From January 10, 2025 through December 31, 2025, I ran a simple experiment: keep a small allocation to Fundrise as a way to add private real estate and private credit exposure alongside my public-market portfolio. The goal wasn’t to “beat the market” in a single calendar year, it was to begin to build something that could be a steadier, less headline-driven position over time.
My 2025 headline result with Fundrise
Over the measurement window, my Fundrise account produced a net return of +2.4%. I made my initial investment at the start of the year and had no withdrawals, and I treated this as a long-term allocation rather than something I’d trade around.
A +2.4% year isn’t going to generate fireworks, but that’s not what I’m looking for from this part of my portfolio. What mattered more to me was how the return was generated and what I learned about the mix of funds I picked.
Quarterly performance: consistent, but muted by year-end
Here’s how returns broke down across 2025:
- Q1: +0.7%
- Q2: +0.9%
- Q3: +0.5%
- Q4: +0.1%
The first three quarters were steady and incremental, then Q4 was basically flat. In my mind, that pattern is exactly the trade-off you should expect with private-market exposures: they often feel less reactive than public equities in the moment, but they can also deliver returns that are slower, smoother, and occasionally capped by the underlying portfolio’s pricing cadence and income generation.
Allocation choices: 80/20 ended up meaning “1 fund did the work”
My allocation was straightforward:
- 80% in the Flagship Real Estate Fund
- 20% in the Income Real Estate Fund
The results between those two were not close:
- Income Real Estate Fund: +7.7% in 2025
- Flagship Real Estate Fund: +1.1% in 2025
Even though the Income Real Estate Fund was only 20% of my allocation, it was the primary source of gains for the year. That’s an important point: in a blended portfolio, the “smaller” position can be doing most of the heavy lifting if the return dispersion is wide.
What that taught me
I went into 2025 thinking the Flagship fund would be the anchor and the Income fund would be a stabilizer. Instead, the year demonstrated that “income-oriented” exposure can be the return driver, especially in environments where income and credit-like structures carry more of the burden than pure property appreciation.
Reinvested Distributions
I received distributions during the year and reinvested them back into the positions.
- Distributions were approximately +1.1% of my contributions over the period, and they were reinvested.
This matters because reinvested distributions are what turn a “quiet” holding into something compounding. When you’re trying to build a position over multiple years, reinvestment is a feature, not a footnote.
The real reason I like Fundrise: psychological diversification
I’m happy with the Fundrise experience overall, but not because I expect it to produce some dramatic outperformance every year.
I like it because I don’t want my entire financial life tied to the daily mood swings of the stock market. Having a small slice of my portfolio exposed to private real estate and private credit dynamics helps me stay more disciplined elsewhere. It’s not that private assets are “risk-free”, they’re not. It’s that the risk behaves differently, and that diversification has value.
If the public market is noisy in a given month, it’s useful to have at least one allocation in the portfolio that isn’t screaming for attention every day.
What I’m doing differently in 2026
Based on what 2025 showed me, I made two decisions going forward:
- Starting January 2026, I increased my allocation to the Income Real Estate Fund.
The 2025 return spread (7.7% vs 1.1%) made it clear that the income-oriented allocation was more aligned with what I wanted from Fundrise steady progress, compounding, and less dependence on property price appreciation. - In February 2026, I bought Fundrise iPO shares.
Conceptually, this is me leaning into the broader Fundrise ecosystem, not just the funds, but also the platform’s long-term trajectory. I’m treating this as a long-term venture-equity investment, this will be illiquid for a very long time.
My hope is that my Fundrise account becomes a steady allocation I can build over time, one that brings diversified risk relative to my broader market holdings.
Closing thoughts on Fundrise in 2025
A +2.4% year won’t make anyone feel like a genius. But for what I want Fundrise to be—a small, steady, long-term diversifier—I’m satisfied with how 2025 played out.
The biggest lesson was simple: the mix matters more than the brand name. In my case, the Income Real Estate Fund was the driver of returns, and the Flagship fund was the stabilizer. Going into 2026, I’m adjusting my allocation accordingly and continuing to treat this as a long-duration holding meant to complement, not compete with, my public market portfolio.
Disclosure: This is a personal case study and not investment advice. Returns and fund performance can vary, and private investments involve liquidity and market risks.