DST Fees Explained: Where Your Returns Go

Where the money goes: acquisition, hold, and sale

On a $500,000 investment in a Delaware Statutory Trust - a trust that lets investors hold fractional interests in real estate - a 15% upfront fee load takes $75,000 before a single dollar reaches the property. The $425,000 that remains is the capital actually working in real estate.

Those fees come in three waves that track the life of the deal: once at acquisition, every year during the hold, and again at the sale. Knowing what each wave pays for is how you judge whether an offering's economics justify their cost.

Upfront fees, charged at acquisition

Ongoing fees, charged annually during the hold

Combined, ongoing fees typically run 1.5-3% of asset value per year.

Disposition fees, charged at sale

Telling a normal fee from a high one

Not every DST charges the same. The table below sorts each fee into three bands: a normal range, a range worth questioning, and a range that needs real justification.

Fees in the elevated or high bands don't automatically make an offering a bad one. They shift the burden of proof onto the sponsor, who should be able to say what the extra cost buys: a superior property, a proven track record, specialized management.

How fees eat into returns

Fees lower the capital that is ever put to work, and the effect compounds: a smaller base earns less every year it stays invested, and the disposition fee then takes another cut of what's left at the sale. How much this costs a given investor depends on that offering's total fee load and the length of the hold - the fee tables above are what to use for a specific deal.

On the $500,000 example used above, the 15% upfront load alone removes $75,000 before any property-level income begins. Only the $425,000 earns income for you. Ongoing fees are not charged on it: asset management runs on the property's value and property management on its rent.

That gap between a lighter and heavier fee load widens the longer the capital stays invested, which is why comparing total fee load - not just the headline upfront percentage - matters more on a longer hold.

Putting two offerings side by side

Fee percentages that look similar at a glance can hide a real gap in dollars. Comparing the same categories side by side, against the capital each offering actually deploys, is what makes the difference visible.

Offering A carries lower total fees and deploys more of the original commitment into the property. That doesn't settle it: if Offering B holds a materially stronger property, a better sponsor track record, or a stronger market position, its higher fees may be worth paying. The point is to make the fee comparison explicit instead of trusting headline percentages that don't show the dollars they cost.

Fees as a test of alignment

Fees measure cost. They also reveal whose side the sponsor's incentives are on. Four questions get at it:

• Does the sponsor invest its own capital alongside investors? Co-investment creates shared incentives.
• Is the sponsor paid mostly at acquisition or on performance? A sponsor that earns most of its money from day-one fees has little riding on how the property does over the next ten years.
• Does the sponsor take a performance fee tied to specific results, rather than a flat fee regardless of outcome? A results-linked fee ties the sponsor's pay to how investors actually do.
• What happens to the asset management fee if distributions are cut? If the fee holds steady no matter what, the incentives point in different directions.

Red flags

• Fees the sponsor won't itemize. If an offering won't lay out every fee in the offering documents, treat that as disqualifying.
• Upfront fees well above 18% with no clear account of what the premium buys.
• Fees hidden inside property-level expenses rather than disclosed as sponsor compensation.
• Fees that look too low, which can mean the sponsor is subsidized by other activities or that costs will surface later in forms you didn't expect.

What the SEC filing shows about fees, and what it doesn't

The fee schedule is not in the SEC filing. A Form D reports the size of the raise and the minimum investment and says little about what the sponsor charges. The fees live in the offering documents, which are not public — the sponsor sends them to investors who ask. That is why no directory, this one included, can show you a sponsor's full fee load; the one fee figure in the public record is the sales commissions and finders' fees a Form D reports, which Top1031 shows on each offering's record where the filing reports it: across 1,630 offerings that state one, the median is 7% of the offering amount. Among the 167 offerings that filed with the SEC in 2026 and state one, the median is 6%. Anyone publishing a full fee load is either quoting a range like the tables above or reading offering documents you have not seen.

What the public record does support is everything around the fee, and that is what makes a fee quote checkable when the offering documents arrive. The current offerings list shows each Active offering's size and minimum investment as filed. Across offerings filed in 2025 the median minimum was $100,000.

So the order that works is: read the offering’s public record first, form a view on the property and the sponsor’s track record, then ask for the offering documents and hold their fee load against the deal you already understand. A 15% load on a strong property with a proven sponsor is a different question from the same load on neither.

The bottom line

DST fees are real, sizable, and different from one offering to the next. You can't dodge them; the structure requires them. What's left is to understand them, model how they hit your net return, and compare offerings on a fee-adjusted basis. A good sponsor itemizes every fee and is confident the offering delivers value after all of them are counted. That transparency is the floor, not a bonus.