Yieldstreet Review 2026: $208 Million in Documented Losses, an SEC Fine, and a New Name

On October 22, 2025, Yieldstreet changed its name to Willow Wealth. A new logo, a new domain, and a fresh brand narrative appeared. What also disappeared, simultaneously, was the company's historical performance chart. According to CNBC's December 2025 investigation, that chart showed annualized real estate returns of negative 2% across the 2015 to 2025 period. A company is entitled to rebrand. It is not entitled to quietly erase a decade of performance history when it does. Those two events happening on the same day is not a coincidence. It is a data point.

TL;DR

Yieldstreet, now operating as Willow Wealth, has accumulated more than $208 million in confirmed investor losses, settled a federal class action for $9 million, and paid $1.9 million to the SEC for failing to disclose known collateral risks. Its real estate default rate stands at roughly 30%, compared to an industry norm of 2% to 8%. Below is what the record shows. What you do with that record is your decision.

What Yieldstreet Actually Is

Founded in 2015, Yieldstreet built its pitch around giving accredited investors access to asset classes traditionally available only to institutional money: real estate debt, art finance, legal settlement funding, marine finance, and private credit. The platform currently holds approximately $1.86 billion in discretionary assets under management across 209 advisory clients, as of November 2025, per regulatory filings tracked by AUM13F.

Minimum investments run from $10,000 to $50,000 per individual deal. The platform's flagship product, the Alternative Income Fund, carries a $10,000 minimum. Accredited investor status is required for most offerings.

One structural detail every prospective investor needs to understand: Yieldstreet uses a Borrower Payment Dependent Note, or BPDN, structure. Under a BPDN, you are not a direct creditor of the underlying asset or the underlying borrower. You are an unsecured creditor of Yieldstreet Inc. itself. If Yieldstreet Inc. encounters financial distress, your claim sits in the general unsecured stack, behind senior lenders, behind secured creditors. This is a materially different risk profile than holding a direct mortgage lien or a direct loan participation. Many investors on the platform did not fully appreciate this distinction until losses materialized. For more on how these structures compare across platforms, see our 2026 real estate crowdfunding platforms comparison.

The Loss Record

The $208 million in confirmed losses is supported by CNBC's August 2025 investigation and subsequent reporting through December of that year, drawing on SEC filings, court documents, and investor records.

The real estate book is the starkest illustration. Twenty-three of the platform's major real estate deals experienced losses, that is 23 of 23 within that specific cohort. Across the broader real estate portfolio, the default rate is approximately 30%. The industry benchmark for comparable real estate debt vehicles is 2% to 8%. CrowdStreet, for reference, has reported a historical net IRR of 12.2% across its real estate offerings. Yieldstreet's historical real estate returns, per the now-removed chart, were negative 2% annualized over a decade.

The marine finance losses deserve separate treatment because they involve not just bad outcomes but documented non-disclosure. Six maritime offerings to the same borrower group produced $89 million in investor losses. The underlying ships, the collateral backing these loans, were, in several cases, missing or had been physically deconstructed. Yieldstreet personnel had documented knowledge of these collateral problems before they closed an additional $14.5 million offering in September 2019. They did not disclose what they knew to investors in that offering.

The internal watchlist situation compounds the picture. According to CNBC's reporting, 23 of 30 deals that appeared on the company's internal watchlist were never disclosed to investors. A watchlist is only useful to investors if they can see it.

The SEC Enforcement Action

On September 12, 2023, the SEC announced a settlement with Yieldstreet Inc. and Yieldstreet Management LLC. The total payment was $1.9 million, covering civil penalties, disgorgement, and prejudgment interest. The SEC press release states the violation precisely: in connection with a September 2019 marine loan offering, Yieldstreet failed to disclose that ships pledged as collateral in earlier tranches had been reported missing or deconstructed. Company personnel had this information. It did not appear in the offering documents.

A $1.9 million settlement against a platform managing nearly $2 billion in assets is numerically a rounding error. The significance is the SEC's documented finding that the company had material information about collateral problems and chose not to share it with investors who were putting real money into those exact deals.

The Federal Class Action

Separately from the SEC matter, Yieldstreet reached a $9 million class action settlement in 2025, structured as $6.2 million in cash payments and $2.75 million in waived fees. The class action was rooted in the same marine loan losses. A $9 million settlement does not come close to covering $89 million in marine losses, but it represents a judicial acknowledgment that investors had legitimate grievances.

The Rebrand Red Flag

There is nothing inherently wrong with a company changing its name. What makes the Willow Wealth rebrand worth examining is the simultaneous removal of historical performance data. The chart that disappeared showed ten years of real estate returns ending at negative 2% annualized. That is precisely the kind of data a prospective investor would want to see when evaluating a platform that is actively marketing real estate debt products. Removing it during a rebrand means that new investors encountering Willow Wealth for the first time will see forward-looking projections without the historical context that would allow them to evaluate those projections. According to third-party review analysis, the erasure of that data was specific and deliberate.

Any platform that removes unflattering historical performance data during a rebrand is telling you something important about how it treats transparency. Pay attention to that signal.

What Still Works

A fair review requires saying what the record also shows on the positive side. Yieldstreet's short-term notes, typically 3 to 6 month instruments, have a clean repayment history. Investors who used the platform specifically for short-duration, self-liquidating notes have generally received principal and interest as scheduled. Duration matters enormously in alternative credit.

The Alternative Income Fund, which held approximately $1.6 billion in assets as of late 2025, targets a 7.6% annualized yield and has delivered reasonably close to that target in recent periods. However, the fund suspended quarterly redemptions in late 2025 pending a planned merger with Mount Logan Capital's SOFIX fund. Suspended redemptions in an interval fund are not automatically a crisis, but they do mean your capital is not liquid on demand. Our interval fund guide explains how these liquidity mechanics work in detail.

Fee Comparison

Yieldstreet's all-in fee burden is estimated at 3.3% to 6.7% annually, depending on the specific offering. For comparison: Fundrise charges a flat 1% annual fee across its real estate funds. Masterworks charges 1.5% annual plus 20% of proceeds at exit. CrowdStreet operates on a deal-by-deal basis with fees typically 1% to 2% at the platform level. To put the fee differential in concrete terms: on $50,000 invested in a Yieldstreet deal with a 5% all-in fee structure, you pay $2,500 per year before generating a single dollar of return. On Fundrise at 1%, the same $50,000 costs $500 per year. The fee gap needs to be covered by above-benchmark returns to justify the higher cost. Based on the historical real estate return data that the company itself published, that gap was not covered. For additional context on platform fees and returns, see our Masterworks fee analysis.

What Accredited Investors Should Demand Before Investing in Any Alt Platform

The Yieldstreet record illustrates several due diligence questions that apply to any alternative investment platform, not just this one. First, ask for audited historical returns by asset class, not blended platform figures. Blended numbers can hide catastrophic performance in one category behind adequate performance in another. Second, understand the legal structure of your investment. Are you a direct creditor of the underlying asset? Or an unsecured creditor of the platform itself? These are not equivalent positions. Our primer on accredited investor vs. qualified purchaser definitions covers why the SEC draws these distinctions. Third, ask specifically about the platform's internal watchlist or troubled-asset notification process. Fourth, look at the fee structure in total, not the management fee in isolation. Fifth, when a platform rebrands and removes historical data, treat the new brand as a new platform for purposes of due diligence.

More than $208 million in confirmed investor losses. A 30% real estate default rate against an industry norm of 2% to 8%. An SEC enforcement action documenting that the company withheld material information. A $9 million class action settlement. A rebrand paired with the removal of unflattering performance data. Fees running up to 6.7% against alternatives charging one-fifth of that. That is the record. What you do with it is your decision.

Author Disclosure: Jeff Barnes, MBA has no personal position in any company, fund, or platform named in this article. Angel Investors Network has no current commercial relationship with any party mentioned. AIN provides marketing and education services, not investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal.