Here’s our picks for the best alternative investment platforms to jump-start your journey. There are alternatives to each platform, but we’ll tell you why we chose it over the others in its field.
AcreTrader – Best For Farmland
AcreTrader is one of the few platforms that provides fractional investment opportunities for farmland. The platform has a range of offerings including timberland, domestic row and permanent crop deals, international farmland offerings, and more.
Unfortunately, like its competitors, AcreTrader does require investors to be accredited.
Since getting started in 2018, AcreTrader has been the most consistent source of investment opportunity in the space. Most investments on the platform are for row crops. However, they do occasionally have more unique opportunities such as timberland and land trusts.
They also are slowly building a track record of successful exits. Here’s an example from early June with a 16% actual IRR.
The company also owns the Acres tool, which has a range of very detailed data on farmland. This gives them the ability to easily analyze any land opportunity that may come their way.
Lastly, they offer the ability to invest directly, or through an IRA such as Alto.
FarmTogether is the main alternative. They have fractional investment opportunities as well as 1031 exchange, a farmland fund, and bespoke opportunities.
Their offerings tend to focus more on permanent crops, which also gives them a greater regional concentration in California. They also tend to have much lower deal flow than AcreTrader.
Arrived Homes – Best For Fractional Real Estate
Arrived is a juggernaut in the fractional investing space. Buoyed by more than $200M in funding and a considerate product launch strategy, Arrived has provided a steady flow of offerings since their founding in 2020.
The platform now has fractional investments into individual properties, a real estate investment fund, a private credit fund, and a few different products for accredited investors.
Arrived is simply the most consistent platform when it comes to fractionalized real estate. Despite huge changes in market conditions, they have adapted their offerings and continued to deliver investment opportunities. Some other competitors failed to navigate through these changes.
They maintain an accessible ~$100 minimum investment across funds, long term rental, and short-term rental offerings. Those offerings also cover a wide range of markets and risk levels, providing investors with lots of choice.
Additionally, Arrived makes an effort to keep investors informed. That includes updates on properties, attempting to estimate changes in share prices each quarter, and publishing detailed financial performance reports each quarter.
There’s a lot of companies in the space, so here’s just a couple:
Landa has a bunch of properties available for investment, though they are generally concentrated around Atlanta and a few other metro areas. The minimum investment varies based on property but can be as low as $5.
They also have multifamily investment offerings and a secondary market. These are both things Arrived lacks.
So why didn’t they make the top of our list?
A lot of it comes down to user experience. Their deal flow is much worse and comes with a more limited number of markets. Yield is very inconsistent and generally fairly poor.
The secondary market is not a reliable source of liquidity either. All shares of a property have to sell out before it’s listed for trading. Based on our experience, that can take years. Literally.
On top of that, the app and website have suffered from very bad performance issues over the years. We’ve also seen various accounting oddities. That included money disappearing, as well as the account balance going negative after withdrawing monthly distributions.
Lofty has the basics. It’s available to non-accredited investors, has a $50 minimum investment, a mix of property types, and a secondary market.
It’s also doing some unique things, which may be good or bad – depending on your perspective.
First, it’s the least passive investment platform out there. Each share is also a vote. Things like whether the property should be sold or which vendor to go with for repairs are all things that need a majority of votes to move forward. Investors can also make proposals as well.
It’s also more of a marketplace than other platforms. Not everything on the platform is a property that Lofty has acquired and fractionalized. You can even sell equity you have in your home through Lofty. That can make for some very interesting offerings, but it also means their quality will have greater variance.
And it’s all based on crypto. Shares are really tokens in a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). There’s wallets and USDC. You can still invest with a regular bank account, but you can’t avoid the cryptocurrency aspect of it entirely.
Lastly, we did also have accounting issues here too. We had some money disappear after canceling a secondary market order. It took a long time, but it did get resolved. The company also provided a fair amount of account credit for the trouble.
Fundrise – Best For Multiple Assets
Fundrise is one of the oldest alternative investment platforms for retail investors. They were founded in 2012. Their product strategy has been refined into providing access to different funds starting from $10.
They now have offerings that span real estate, private credit, and venture capital. Venture capital is their newest asset class, but it’s no slouch. It’s raised more than $100M from 35K investors.
The Fundrise Innovation Fund is a disruptive approach to venture capital investing. It provides retail investors the ability to get exposure to top startups for as little as $10. The fund currently includes investments in companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Canva. This is also without the carried interest fee that is typical in the space.
Beyond their venture capital offerings, Fundrise also has funds focused on private credit and real estate. All of these are designed for low minimum investments and allow for a passive “set it and forget it” investing experience. The same type of experience many retail investors are used to from ETFs and apps like Wealthfront.
Overall, Fundrise provides an easy opportunity to invest in a variety of alternative asset classes all from the same place. They also offer periodic liquidity, while many other companies lack the same flexibility.
Not a lot of companies offer such a range of investments within the same platform.
Yieldstreet is a platform that offers a very large range of investment offerings, but only for accredited investors. Their investment minimums are also much larger, ranging from $10K-$25K for most opportunities. This platform is also less automatic. It really requires reviewing multiple deals manually to get the most out of it.
Rally – Best For Unique Collectibles
Rally was founded in 2016 and has since made a new for themselves with unique and interesting collectibles. They have offerings ranging from vintage cars to a triceratops skull to Mickey Mantle’s childhood home.
Their platform fractionalizes the collectibles with share prices as low as $5. That keeps the barrier to entry low. They also have a secondary market which allows investors to exit early or pick up additional shares.
Rally also allows shareholders to vote on when and how assets are sold. Sometimes they receive purchase offers. Other times shareholders can choose to bring an asset to auction.
This has resulted in multiple exits for investors. Some of which were very notable. An unopened copy of “Super Mario Bros.” from 1985 sold for a record $2M. They also set a record with a $29K sale of an unopened, first-generation iPod.
They also have a museum in New York City where you can go and see some of the assets available on the platform.
There are a lot of alternatives, especially if you want to focus on one specific category like trading cards. Here’s a couple:
Public introduced collectibles after their acquisition of Otis. They also have accessible share prices and a secondary market. However, they have very few offerings. They also lack the history of exits that Rally has.
Alt focuses on trading cards. It’s both a tool and a platform. You can vault, buy, and sell trading cards directly on Alt. You can also use it to track your portfolio or analyze price trends of individual cards.
SongVest – Best For Music Royalties
SongVest is one of a small number of investment platforms focused on music royalties. They offer SEC-qualified fractional investment opportunities, as well as “whole asset” auctions.
The company was co-launched by Sean Pearce and operated from 2008 to 2013. The initial focus of brokering royalty sales hit full stride with Pearce’s next company – Royalty Exchange. In 2020, Pearce returned to relaunch SongVest with a focus on bringing fractional investment opportunities to retail investors.
There aren’t a lot of options for SEC-qualified fractional investments in this space. Public has done one so far. Other companies have done crypto-based fractional offerings, but we prefer the structure and review of SEC qualification.
These fractional “SongShare” offerings provide a chance to get started with a low barrier of entry (as low as $20/share). This gives you the opportunity to explore the asset class, its returns, and your experience without too much at stake.
For those that want whole assets, SongVest provides that option as well. They broker the deal and you pay no fees as a buyer. Afterwards, you’ll have access to the royalty income directly – SongVest does not act as a middleman or take any fee on it.
We also like that the platform is not a completely open marketplace. The SongVest team will do some diligence before listing anything on the platform. That doesn’t mean all the opportunities are good investments. But it does seem to keep away things that are egregiously bad.
Lastly, as we’ve written about before, our experience with the platform has been very good so far.
In summary, SongVest tops our list for music royalties because it features multiple investment options that cover both big and small investors.
ANote Music also has a solid array of fractional offerings and a secondary market. There are a few catches though.
It’s a European-based company, so everything happens in Euros. There are also fees to fund your account. To receive royalties, you need to make sure your bank will even accept a deposit of Euros. There’s also no tax documents provided for you.
Royalty Exchange consistently has a lot of “whole asset” offerings available. There are some drawbacks here too.
The offerings typically require a high investment amount ($25K, $50K, and more). On top of that, they charge fees for buyers, unless they buy a very expensive subscription.
They also let anyone relist their assets onto the secondary market. That means there are also lots of assets listed for insane prices. Which makes things less beginner friendly.
Vinovest – Best For Wine & Whiskey
Vinovest was founded in 2019 to democratize access to wine investing. They’ve been quite successful at that. In 2023 they reached $100M in assets under management. Earlier this year they also became the largest wine and whiskey investing platform in the US, according to their CEO.
Vinovest offers a hands-on “trading” account where you can buy and sell individual bottles of wine. They also offer a “managed” account, which provides a passive and automated experience.
Recently they have also expanded to include whiskey investments as well.
There aren’t that many companies working on investments in this space. The main alternative, Vint, switched to being accredited-only. So, they’re the main player in the space for non-accredited investors.
The ability to invest completely passively with their managed accounts is a nice plus. Once you get into some of the higher account tiers (and sometimes even before that), you’ll also get notified about special/limited allocation offerings. You can choose to participate in those, which allows you to shape your managed portfolio a little bit.
Especially with their whiskey offering now available, there’s a lot of opportunities to build a diversified portfolio.
Vint is the main alternative to Vinovest. This accredited-only investment platform specializes in fund-style investments. These are usually focused on a particular theme and can span across both wine and whiskey. Investment minims start around $2500.
One plus side of Vint is that the fund-style offerings can provide an easier path to diversification. With a single investment, your funds could be spread across multiple different wines.
Best Alternative Investment Platforms – Summary
Finding the best alternative investment platforms is a bit more challenging than it used to be. On one hand the number of platforms has grown. On the other hand, we’re also starting to see consolidation. A number of platforms have shut down or been acquired.
We believe the best alternative investment platforms should provide high-quality opportunities and be as accessible as possible. With the exception of farmland, every other platform on this list is open to non-accredited investors and has low minimum investment thresholds.
Finding the right platform for you should begin with determining which asset classes you’re interested in. After that, we’d recommend you take a look at our choices above or explore our more expansive list of alternative investment platforms to look for more.