Secondary Market

When a platform first sells shares in a property, that is the primary offering. Money goes to buy the property. When an investor later sells those shares to another investor, that is a secondary trade. Money goes from buyer to seller and the property is unaffected. A secondary market is wherever those later trades happen. On a fractional platform it is usually an order book inside the app, where holders post shares at a price and buyers take them. On tokenized platforms it can be a decentralised exchange, where the tokens trade like any other.

Availability varies. Lofty runs a continuous marketplace where tokens trade at whatever price buyers will pay. Arrived opened a periodic redemption window after an initial hold. Some platforms allow no resale at all until the property is sold. The offering document states which applies. Pricing is the catch. There is no exchange setting a daily value, so a seller names a price and waits. In a quiet market, shares can sit unsold for weeks, or clear only at a discount to the platform's own valuation. Trading fees, typically 1 to 3%, come off as well. Secondary trades are also subject to the same rules as the primary sale. If the offering was limited to accredited investors, so is the resale. If it was sold under a rule with a one-year holding restriction, the shares cannot move until that year is up.

Treat a secondary market as an emergency exit, not a plan. The listed platforms with the most active markets still see far less volume than any stock, and a fractional share may take days to sell at a fair price or minutes at a poor one. If liquidity matters to you, favour platforms that run a market and properties that have already traded on it, and size your investment so that you would not need to sell early. The property's own sale, at the end of the hold period, remains the main way capital comes back.