST buyers the least price-sensitive investors in real estate, which is why the fee loads in this category are what they are.

The fee question, answered from their own filings (updated September 22, 2026)

This section used to say we could not give you a number. That was wrong, and the correction is the most useful thing on this page. The number is in Item 15 of every Form D — "Sales Commissions" — a box the SEC requires the issuer to fill in, and one nobody reads because the interesting fields are assumed to be the offering amounts. Across the seventeen offerings it totals $31,548,750.

Read per offering, it is not a range. It is a policy:

Read the top of that table and the bottom of it together, because that is the finding. The vehicles sold to 1031 exchangers — the DSTs, the product the firm is named for — carry 9.0% or 10.0% in disclosed sales commissions. The vehicles the firm sold to its own direct investors, the first two Bridge Funds, carried 1.0% and 0.5%. Same sponsor, same website, an eighteen-fold difference in load, and the difference is the distribution channel: a DST sold through a broker-dealer network pays that network, and the money comes out of the offering before a dollar of it buys a building.

What happened to Bridge Fund III makes the point better than any argument could. The first Bridge Fund disclosed $250,000 of commissions on $25 million (1.0%). The second disclosed $125,000 on $25 million (0.5%). The third, still open, discloses $4,000,000 on $50 million — 8.0%. The product line did not change. The way it is sold did.

Three honest caveats, because this is a number with edges:

1. Item 15 is what the issuer expects to pay on the whole offering, not what has been paid. The figures are round — exactly 9.0%, exactly 10.0%, exactly 8.0% — which is what an estimate on the full offering looks like, not a running total. On an offering that never fills, the dollars actually paid are lower; the rate a buyer pays does not change.
2. Sales commissions are not the whole load. A DST also carries organization and offering costs, acquisition fees and ongoing asset management fees, none of which appear in Form D. So 9.0% is a floor on the upfront drag, not the total. Our 1031 exchange guide puts the all-in industry upfront figure higher, and how platform fees really compare puts DST loads next to everything else.
3. 9% is not an accusation; it is the going rate for commissioned DST distribution. The finding is not that 1031 Crowdfunding is unusual. It is that the number is verifiable, it is theirs, and nothing on their site says it.

What to do with it. Ask for the PPM, turn to the "Estimated Use of Proceeds" table, and check that the percentage reaching the property is consistent with a 9% commission plus the other loads. If the PPM shows materially less drag than the Form D implies, ask which document is wrong — and get the answer in writing. That table exists in every DST offering and it is the single most important page in the document.

What changed recently

Three developments in the filings are worth noting because they show the firm broadening away from pure 1031 DSTs:

0. Senior Housing DST 12 filed its first Form D on September 8, 2026 — after the first version of this review was published. It seeks $22,200,000, reports $5,000,000 already sold to just 2 investors (first sale September 2, 2026), a $25,000 stated minimum and $1,554,000 of sales commissions (7.0%). Two investors for five million dollars is an average of $2.5 million each; whatever the word "crowdfunding" is doing in the firm's name, it is not describing this. The filing also gives the issuer address as Southlake, Texas, not the Irvine, California address on every earlier filing in the group — worth watching, not yet worth concluding anything from.

1. Covenant Senior Housing REIT, Inc. became Covenant Housing REIT, Inc. between its January 2025 and January 2026 Form D amendments — dropping "Senior" from the name, which reads as a widening of mandate. It is also the only vehicle in the group with a $5,000 minimum rather than $25,000, and the only one plausibly aimed beyond the exchange market. It has raised $870,127 from 31 investors against a $25 million target.

2. 1031CF Real Estate Private Credit Fund, LLC filed its first Form D in April 2026 with a $50 million target — a move into lending, a different business from tax-deferred property exchange.

If tax deferral through a retirement account is the actual goal rather than a property exchange, our real estate crowdfunding IRA guide compares that route, and how platform fees really compare puts DST loads next to everything else. Both new vehicles are recent enough that judging them would be premature. We are flagging them so the next reader knows where to look.

Who this is for

It fits an accredited investor mid-1031-exchange, with real proceeds to place and a clock running, who wants fractional institutional real estate without becoming a landlord again, and who will read the PPM's use-of-proceeds table before signing.

It does not fit anyone who found it searching for "crowdfunding," anyone below the accredited thresholds, anyone who might need the money back, or anyone who wants to verify a sponsor's performance from public filings before committing.

Verify this yourself in fifteen minutes

1. Go to EDGAR full-text search and search the exact phrase "1031 Crowdfunding". You will get the affiliated entity list.
2. Open any entity's most recent Form D and click the primary_doc.xml. Find totalOfferingAmount, totalAmountSold and totalNumberAlreadyInvested. Those three fields are the entire fill-rate story, and they are free.
3. Look up Capulent, LLC (CRD# 155155) on FINRA BrokerCheck for the broker-dealer's regulatory history, and the individual representative selling to you by name.
4. Ask for the private placement memorandum and read the "Estimated Use of Proceeds" table before anything else.
5. Ask directly: what does the $2.8 billion figure include, and how much of it was raised into offerings you sponsored? It is a fair question with a factual answer.

That sequence works on any Reg D sponsor. Most investors in this category skip all five steps because the exchange clock is running, which is precisely when they are least protected.

FAQ

Methodology

The entity list was built from SEC EDGAR full-text search for the exact phrase "1031 Crowdfunding" (form type D), first on August 20, 2026 and re-run on September 22, 2026, when it returned 31 document hits mapping to 18 CIKs. One of those CIKs is the parent, 1031 Crowdfunding, LLC, whose own 2014 Form D ($500,000 sought, $200,000 sold, 3 investors) is reported separately and excluded from the totals, leaving 17 offering entities. For each we retrieved the most recent Form D or D/A via EDGAR's structured submissions endpoint and parsed totalOfferingAmount, totalAmountSold, minimumInvestmentAccepted, totalNumberAlreadyInvested and the Item 15 salesCommissions dollar amount directly from each filing's primary_doc.xml. Totals, fill percentages, the $272,385 average and every commission percentage are our own arithmetic on those parsed values. What changed between the two reads: Senior Housing DST 12 appeared (September 8, 2026), adding $22,200,000 sought and $5,000,000 sold; and we read the salesCommissions field, which the first version of this review did not.

Three limitations are stated rather than glossed:

1. Form D data is as-last-reported, not as-of-today. Issuers amend annually or on material change, so an active offering may have raised more than its most recent filing shows. Senior Housing DST 11 (amended August 4, 2026) and 1031CF Bridge Fund III (May 11, 2026) are the two most likely to have moved.
2. The entity list captures offerings whose filings name "1031 Crowdfunding." Third-party DSTs distributed through the marketplace would not appear, which is the most likely explanation for the gap against the advertised $2.8 billion.
3. We could not verify the $2.8B, $8.1B or 2,800-transaction figures, and we make no claim that they are wrong — only that they are not derivable from public filings.

Marketing figures were read from 1031crowdfunding.com on the same date. Accredited-investor thresholds are the standard SEC definition. Capulent's CRD and SEC numbers are as stated in 1031 Crowdfunding's own platform disclosure and should be confirmed on FINRA BrokerCheck before you rely on them.

We have no affiliate relationship with 1031 Crowdfunding, hold no interest in any entity named here, and earn nothing whether you invest or not. Nothing here is investment advice or tax advice; 1031 exchanges have strict statutory deadlines and you should work with a qualified intermediary and your own tax adviser. If the firm disputes any figure above, we will publish the correction.

Last updated: August 20, 2026.