Vowing to invest more in 2023? These apps make it easier for investors to enjoy the perks of real-estate investing without as much capital.

This Seattle real-estate investment company offers shares of rental homes with a very low barrier to entry.

A trend in the American housing market that's surfaced since the 2008 financial crisis is that corporations have taken to buying up single-family homes to rent them out. Arrived gives investors the ability to become a landlord — or, perhaps more accurately, a colandlord — without having to buy an entire house.

Arrived offers the ability to buy shares with as little as $100, according to the company's website. The average investment is closer to $2,300, Frazier told Insider in November.

Founded in 2019, Arrived sets itself apart from its co-ownership foes by working with the Securities and Exchange Commission to become qualified, meaning nonaccredited customers can invest in individual shares.

The company has over 200 homes set up in more than 17 cities all over the US, including Nashville, Tennessee; Denver; and Charlotte, North Carolina, but it has plans to expand to 40 cities over the next year, Frazier said.

According to Arrived's website, its investors have funded 203 properties with more than $75 million and it has raised $162 million in total as a company, according to Crunchbase.

Investors can invest as little as $100 into a property all the way up to the cost of 9.8% of the shares available that particular property. Returns vary depending on the property, but Frazier said it's structured to mimic returns of a more traditional real-estate investment. Investors receive their returns via quarterly dividends.

But getting into a fractional piece of a property on the platform may be difficult because homes are sold out.

"As soon as we got qualified, we pretty quickly sold out our initial homes," Frazier said. "They were selling out in less than 24 hours."

In September, Arrived ventured into the vacation rental market and now offers vacation rentals on its platform.

Founded last year in Salt Lake City, Ember gives buyers the ability to purchase a share of a vacation home and split time there with other shareholders. One-eighth of a share guarantees you 45 nights and one holiday weekend, while one-half of a share will grant you 180 nights.

Floor prices to buy a share of an available home start at $103,782 and go as high as $679,045, but the website also shows "potential buys." Homes in that category range from under $300,000 to over $1.3 million a share.

Ember is West Coast-focused, with vacation homes in Washington, Oregon, California, Utah, New Mexico, and Texas.

As of February, Ember operated 12 homes in 10 vacation destinations, from Palm Springs, California, to Galveston, Texas. Ember declined to disclose how many properties it had control over for this list.

Earlier this year, the company announced a $17.4 million Series A funding round led by the billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel.

Los Angeles-based Fintor's mission is to democratize access to real estate by providing buyers, particularly millennials and Gen Zers, with property-investment opportunities in up-and-coming American cities.

The app is the brainchild of Farshad Yousefi and Masoud Jalali, who wanted to confront the challenge of investing in real estate when saddled with other financial obligations, like student debt.

"Fintor can give the same return as the stock market, but at half the risk," Yousefi told TechCrunch in April 2021. "As two [Iranian] immigrants, we've seen how much this country has to offer and how real estate sits at the top of everything, yet is so inaccessible."

Investors in Fintor properties get a monthly dividend from properties, whose rents generally range from $1,500 to $3,000, and receive payouts through share-price appreciation and net proceeds when a property is sold.

The buy-in with Fintor can be small — as low as $5 — because the company splits homes into 10,000 shares or more. The idea is to allow users to invest across markets, some which may perform better than others, rather than forcing them to invest a large sum in a single asset (à la traditional real-estate investments).

The brand focuses on homes in places like Atlanta, Georgia; Charlotte and Greensboro, North Carolina; and Huntsville, Alabama, priced between $100,000 and $380,000. The company is projecting $400 million in revenue in the next five years, according to a pitch deck provided by the company.

Fractional lowers the financial threshold for real-estate investing by facilitating the purchase of investment properties throughout the country.

The minimum buy-in is $5,000.

The San Francisco company and Y Combinator alumni (Fractional was part of the startup accelerator's winter 2021 class) hope to open up real estate as an asset class to a broader swath of the public.

It raised $5.5 million for a total valuation of $30 million in November 2021, according to TechCrunch, wooing investors including Will Smith and Kevin Durant.

TechCrunch also reported that over 400 users had tried Fractional's beta version with investments spread across 95 properties. That number has since ballooned to 305 properties totaling over $48 million in assets managed by the brand.

Here's how it works: Users create investment-property proposals that are either private, allowing friends or family members to go in on a property, or public, allowing the broader Fractional customer base to buy in. Once proposals get enough investment from users, Fractional handles offering, purchasing, and closing on the home via an LLC. The platform empowers users to purchase properties of their own choosing, which means return on investment varies.

After closing, Fractional offers the service of finding tenants for the property through its property-management partners.

While Here is a relative newcomer to the world of fractional vacation ownership, it's been in development for years, according to the founder and CEO Corey Ashton Walters.

The Miami-based company that launched in February 2022 offers shares of vacation homes starting at $1 a share — with a minimum stake of 100 shares per home. The average investment is $584, according to the company.

Users can buy shares up to 19.9% of a property, which is held under an LLC, and generate passive income while Here handles responsibilities related to the upkeep of a vacation home.

The company has so far stuck to just a few locations — like Big Bear, California; Clearwater, Florida; and Gatlinburg, Tennessee — where smaller investors would have a hard time accessing properties on their own, according to Walters.

"The average person really struggles to get access to the top-performing properties in this asset class," Walters told Insider. "Here democratizes access to the coolest places and the coolest locations on planet Earth."

Walters is banking on a booming travel market and a $5 million of fresh funding to boost Here's fortunes.

Based in Fort Collins, Colorado, Lifestyle Asset Group has coordinated co-ownership of luxury vacation properties since 2013. Destinations it covers range from downtown Manhattan to the Florida Keys, as well as international locations like the Caribbean and Mexico.

Not surprisingly, shares in these homes often come with a hefty price tag, along with annual fees. For example, a fifth of a share of a five-bedroom home on Seabrook Island in South Carolina will cost you $342,000 with an annual fee of $17,000.

The annual fees cover costs like property taxes, insurance, and utilities, but also include reciprocity access to sister LLCs managed by Lifestyle Asset Group — meaning you can exchange the allotted weeks at your home for another home.

Lifestyle Asset Group requires an exit strategy for co-owners — usually around eight years after their initial purchase. The LLC the company established to purchase the property sells it and returns your initial investment along with any appreciation gained.

"We created a whole new approach that involves an exclusive group of owners who collectively acquire a vacation residence of immense quality and originality, all with a credible way to get a positive return on your investment," co-founder Karla Jones told Forbes in March 2019.

Lofty, a blockchain-based fractional ownership company with a minimum buy-in of $50, is targeted to tech-savvy Gen Zers and millennials. The platform, which launched in 2021, has raised $5 million from investors including Y Combinator, Y Combinator alumni group Rebel Fund, and venture capital firm TRAC.

Founded by Jerry Chu and Max Ball, the company divides every rental property into tokens on the Algorand blockchain that investors can then purchase. The company's website lays out the data underlying each deal, such as how many tokens a property was broken into and how many tokens are unpurchased, the projected rate of return each year, and the lease terms and rates of tenants in the property.

The company's 131 tokenized properties are predominantly in the Midwest, with a heavy presence in locales like Akron, Ohio, and Chicago, Illinois. They're modest, with the median purchase price of homes on the site at $150,000 and the median purchase amount for first-time users hovering around $500. Current users have a median value of about $6,000 in their Lofty portfolios, the company said.

Lofty has lured over 5,000 investors spread across nearly 100 countries and has cleared $27 million in transactions, according to the company. Purchasing the tokens is easier than it sounds: Investors don't need to have an Algo crypto wallet (which is tied to the Algorand blockchain). Lofty launched a "custodial" wallet that allows users unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies to invest on their platform. Lofty properties are maintained by property managers brought on by the brand.

Pacaso, a vacation-home-co-ownership startup founded by two Zillow alumni, says it's the fastest ever to achieve unicorn status.

After launching in October 2020, it reached unicorn status, or a $1 billion valuation, in March 2021. The San Francisco company said it had raised $125 million and was worth $1.5 billion.

It works like this: The company purchases a home through an LLC in one of many cities, like Charleston, South Carolina; Cape Cod, Massachusetts; and Miami. It then lets customers buy one-eighth to half of a share of the property.

Last year, Pacaso sold nearly 400 "units," or shares, according to a February press release.

After closing, Pacaso acts as a management company that furnishes the homes, handles repairs and utilities, and facilitates scheduling for owner stays.

Prices range from the mid-$200,000s to over $3 million a share for properties in over 35 destinations spanning the US, as well as Mexico, Spain, and the UK.

Pacaso also made Insider's list of hottest proptech startups in 2022.

Pacaso differs from a traditional timeshare because instead of purchasing the right to use a home, you own it.

"Pacaso is institutionalizing, or commercializing, that process to eliminate the stress, hassle, and problems," its CEO and founder, Austin Allison, told Insider in 2021, when the company hit its $1 billion valuation. "We believe we will surpass the old category of second-home ownership."

This app-based platform opens up real-estate investing opportunities from $1.

Rhove currently only has two properties that users can invest in: a four-unit rental building in Columbus, Ohio, and a 27-residence senior living community in Silvis, Illinois. But it is in the midst of expanding its offerings nationally and internationally with what it claims is about $1 billion in properties in the pipeline.

Investors in Rhove properties can earn a return on their investment that is paid directly into their Rhove accounts. If the value of the building grows, so does the value of the shares. Rhove users can buy or sell shares at any time.

Rhove was founded in 2020 by Calvin Cooper, a former venture capital investor in fintech and proptech. In a seed round, Rhove has raised an undisclosed sum from Drive Capital, real estate developers Brett Kaufman of Kaufman Development and Dave Marcinowski of Madera Residential, among others.