There's a startup called Fundrise that makes it pretty easy to invest in REIT's. But for some reason, you have to commit your money for I believe 5 years withou

There's a startup called Fundrise that makes it pretty easy to invest in REIT's. But for some reason, you have to commit your money for I believe 5 years without taking it out. I don't fully understand why or what the deal is with that so I haven't pulled the trigger yet myself and invested with them. It's also mostly commercial focused I believe, as opposed to housing. But I 100% agree with you. Pretty much every young working person is already extremely over-exposed to the housing market via their rent costs which easily might be 30-50% or more of your after-tax salary and can go up every year. Investing a big part of your savings in your local housing market seems like a smart way to hedge. REIT's do seem fairly complex and obscure though, and it seems like you usually have to back a single developer or project and put in a fairly large minimum investment. I can easily buy an index fund that tracks S&P performance, why isn't there a simple index fund I can buy that tracks the SF housing market performance? I guess because it's a totally private market?