Guide
How to invest in real estate with little money
The old answer to "how do I start investing in property?" was: save a 20% down payment, qualify for a mortgage, buy one house and hope it rents. That path needs tens of thousands of dollars before you own anything at all. Fractional ownership changes the unit of purchase — instead of buying a whole building, you buy shares of one. On Brickly a share costs $100, so the real minimum to start is $100.
How fractional ownership actually works
Take a $20M shopping center. Normally one buyer or one fund needs the full $20M. Instead, the property is divided into 200,000 shares at $100 each. Two thousand investors putting in an average of $10,000 own it together. The tenants keep paying rent to the property, and that rent — after property costs — is distributed to shareholders in exact proportion to the shares they hold. Owning 100 shares of 200,000 means you receive 0.05% of the income and hold 0.05% of the equity.
Sponsors don't always list the whole building either. A property might be offered at 50% or 30%, meaning only that slice of the equity is available to investors — which keeps the individual offerings small enough that a modest investment still buys a meaningful position.
What a small investment actually pays
Brickly offerings target annual yields of 8–12%. Applied to the income you'd receive, that looks like this. These are targets based on each property's underwriting, not guaranteed returns — rent can fall, tenants can leave, and property values move both ways.
| You invest | You own | Per year | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| $100 | 1 share | $8 – $12 | ~$0.67 – $1 |
| $1,000 | 10 shares | $80 – $120 | ~$7 – $10 |
| $10,000 | 100 shares | $800 – $1,200 | ~$67 – $100 |
| $50,000 | 500 shares | $4,000 – $6,000 | ~$333 – $500 |
Rent distributions are paid on the 1st of each month. A 0.5% fee applies to each buy and sell transaction.
The barriers a small budget usually hits — and what replaces them
You don't need a down payment
A traditional rental needs 20–25% down plus closing costs. On Brickly the unit of ownership is a $100 share, so your entry cost is whatever you choose to put in.
You don't need a mortgage
There's no loan application, no credit check and no personal debt attached to your position. You buy shares outright and own them until you sell them.
You don't manage anything
Tenants, leases, repairs and bookings are handled at the property level. Your job is deciding how many shares to hold.
You aren't stuck in one property
$1,000 can be spread across several offerings — a grocery-anchored center, an industrial building, a vacation rental — instead of concentrated in one door.
Starting with $100: step by step
- 1Join the waitlist and get access when new offerings open.
- 2Browse the listings. Each one shows the share price, the percentage of the property being offered, the target yield and the cap rate.
- 3Buy as many shares as you want, starting at one. A 0.5% transaction fee applies.
- 4Collect rent monthly, paid out on the 1st in exact proportion to the shares you hold.
- 5Sell shares back when you want your capital out, or hold for any gain if the property sells for more than it was listed at.
What to weigh before you start
Fractional shares are not a savings account. Income depends on tenants paying rent, and for vacation rentals it depends on nightly bookings, which are seasonal. Selling shares depends on the offering having liquidity, so treat this as money you can leave invested. The upside beyond rent is equity: if a property listed at $20M eventually sells for $25M, shareholders participate in that gain in the same proportion as their income.