Connect Invest Review 2026: Notes II and III, Ignite Loans, Exits

The one-sentence version

Connect Invest pays a fixed 7.5% to 9% on notes that are a claim on a small Nevada company, which lends your money to borrowers found by an affiliate; the filings show growing balances, short maturities that depend on new money arriving, and a loan book that is performing in the main but not entirely.

Connect Invest is one of the platforms in our real estate notes guide, where we read 26 issuers' reports side by side, and one of the issuers in our Regulation A real estate census. This page is the single-platform read: what the two live issuers owe, when it falls due, and what your options are if you hold a note.

Which Connect Invest company holds your note

The website and app show one product. The SEC filings show separate companies, each with its own balance sheet. Noteholders of one have no claim on the assets of another.

Check your account statement or Note Purchase Agreement for the issuer name. The legal name matters more than the brand when something goes wrong. Connect Invest, LLC is the manager and sole member of each issuer.

Anyone can buy: the offering circulars sell under Tier 2 of Regulation A, so accredited investors have no limit and others are limited to 10% of the greater of annual income or net worth. Our page on qualified purchaser versus accredited investor explains the difference, which matters here because III's automatic rollover requires the holder to still be a qualified purchaser at the rollover date.

Connect Invest II: a ladder that is mostly 2027 and 2028

Connect Invest II has moved from six-month paper toward two-year paper. At June 30, 2026 its notes were $9,267,401 of 12-month notes at 8.0% and $28,368,952 of 24-month notes at 9.0%, so 75.4% of the balance (our arithmetic) is the 9% two-year note.

The company's stated plan is to “fund Note maturities from repayments of real estate loans, the sale of new Notes and reinvestment by existing Note holders”. In the first half of 2026 it received $16,607,260 from selling notes and paid $10,010,997 to redeem them, which is 31.8% of the notes outstanding on December 31, 2025 (our arithmetic). The same period in 2025 had $17,404,352 of sales and $6,971,429 of redemptions. The model works while sales stay ahead of redemptions; the 1-SA does not say how much of the $10.0 million was reinvested by the same holders.

The balance sheet is thin but not underwater by much: assets were $37,437,964 against liabilities of $37,872,882, a member's deficit of $(434,918), so assets covered 98.9% of liabilities (our arithmetic). The deficit narrowed from $(853,934) at December 31, 2025 for three reasons visible in the 1-SA: net income of $234,838, a prior period adjustment of $310,188, and distributions to the member of $126,010. The filing describes the adjustment only as relating to note payables and an amount due to Connect Invest, LLC.

The loans behind II

Read two things into this. The default balance fell by about a million dollars in six months while the book grew by 22%, which is the direction a holder wants. But the filing also records that $1,577,389 of loans, or roughly one dollar in twenty-four, were in default at the date notes were being sold at 8% and 9%, and that the allowance is smaller than the defaulted principal. The allowance covers expected losses on the whole book, not just these loans, so we do not read the shortfall as a loss; we read it as the number to watch in the next report.

The sponsor's own record is in the 1-K: over the five years to December 31, 2025, Ignite's “default rate on Ignite’s real estate loans” was “approximately $77 million, or 5.95%, with an aggregate loss of principal of $3,852,709 or 0.30%”. That is the originator describing itself. It also means that about one dollar in seventeen of what Ignite lent defaulted at some point, and that the loss of principal was a small fraction of that, on Ignite's figures.

Connect Invest III: six-month notes against loans that mature on a different clock

III is the newer and smaller issuer. It was organized in November 2024, began issuing notes in the second half of 2025 and, at June 30, 2026, had $15,159,077 of six-month notes: $5,672,571 at 7.50% and $9,486,506 at 7.75%. The Class A-2 note, which pays 7.75%, rolls over automatically for another six months unless the holder tells the company at least 10 days before maturity that they want their money back.

The point is mechanical, not alarming on its face: when the notes live six months and the loans live longer, repayments of loans cannot be the only source of cash. Between July 1 and September 23, 2026, III repaid $6.68 million of note principal while loan participations of about $1.84 million repaid between July 1 and September 11. The difference had to come from new note sales, rollovers or the manager's balances, which the filing does not break out. The company says the remaining notes “are expected to be repaid or rolled over from loan collections and new Note issuances”. In the first half of 2026 it sold $15,708,443 of notes and redeemed $8,723,337.

This is a business that depends on continuous sales, and the notice to Class A-2 holders is thin by design: the offering circular says the company “will not provide any additional information prior to any maturity date” beyond an electronic notice at least 30 days ahead pointing the holder to public filings. If you hold an A-2 note, the default action is that your money stays.

III's credit record is clean on paper: no loans in default, an allowance of $154,890 (1.02%), and net income of $114,545 for the half year after a net loss of $142,712 in 2025. It is also young, with 124 participations that are mostly under a year old, so the absence of defaults says little about how those loans will perform at maturity.

What the spread looks like, and who is paid out of it

Each issuer earns the difference between what borrowers pay and what noteholders are paid, and pays the manager a fee on the notes.

The fee is one-twelfth of 1% a month on notes outstanding, whatever the loans earn: $171,978 for II in the first half of 2026 and $66,236 for III. Ignite, the originator and servicer, is paid separately: the circular says borrowers pay it a servicing fee “initially equal to 0.50% of the original principal amount” of each loan, so it is not in the issuers' accounts. Ignite also has discretion that matters to a noteholder. It can modify or extend a defaulted loan, and, the circular says, “any such actions taken by Ignite in relation to any real estate loan will not require the approval of the holders of the related Notes”. The 1-K lists the issuer's general counsel as also serving as general counsel for Ignite.

None of that is unusual for a sponsor platform. It means the people who decide which loans the notes fund, how a late loan is handled and what the manager is paid are all on one side of a related-party line, and noteholders have no vote.

Secured or unsecured: what the website says and what the filings say

The company's home page, as archived by the Internet Archive and read on October 22, 2026, says “Each Note is backed by real estate, giving your portfolio real, tangible assets you can trust”, and, under a heading of first lien position, “Every Note holds first-lien security, placing your investment in a senior position for added protection”. It also shows 6, 12 and 24-month terms at 7.5%, 8% and 9% APY and describes a wallet with “instant access”.

The filings say something different. The Connect Invest II annual report states: “The Notes are unsecured, general recourse obligations of the Company.” The offering circular adds that the notes “are not secured by any collateral and are not guaranteed or insured by any governmental agency or instrumentality or any third party”, that “holders of the Notes will not have any recourse against the borrowers under the real estate loans or the collateral securing” them, that they are “prepayable by the Company at any time without penalty”, and that there is no limit on senior debt the company could add. Noteholders also agree they have “no right to make any attempt, directly or through any third party, to take any action to collect from the borrowers”.

Our reading: the first liens are real, but they belong to the issuer as lender. A noteholder owns a promise from the issuer to pay interest and return principal, funded by the loans. If the issuer cannot pay, the noteholder is a general creditor of the issuer, not a lienholder on the property. The financial statements use another phrase, “real estate secured loan payment dependent notes”, which is closer to the website's picture, and it appears in both the 1-SA and the 1-K; the offering circular's legal terms control, and they say unsecured. Whether this is a distinction the typical app user understands is a judgment we leave to you.

Getting out: redemption plan, maturity and rollover

Both circulars include a “Noteholder Redemption Plan”. These are the terms as filed (the II circular is dated September 12, 2025 and the III circular is the May 2025 amendment; the company may have changed them since by supplement, and the later reports do not repeat them):

• Liquidity monthly, one open request at a time, at least $1,000 per request, paid after a 15 business day wait.
• A fee equal to the greater of 0.5% of principal for each calendar quarter (or part) left to maturity, or $25 per note.
• An intended cap on redemptions of 2.0% of all notes outstanding per month and 5.0% per quarter.
• Requests above available funds are paid pro rata, “if at all”, and the company says it is “not obligated to redeem any Notes under the redemption plan” and may amend, suspend or terminate it “at any time without prior notice”.

What those terms cost, worked on a $10,000 note (our arithmetic):

The fee is the smaller number; the cap is the larger one. Applying the circular's intended limits to the June 30, 2026 balances gives about $752,727 a month and $1,881,818 a quarter at II, and about $303,182 a month and $757,954 a quarter at III (our arithmetic; the circulars say the company “intend[s]” these limits and can change them). If holders asked for more than that, each would receive a share. For comparison, II paid out $10,010,997 of redemptions in six months, but some of that will have been maturities, which are not subject to the plan.

Two practical consequences. A holder of a note maturing in 2028 who needs money in 2027 is in the early-redemption queue, not the maturity queue. And the site's promise of “instant access” describes the wallet where interest lands, not an ability to leave a note at will.

Things in the filings that do not line up

• When Ignite began. The 2025 annual report says Ignite “commenced operations in 1995”; the semiannual report says Ignite “commenced operations in March 2011”. Both call it a licensed mortgage broker. The two may describe different dates (the company versus a licence), but they appear in documents filed five months apart without explanation.
• A label that is a cash-flow figure. The annual report's discussion says the company has issued “$34,414,996” of notes outstanding at December 31, 2025. That is the proceeds of notes sold during 2025 in the cash-flow statement; the balance sheet shows $31,465,357 outstanding.
• Offering size. The III annual report's discussion refers to an offering of “$50 million”, while its business section and semiannual report say up to $75 million. Our Regulation A census shows the $50,000,000 of the original Form 1-A.
• Manager name. The annual report names Connect Invest Corp. as manager; the semiannual report says Connect Invest, LLC (previously Connect Invest Corporation) took over effective June 1, 2025.
• A regulator's order. On July 16, 2026, the Arkansas Securities Department entered a consent order with II and III “relating to the late filing of notices for their Regulation A Tier 2 offerings in that state”. The 1-SA gives no other details and no penalty.
• Auditor. The 2024 statements were audited by a Dallas firm and the 2025 statements by Assurance Dimensions, LLC. We make no inference; it is a change a reader would want to know about.

What we could not verify

• How much of each redemption was reinvested. The reports give cash sales and cash redemptions, not rollovers by the same holders.
• Current redemption-plan terms. We read the plan as it stood in the offering circulars; the later reports say nothing about changes.
• The unaudited statements. Both semiannual reports are unaudited and prepared “by management from the Company’s general ledger”.
• IIII. The fourth issuer has no financial statements on EDGAR yet.
• The home page's date. We read an Internet Archive copy of connectinvest.com because the live site refused our request; the wording matches what our real estate notes guide quoted on October 13, 2026.

What a Connect Invest reader can do with this

1. Identify your issuer and your maturity date. Log in, open each note and write down issuer name, rate, maturity and whether it is a Class A-2 note with automatic rollover.
2. If you hold a 2026 maturity, decide before the notice. For III's A-2 notes the default is rollover; the election to be repaid must reach the company at least 10 days before maturity. For II, the 2026 maturities total $6,889,415 and $1,784,308 had been repaid by September 23, 2026.
3. Size the position to the claim, not the collateral. A note is an unsecured claim on a thinly capitalized LLC. The company's own risk language says investors should be able to bear the loss of the entire purchase price. Our Compound Real Estate Bonds review and Groundfloor Notes review run the same checks on other issuers.
4. Spread across issuers, not just notes. Holding II and III notes does not diversify the sponsor: both rely on the same manager, the same originator and the same four states.
5. Read the next filings. The annual reports for 2026 are normally due by April 30, 2027. Watch four lines: loans in default, cash against the next twelve months of maturities, notes sold less notes redeemed, and the member's deficit.
6. If you want to leave early, submit a redemption request early, use the fee table above to price it, and keep your own copy of the request and date.

Pros and cons

FAQ

Verdict

Connect Invest is a documented, regularly reporting issuer whose figures reconcile to a rising balance of short notes and a loan book that is mostly current. What it is not is a secured investment in property. The numbers to hold in mind are the ones in the June 30, 2026 reports: $52.8 million of notes across II and III (our arithmetic), $22.0 million of them due by December 31, 2026, and $698,241 of combined cash. Whether the machine keeps running depends on new notes arriving each month, which is a fact about the platform's sales and not about the quality of any one loan.

Sources: Connect Invest II LLC (CIK 1831623) Form 1-SA for the six months ended June 30, 2026, accession 0001171520-26-000278; Form 1-K for 2025, accession 0001171520-26-000076; Form 1-A filed September 22, 2025, accession 0001171520-25-000299. Connect Invest III LLC (CIK 2051100) Form 1-SA for the six months ended June 30, 2026, accession 0001171520-26-000280; Form 1-K for 2025, accession 0001171520-26-000070; Form 1-A/A, accession 0001171520-25-000179. Connect Invest IIII, LLC (CIK 2139773) Forms 1-A, 1-A/A and qualification notice, June 2026. Company home page, Internet Archive copy read October 22, 2026. Arithmetic is ours and labelled. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.