All offers / Investing / Groundfloor
Examined Jul 27, 2026 Paid in restricted credit Three conflicting sources Groundfloor's own pages give three different rewards, and none of them is money you can withdraw.
We are not going to pick one for you, because we cannot verify which is live and a wrong number here costs real money. Every version agrees on the part that matters more: the reward is a restricted credit, not a payment. Groundfloor's legal page says it "cannot be withdrawn as cash". Plain version: you are handed a token that can only be spent on a Groundfloor loan, and you see real money only when a borrower pays that loan back.
What the official pages actually say
| Legal page at groundfloor.com/legal, undated | $50 credit each, for $100 invested |
|---|---|
| Marketing page at join.groundfloor.com, undated | $50 each, for $100 invested |
| Support article, dated Dec 16, 2025, the newest | $100, for $1,000 invested |
| A 2018 PDF still sitting on Groundfloor's servers | $10 each. Ignore it |
| What all four agree on | It is a restricted credit |
| Cash you can withdraw on day one | $0 |
- What the two undated pages ask you to invest first$100
- What the only dated source asks you to invest first$1,000
Both requirements are live on Groundfloor's own pages. The gap between them is $900 of your own money.
A referral terms PDF created in November 2018 is still publicly linked, still says $10 each, and is almost certainly where every deal blog quoting a "$10 Groundfloor bonus" got its number. Note also that groundfloor.us now redirects to groundfloor.com, so older links pointing at the .us domain are another sign of a stale page.
Do this, in this order
- Settle the amount with Groundfloor before you transfer a dollar. Not with us, not with a deal blog, and not with whichever of its pages you found first. Message support and get the current requirement and reward in writing. The gap between the two live versions is $900 of your own money.
- Know that the qualifying step is an investment, not a deposit. To earn the credit you have to put $100, or $1,000, into closed and fully funded Groundfloor loans (it calls them LROs and Notes). That is your capital going into property lending, where it can lose value and is not a savings balance you can pull back at will. Never chase a referral bonus with money you cannot afford to have tied up.
- Understand what "restricted credit" buys you, which is not freedom. The credit has to be invested in a loan, and only when that loan repays does the money become withdrawable. How long that takes depends entirely on the loan, and none of the pages we read state the loan term lengths.
- Expect roughly 30 days before the credit even appears. Groundfloor posts it about 30 days after the qualifying investment. That clock runs before the one in the step above, not instead of it.
- Spend the credit within a year of getting it. The legal page says an unused restricted credit expires one year after issuance. The newer support article does not mention expiry at all, so plan around the shorter of the two.
- Budget for a tax form on money you cannot spend. Groundfloor says it may be required to send both parties, and file with the IRS, a Form 1099-MISC. That is the form used to report miscellaneous income, and receiving one means the reward is income you may owe tax on. A locked $50 credit that generates a tax form is not a $50 bonus.
The fine print that can still cost you
Two of the three live sources carry no date whatsoever. There is no revision note, no effective date, nothing that lets you work out which came last.
There is no cap, which sounds better than it is. Groundfloor's marketing page says there is no limit on how much you can earn or how many people you can introduce. Uncapped rewards are worth much less when each one is a credit that must be redeployed into a loan before it turns into money.
Groundfloor can take the credits back. Where it has a reasonable belief of fraud, it reserves the right to rescind any restricted credits. Standard language, and it applies to both sides of the referral.
The tax liability is yours on both sides. Referrer and invitee are each responsible for any tax due on the reward. Groundfloor does not give tax advice and neither do we.
One number is missing from every page we read. The term length of the loans your credit has to sit inside. Without it, nobody can tell you when a restricted credit becomes spendable money.
Is it worth your time?
If property lending is something you already do and you were investing anyway, a free credit on top is a fine extra and you should chase the right number before you act. For everyone else, look at what is being asked. You put real capital into loans, you wait a month for a credit, you then have to invest that credit into another loan, and you get money only when a borrower repays, on a timetable nobody will state. Meanwhile a tax form may arrive for the privilege. Get the answer from Groundfloor in writing before, not after, your money moves.
