Do you have any examples of this? My understanding is that they're all privately held, so I guess you'd have to be in it for a 10 or 20 year horizon to be worthwhile without any kind of secondary market?
Not sure why someone with a legitimate business plan with reasonable proforma's would be looking for "crowd funding". There also likely to be regulatory issues with respect to such as accredited investor status.
https://fundrise.com/reits/builder https://www.realtymogul.com/mogulreit Holding period is ~3-5 years. They are structured as reits so no need to be accredited to invest.
I think that's the real rub. From one of those sites "These are longterm investments. Each eREITTM plans to look for opportunities to provide liquidity to its investors after approximately five years. While we expect to seek a liquidity transaction in this time frame, there can be no assurance that a suitable transaction will be available or that market conditions for a transaction will be favorable during that time frame." Sounds to me like as long as they make a half-ass effort to sell the REIT they're covered, and you potentially could be stuck with the thing forever. They do self-liquidate to some extent, but we're probably talking 20+ years and you've essentially lost your principle.