There is another set of companies that cater to retail investors. Arrived, Lofty and Mogul offer shares or tokens in houses that start at around $50 or $100. Most of the homes bought and sold in stock by these companies are more modest; these are typical single-family homes, rented to full-time tenants, and others may be larger homes set up for short-term rental platforms like Airbnb. On Lofty, people can buy tokens in homes starting at around $50, then use those tokens to vote on management decisions regarding their properties, including repairs. Fundrise, probably the largest of the companies, is powering “build-to-rent” communities with more than $700 million in support from JP Morgan.

At Jeff Bezos-backed Arrived, high interest rates are “one of the biggest reasons more people are joining,” says CEO Ryan Frazier. For a low price, retail investors can enjoy the benefits of investing money in the real estate market: Arrived sells shares in homes, most of which are valued between $200,000 and $400,000, and each attracts a hundred of investors. In many of them, stock prices are low, some at $12, others at $25. But some are investing more, and $150 million has now been invested in about 400 properties on Arrived, Frazier says. The number of investors and the amount invested have almost doubled in the past year, and high mortgage interest rates, coupled with a low supply of affordable housing, only make the sector more attractive as people have struggling to afford housing, Frazier said. Returns on some of the company’s longest-held properties have exceeded 70 percent, although a number of other properties are in the red.

Arrived drew the ire of Congressman Ro Khanna last year, when it launched its single-family residential fund, which pools more than a dozen properties and lets people invest in the asset class, like a modern REIT . “The last thing Americans need is a Bezos-backed investment company that further consolidates single-family homes and puts homeownership out of reach for more and more people,” Khanna said in December. “Housing should be a right and not a speculative commodity.” In response to these criticisms, Frazier says the Arrived model democratizes real estate investing, instead of a few hundred people owning these 400 properties, he claims, now 38,000 people own a share.

At Mogul, which widely launched its platform last fall after a private beta, people can invest as little as $250 in homes scattered across America’s Sunbelt. These are usually short-term rentals, including a stylish five-bedroom house in Southern California that rents for $800 a night on Airbnb. Mogul currently only has four properties available, but CEO Alex Blackwood says the company plans to have as many as 20 to 30 within the next month or so. But not all of them are retail investors, and some instead invest tens of thousands of dollars in properties. It’s a way for those with more money to find passive ways to invest in real estate instead of becoming full-time landlords or short-term rental hosts, Blackwood says.

He argues that the fractional investing trend is accelerating because people are still seeking the American dream feeling of homeownership. In a chaotic real estate market, investors take a glass-glass-full approach. The outlook for the housing market may be bleak, but Blackwood says young people excluded from the housing market “want to buy part of something rather than nothing at all.”