Willow Wealth Review 2026: What Yieldstreet’s Rebrand Means for Your Money
- Stock trade fee
- N/A
- Minimum deposit
- $10,000
Our verdict
Private market investing under a new name — with a loss history you should weigh first.
Willow Wealth is the new name for Yieldstreet, the alternative investing platform that lets you diversify into real estate, private credit, private equity and other assets usually reserved for institutions. Most offerings target accredited investors and carry a $10,000 minimum, though the Yieldstreet Alternative Income Fund remains open to all investors regardless of accreditation status.
Best for: Accredited investors who've reviewed the platform's disclosed losses and are comfortable with the risk.
Pros
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Alternative asset access. Real estate, art and private credit deals not typically available on retail platforms.|
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Non-accredited option. The Alternative Income Fund is open to all investors regardless of accreditation status.|
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Self-directed IRA option. IRA investing available through a third-party custodian.|
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Accounts carried over. Willow Wealth says existing Yieldstreet holdings and account terms are unaffected by the rebrand.
Cons
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Disclosed losses. At least $208 million in real estate losses disclosed across the platform since August 2025.|
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High default rate. Roughly 30% of reviewed real estate deals were in default by December 2025, well above the 2%–8% industry norm for similar private deals.|
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High barrier to entry. Most deals require accredited investor status and a $10,000-plus minimum.|
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Illiquid. You generally can't sell before a deal's term ends.
Willow Wealth is the new name for Yieldstreet, the alternative investing platform that lets accredited investors put money into real estate, art, private credit and other assets usually reserved for institutions. The company announced the rebrand on October 22, 2025, with the name change officially taking effect in November 2025, shortly after a CNBC investigation into losses across its real estate portfolio.(1)
Willow Wealth says the switch is a brand change, not a structural one — existing Yieldstreet accounts and investments moved over automatically, on the same terms as before.(1) If you’re considering investing for the first time, though, you should understand the losses behind the rebrand before you decide whether Willow Wealth is right for you.
What happened to Yieldstreet
Yieldstreet built its reputation on giving accredited investors access to private real estate, art and asset-backed deals, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in equity and debt financing since its 2015 founding — including a $100 million round in 2021 that brought its total funding to $278.5 million at the time, with further rounds since — and drawing more than 500,000 members over a decade.(2),(3) Through 2025, a series of CNBC reports found the platform’s real estate portfolio performing far worse than investors had been led to expect.
Reporting on those findings puts total disclosed investor losses at at least $208 million between August and December 2025:(4)
- $78 million in real estate losses reported in August 2025
- $89 million wiped out on marine loan deals disclosed in September 2025
- $41 million in new real estate defaults in Houston and Nashville disclosed in December 2025
Those are disclosure dates, not necessarily when the underlying problems began — some of these deals, including the marine loan portfolio and the issue behind the 2023 SEC case explained later in this article, had been deteriorating for longer before the losses became public.
Of 30 real estate deals reviewed, nine were in default by December 2025 — a 30% failure rate, well above the 2% to 8% failure-rate estimates CNBC cited for private credit deals generally.(4) Boston University finance professor Mark Williams, commenting on the losses, said the platform “created a high-risk trap for investors.”(4)
Around the same time as the rebrand, the company took down a decade of historical performance data from its public website. This included a chart that had shown real estate returns falling from an annualized 9.4% two years earlier to -2% over the 2015-2025 period.(4) Willow Wealth’s stated position is that “transparency is paramount” and that it provides performance data at the individual offering level.(4)
The losses follow earlier regulatory trouble. In 2023, the SEC charged Yieldstreet with failing to fully disclose collateral risk in a marine shipping deal; the company paid roughly $1.9 million in penalties without admitting or denying the allegations, and separately settled a related class action for a $6.2 million cash fund plus up to $2.75 million in forgiven fees for affected investors.(5),(6)
What’s actually changed — and what hasn’t
Willow Wealth positions the rebrand as reflecting an expanded product lineup after ten years in private markets, not a change to the underlying business.(1) Mitchell Caplan, the former E*TRADE CEO who took over as Yieldstreet’s interim CEO in May 2025 — months before the rebrand — has led the transition alongside original co-founders Milind Mehere and Michael Weisz, who remain on the board.(7)
By the company’s own account: your existing investments continue under their original terms, and your account carried over automatically, so you can log in at willowwealth.com with your existing credentials to see your portfolio, statements and tax documents.(1) We weren’t able to independently verify the mechanics of that transition beyond the company’s own statements.
Willow Wealth’s products, fees and minimums
Willow Wealth’s offerings carry over from Yieldstreet largely unchanged in structure:
- Individual private market deals (real estate, art, private credit and similar) — typically limited to accredited investors, usually with a $10,000 minimum.
- Third-party evergreen funds from Carlyle, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and StepStone, added to the platform in December 2025, with a $10,000 minimum and also limited to accredited investors.(8)
- Willow 360, a managed portfolio option the company launched in August 2025, with a $25,000 minimum.
- IRA investing through a partnership with third-party custodian Equity Trust, supporting rollovers from a 401(k) or transfers from an existing Traditional, Roth, SEP or SIMPLE IRA.
The Yieldstreet Alternative Income Fund, previously the platform’s main option for non-accredited investors, is no longer offered as a standalone Willow Wealth product: in August 2026, Mount Logan Capital’s Opportunistic Credit Interval Fund (SOFIX) acquired roughly $130 million of its assets following a shareholder vote, with existing fund holders converted into SOFIX shares in a tax-free reorganization rather than cashed out.(9)
With that fund gone, Willow Wealth doesn’t currently have a clear option open to non-accredited investors in its core lineup. And most individual deals and third-party funds still require accredited investor status — meaning you’ve earned more than $200,000 a year for the past two years ($300,000 combined with a spouse) or you have a net worth over $1 million, excluding your primary residence.
Is Willow Wealth safe and legitimate?
Willow Wealth is an established platform that’s been operating since 2015 under its original name, and Yieldstreet’s investment adviser subsidiary is SEC-registered — it isn’t a scam.(1),(5) But “legitimate” and “low-risk” aren’t the same thing.
The losses detailed earlier are real and recent, and they’re concentrated in two areas — real estate and marine finance, the same asset classes behind the 2023 SEC case — rather than spread evenly across everything the platform offers. A 30% default rate against the 2% to 8% failure-rate range CNBC cited for private credit generally is a meaningful signal about how these particular deals were underwritten and monitored, not just bad luck in a tough market.(4)
None of this means every deal on the platform will perform the same way. But if you’re weighing a new investment, go in with the loss history in view rather than relying on the rebranded site alone, and ask a Willow Wealth representative directly about a specific deal’s current status before committing.
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Matt Finder
Investments editor and market analyst
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