Ark7 Review: Is It Still Worth It In 2025? (Honest Review)

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Not sure if Ark7 is the right real estate investment platform for you? You’ve come to the right place.

I watched hours of videos reviewing and ranking different fractional real estate investment platforms, read through 10+ review articles/pages, and scrolled through countless forum discussions and comment sections where passive real estate investors argued about Ark7.

This post aggregates everything I found.

That being said, I recommend you stick to the end to understand what the biggest limitation of the platform really is.

Ready? Let’s dive right in:

How Does Ark7 Work

Ark7 is a real estate investment platform that allows you to buy real estate as easily as buying stocks.

It works in 4 steps:

1. Ark7 identifies and buys rental homes across the U.S. with good rental income potential.
2. Each property is divided into shares (often $20-$100 per share, depending on the property). When you buy shares, you legally own a small percentage of that property. More specifically, you own a piece of the LLC that owns the property (each property has its own LLC, created just for the purpose of owning that property).
3. Ark7 collects rent from tenants, deducts expenses and management fees, and distributes rental income every month to you and other shareholders.
4. As long as you hold the shares, you receive passive rental income every month. You will also benefit from the appreciation in value of the property once you sell your shares (ideally years down the line).

Think of it as buying a tiny piece of a rental house that pays you monthly rent, without doing any of the work of being a landlord.

No more high capital requirements and endless paperwork. With platforms like Ark7, real estate is no longer only available to wealthy people looking to grow their wealth further.

Now keep in mind this is different from crowdfunding where you pool money together with other investors into a fund, but you don’t directly own the property yourself. With Ark7 you DO own it.

It’s such a game changer that Nasdaq recently put out an article on how Ark7 allows you to own a rental home for as little as $20.

Ark7 Pros and Cons

Here are the advantages of Ark7:

• Low minimum investment: The low barrier to entry makes it easy test the platform with small amounts before committing more. It allows you access to investments you wouldn’t be able to afford on your own.
• You can pick and choose which properties to own: With Ark7, you choose deal by deal in which individual properties to invest. This is more transparent than crowdfunding where you depend on the decisions of the overall fund.
• Skin in the game: Ark7 typically owns 1% to 20% of shares in properties it lists. They have skin in the game alongside you as an investor, which is a good thing. The platform is SEC-qualified, ensuring its reliability.
• Sell your shares when needed: Unlike many real estate investments where you are stuck for 5 years or more, with Ark7 you can buy and sell shares on their secondary market. It works just like a stock exchange, meaning buyers set a bid price and sellers set the ask. When the two overlap, the transaction happens. There is a minimum holding period of 1 year though.
• Professional due diligence done for you: You don’t have to spend months looking for the right property. Ark7 does the heavy research for you, choosing properties based on location, returns, condition, private deals, the community, the market in that area, the population growth, and many more factors all culminating in an onsite visit. Thousands of properties nationwide go through the Ark7 team but only a select few are made available to the public.
• Can invest through an IRA: You can transfer from your existing IRA or from your bank account, and get all the tax benefits. There is no fee to open your IRA but individual retirement accounts are legally required to have a custodian, which charges a fee per property invested.

Here are the disadvantages:

• Small track record: Ark7 was founded in 2018, so their experience is limited compared to other fractional real estate platforms.
• Limited liquidity: You can’t instantly cash out like a stock, as the secondary market trades depend on demand which may be illiquid. To sell your shares quicker you’ll likely have to set a lower ask. But this is only a problem if you’re not investing for the long-term (see #Who Is Ark7 Not For).
• Limited decision making: Once you invest in a property, you have no say in decisions such as renovations, improvements, rent increases, or overall management of the property. Still, you only invest in individual properties that you want (unlike crowdfunding) and you have access to the entire investment thesis before you make your decision, explaining why they invested in the property (whether it’s location, an exclusive deal, or the market for example) as well as their plans for the future.
• No access to commercial properties: Commercial real estate is property for business, like offices and retail. Platforms that offer this are generally limited to accredited investors. Ark7 only offers residential real estate such as houses and apartments. Both have pros and cons, including higher potential profit and risk, larger initial investments, and long-term leases in commercial real estate versus lower entry costs, higher tenant turnover, and active management in residential real estate.

Who Is Ark7 For

Legally, Ark7 is open to all U.S. citizens or residents over the age of 18.

But it is more appropriate if:

• You are a small investor with some money in index funds for example, and want to diversify from the stock market so that your portfolio is protected from recessions and inflation.
• You want passive rental income and to benefit from the boom in the housing market without all the work and cost of becoming a landlord.
• You tried investing in real estate but found it difficult to deals that were worth it. With Ark7 you benefit from the experience of professionals sourcing private deals you wouldn’t be able to source on your own, thanks to decades of experience in real estate investing.

As of March 2025, Ark7 has +220,000 active investors and manages over $21 million worth of properties in 10 markets.

In the past 3 years, they distributed over $3 million in cash dividends. They pay you these dividends every month, and have never missed a day.

September 2025 was the 65th distribution month, with a 4.14% annualized dividend return rate. Add to that the property appreciation and you’re likely looking at 10-15% yearly returns.

Who Is Ark7 Not For

If you’re a short-term investor used to day trading stocks, Ark7 is not for you. Most of the bad reviews online are people complaining they can only sell their investment after a year and their shares’ value is lower.

Ark7 makes it clear there is a minimum holding period of one year on all investments.

Real estate is a long-term game. Even if the platform allows you to withdraw the money after a year, that is NOT the goal. Ideally, you should only invest money if you’re ready to leave it invested for years or even decades.

Also, if you’re an accredited investor ($200,000 individual income, $300,000 joint income, or $1 million net worth) you may have access to better platforms offering bigger better more exclusive and diversified projects, for example EquityMultiple that focuses on private-market commercial real estate. Ark7 is more for beginner investors.

Still, there are some investments in Ark7 that are for accredited investors only and worth checking out.

Ark7 Alternatives: Comparison Table

Let’s see how Ark7 compares against similar fractional real estate platforms:

	Ark7	Arrived	Fundrise
Investment focus	Individual single-family and multi-family rental properties	Single-family homes, vacation rentals, plus a Single-Family Residential Fund and a Private Credit Fund	Diversified portfolios via proprietary eREITs and eFunds covering residential and commercial properties
Platform members	220,000+	871,000+	385,000+
Track record	~4-5% dividends from rental income (not including property appreciation) across $21M+ in property value funded ($3M cash distributions paid)	3-5% income on single-family properties (not including appreciation) and 8.1% on the Private Credit Fund, resulting in $18M+ in interest and dividends paid on $320M total invested1	4.3% annualized return on Flagship Fund, 222 active projects (233 completed) totalling $7B+ portfolio value, and $361M+ dividends paid to investors2
Minimum investment	$20	$100	$10 for a brokerage account, $1,000 for IRAs
Investor requirements	Open to all, including non-accredited investors	Open to all, including non-accredited investors	Open to all, including non-accredited investors
Fees	3% sourcing fee + 8-15% property management fee charged on rental income, not assets	3.5-5% sourcing fee + 0.15% yearly asset management fee on total assets invested + 8% property management fee on long-term rentals (15-25% for vacation rentals) charged on rental income	Annual 0.15% advisory fee + 0.85-1.85% management fee charged on total assets, not income
Liquidity	Minimum holding period of 1 year	Minimum holding period of 5-7 years on individual properties, 6 months for funds	Quarterly redemptions (although with restrictions and penalties if shares are held less than 5 years)

Joining any of these platforms is free. There are no fees for joining. You only pay (indirectly, as it is deducted from your returns) when you invest in a deal.

Fundrise is by far the biggest out of the three in terms of assets. But they focus on real estate investment trusts (REITs), which are volatile and closely related with the stock market. If your goal is to diversify your portfolio so you’re more protected in a recession, REITs will not help. They also don’t counteract inflation and offer zero tax benefits.

Arrived has the most members in its platform, despite the higher fees (up to 25% of rental income) and long minimum holding period (5 years).

Ark7 is by far the smallest out of the three but their fees are not that small. They are more straightforward in their offerings: direct access to individual rental properties (no funds, no REITs, no crowdfunding, at least for now). And a simple fee structure along with a lower minimum holding period.

Now, for all three platforms you must pay attention to how they charge you fees, more specifically if it’s on the assets or the income.

For example let’s say you have a property bought for $300,000 with $2,000 rental income. A 0.85% fee charged on the $300,000 worth of assets is $2,550 in fees, meanwhile 10% charged on the rental income is $200/month ($2,400/year). So they are similar amounts even though 0.85% seems like a lot less than 10%, right?

With that in mind and if Ark7 is still your preferred option, here’s how you can sign up:

How to Sign Up for Ark7

Getting started with Ark7 is easy.

After you check if you qualify for the $50 bonus credit to invest, all you have to do is create a free account. It’s free and takes just a few minutes.

You’ll immediately have access to the entire marketplace of properties.

Is Ark7 Worth It: The Verdict

If you’re looking for a short-term investment in real estate, Ark7 is not for you.

Real estate is a long-term investment, so you should only invest money you don’t need for a few years.

But if you want to complement your existing stock portfolio with real estate so you’re better protected against inflation and recessions, then Ark7 is for you.

It’s a smart way to build your passive income because you’ll benefit from the experience and connections of professionals, sourcing private deals at conditions you’re unlikely to get on your own.

The offerings you’ll see on their platform are a select few that made it through multiple layers of due diligence before becoming available to the public, so you’re getting high-quality opportunities.

Still, you have full control over what properties you choose to invest in, and once you do? The day-to-day management of the property is done for you, by professionals.

Of course, for all this you pay fees. And those fees are NOT cheap but they are also not more expensive than other fractional real estate platforms either.

So if that sounds like a good deal, don’t forget to check if you qualify to earn an extra $50 Ark7 bonus credits on your first investment.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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Footnotes

1. https://help.arrived.com/en/articles/4953922-what-returns-can-i-expect-from-arrived-investments ↩︎
2. http://fundrise.com/real-estate-strategies ↩︎