CrowdStreet vs Willow Wealth 2026

Yes. Willow Wealth is the rebrand of Yieldstreet, effective October 22, 2025. The underlying corporate entities (Willow Wealth Markets LLC, the SEC-registered broker-dealer; Willow Asset Management LLC, the SEC-registered investment adviser) are the successor entities to the original Yieldstreet operating companies. The same management team, the same investor portfolio, and the same regulatory record carried over to the rebranded platform. The legacy Yieldstreet website now redirects to willowwealth.com. The October 2025 rebrand coincided with CNBC's three-part investigative series on investor losses and was accompanied by the removal of approximately a decade of historical performance data from the public website. Existing positions held with Yieldstreet are now administered under the Willow Wealth name with no change to underlying investor rights or obligations.

As of May 2026, CrowdStreet has no direct commercial real estate deals listed on the platform. Following the 2023 Nightingale-related events and marketplace suspension, CrowdStreet pivoted to distributing four institutional fund products: Churchill PCAP (private credit), StepStone CRDEX (private markets), SPRIM (private real estate income), and SPRING (private real assets). Whether CrowdStreet may relaunch direct CRE listings is not publicly stated. The 216-deal realized track record from the historical marketplace remains publicly accessible — this is a meaningful difference from Willow Wealth's October 2025 removal of historical performance data. For investors evaluating either platform today, the direct-access product that built each platform's brand is not currently available on either.

Both involve significant investor losses from underwriting and gatekeeping failures, but the scale and platform response differ materially. The Nightingale event at CrowdStreet involved approximately $77.5M raised from approximately 1,279 investors across three SPVs that cleared CrowdStreet's diligence review; the DOJ indicted Nightingale's principal for wire fraud in October 2023 alleging investor funds were diverted. CrowdStreet was the marketplace intermediary, not the investment manager. Civil litigation is ongoing. Willow Wealth's marine finance losses involved $89M lost across multiple marine finance offerings sponsored by the Lakhani family; a British High Court ruled in October 2020 that the Lakhanis committed fraud — Yieldstreet/Willow Wealth was the defrauded party. The SEC fined Yieldstreet $1.9M in September 2023 not for the fraud itself but for failure to disclose known collateral risks to investors. The structural similarity is that both platforms experienced gatekeeping failures on deals they had marketed; the structural difference is the magnitude of total documented losses ($77.5M Nightingale vs $208M CNBC-documented across Willow Wealth) and the platform response (CrowdStreet maintained brand and disclosure; Willow Wealth rebranded and removed historical data).

CrowdStreet, by a meaningful margin as of May 2026. CrowdStreet's 216-deal realized track record document remains publicly accessible — disclosing 11.2% aggregate IRR, 3.1% mean IRR, 16.3% median IRR, 24 total losses (11.2% loss rate), 49 negative-IRR deals (22.7%), category-level performance (Hospitality: -62.7% mean across 16 deals; Industrial: +26.4% mean), and vintage-year trajectory (2018: +31.6% mean / 2024: -29.9% mean). The track record excludes the Nightingale SPVs as 'non-standard exits' — a disclosed methodology choice that should be evaluated critically. Willow Wealth removed approximately a decade of historical performance data from the public website during the October 2025 rebrand, including a chart that previously showed -2% annualized real estate returns 2015-2025. The 9.4-9.8% IRR the platform marketed historically applied only to matured investments and explicitly excluded the $926.8M Short Term Notes program (~16,000 investors). For investors comparing the platforms on disclosure quality, CrowdStreet's preserved track record is materially more verifiable than Willow Wealth's removed data.

Neither platform is currently offering its original retail-accessible direct-investment product. CrowdStreet's current product is institutional fund distribution (Churchill, StepStone, SPRIM, SPRING) — accredited investors only, with fund minimums not prominently disclosed. Evaluate these on the underlying fund managers' merits, not on CrowdStreet's historical marketplace track record. Willow Wealth is undergoing a major platform transition — flagship Alternative Income Fund agreed to be sold to Mount Logan Capital SOFIX in March 2026 (pending shareholder vote), historical performance data removed, and new product launches (Willow 360 managed portfolios, August 2025; institutional fund partnerships, December 2025) are unproven under the rebranded entity. For new investment capital, retail investors seeking private markets exposure should evaluate platforms with preserved historical disclosure and clean regulatory records — Fundrise for retail-accessible real estate, EquityMultiple or RealtyMogul for accredited CRE access, or other platforms in the AltStreet platform reviews directory.

AltStreet's primary-source EDGAR analysis confirms that Yieldstreet/Willow Wealth raised approximately $926.8M from approximately 16,000 retail investors via three Short Term Notes vehicles (ALTNOTES I: $759.6M from 12,503 investors at $0 minimum; ALTNOTES II: $167.2M from 3,483 investors at $5K minimum; ST NOTES LLC: $179.6M from 1,867 investors). This represents 59% of all EDGAR-verified capital raised by the platform. Per platform footnote disclosure, the Short Term Notes program was explicitly excluded from the 9.4-9.8% net realized IRR that the platform used as its primary marketing claim. The Notes funded the platform's deal pipeline before deals became available to direct investors — so Short Term Note investors were exposed to the same underlying deal risks as direct investors but appeared in neither the IRR calculation nor the default disclosure. ALTNOTES I grew from 6,406 investors in May 2021 to 12,503 in May 2022 — nearly doubling investor count during the period when the underlying deals were generating the losses CNBC later documented. This is original AltStreet primary-source research not previously documented at this scale.

Different in character, but both contain documented adverse events. CrowdStreet operates two SEC-registered entities (CrowdStreet Capital LLC FINRA-registered broker-dealer; CrowdStreet Advisors LLC SEC-registered investment adviser); the Nightingale event led to ongoing civil litigation by investors against CrowdStreet — CrowdStreet has not publicly quantified its legal exposure. No SEC enforcement action against CrowdStreet has been publicly disclosed as of May 2026. Willow Wealth (formerly Yieldstreet) operates two SEC-registered entities (Willow Wealth Markets LLC broker-dealer; Willow Asset Management LLC investment adviser); the regulatory and legal record includes: a $1.9M SEC enforcement settlement in September 2023 for failure to disclose marine finance collateral risks (settled without admitting wrongdoing); a $9M federal class action settlement in 2025; a 2020 FBI and SEC investigation into the marine finance offerings (per WSJ/Bloomberg Law reporting; no criminal charges were filed); and the British High Court ruling on the Lakhani marine fraud in October 2020. The volume of adverse regulatory and legal events at Willow Wealth is materially higher than at CrowdStreet.

In March 2026, Willow Wealth announced an agreement to sell the flagship Alternative Income Fund ($100M+ in assets, launched March 2020) to Mount Logan Capital's SOFIX fund. The transfer is subject to shareholder approval through a proxy vote. The Alternative Income Fund was the platform's primary retail-accessible vehicle (available to non-accredited investors at $10,000 minimum, with quarterly repurchase offers gated at 5-20% of NAV). For existing investors, the transition introduces uncertainty: Mount Logan Capital's investment mandate, fee structure, redemption policies, and workout priorities for distressed positions may differ from the original fund's terms. The fund holds 50+ private market investments that will be inherited by SOFIX. Existing investors should carefully review the proxy materials for tax implications, redemption right changes, and what happens if shareholders vote against the transfer. This is unrelated to CrowdStreet — CrowdStreet's institutional fund distribution products (Churchill, StepStone, SPRIM, SPRING) are not affected by the Mount Logan transaction.

Different answers for each. CrowdStreet has always required accredited investor status — historical marketplace at $25,000 minimum, current institutional fund distribution at undisclosed minimums but accredited-only by structure. There is no non-accredited access path on CrowdStreet. Willow Wealth historically offered limited non-accredited access through the Alternative Income Fund ($10,000 minimum) — this was an unusual feature in the retail alternatives category. The fund is being sold to Mount Logan Capital SOFIX pending shareholder vote, and the future of non-accredited access on the Willow Wealth platform is not publicly stated. Most other Yieldstreet/Willow Wealth products were 506(c) accredited-only. For non-accredited retail investors evaluating private markets exposure, neither platform offers a current, clean retail access path — Fundrise (40 Act funds, $1K minimum, non-accredited eligible) is the standard reference point for retail-accessible private real estate.