The 1031 DST market, counted: a record year in SEC filings, and how DSTs end

In 2025, investors moved $6.4 billion into Delaware statutory trusts, the largest calendar year in the SEC filing record for the securitized 1031 exchange market and the first in that record to beat 2022. On a trailing-twelve-month basis the pace peaked at $8.65 billion through March 2026. The market did this without a free, public accounting of what it is, how it behaves, or how its deals end.

Form D totals are a floor. Mountain Dell Consulting, whose monthly figures the trade press reports, put 2025 at about $8.4 billion and counts 2022, at more than $9 billion, as the record year; filings capture about three-quarters of its 2025 total. SEC rules do not require an amended Form D just to report more sales, and require none after an offering ends, so a trust that sells out within a year of its first filing may never report its final total, and filings can trail subscriptions by months (how the two counts differ).

This October 10, 2026 edition covers 21,925 filings in the SEC Form D record and 1,749 securitized 1031 DST offerings since January 2009. Their offering amounts stated on Form D totaled $68.0 billion, and they reported $39.7 billion sold, across 75,361 investor commitments. The median trust's average commitment was $363,000, across 1,204 trusts disclosing both positive commitments and sales. Form D counts are cumulative per trust; one person can hold interests in several trusts.

The screening universe has widened to 15,567 entities as the SEC filing collection expanded; statutory-trust names or entity types and real-estate industry classifications define the DST subset. This edition uses filings and dated outcomes through October 10, with current classifications, Sponsor assignments and property records. Vintage equity belongs to the trust's first-filed year; fundraising flows belong to the filing date, with negative restatements clamped to zero. Counts for past years can change between editions as outcomes are reclassified; the 2024 conversion count rose from 15 to 16 this edition, and records that show a trust still operating are no longer counted as exits.

The headline finding is 2025's high in the SEC filing record. The deeper findings are structural: a market that deconcentrated at the sponsor level through 2023 while its typical deal roughly tripled in size, mature trusts that, where an exit is dated, left a median 6.2 years after first filing (the median completed deal ran 4.8), and an exit door that in eight years went from almost entirely property sales to a mix of sales, REIT conversions and, at visible scale, distress.

Finding 1A record year, measured filing by filing

Cumulative totals hide the market's rhythm, so the fundraising rate is reconstructed from the filing-to-filing changes in every trust's reported sales. That series compounded from roughly $116 million in 2009 to $2.4 billion in 2020, reached $6.25 billion in 2022, the peak of the 2021–22 boom, sagged through the rate shock to about $4.2 billion in 2024, and then set a new calendar-year high in the SEC filing record, $6.39 billion in 2025.

The trailing twelve months peaked at $8.65 billion through March 2026. That peak reflects an unusually large first quarter, $3.12 billion, $2.0 billion of it from two platforms; filing dates can trail subscriptions by months, so a single quarter can overstate the underlying rate. Through September the trailing figure is $7.0 billion, lower because last year's filings have left the window and second- and third-quarter filings ran 40% below the same quarters of 2025. Mountain Dell reports 2026 sales through September up 27%; because filings trail subscriptions, the two series can diverge within a year. New launches are running 3% ahead of 2025 through October 10: 137 trusts against 133. So far this year, filings have reported $6.01 billion for 2026, $0.38 billion short of 2025's full-year total.

Among the 2019–24 vintages, boom trusts evidenced completion fastest. Trusts first filed in 2021 evidenced completion in a median 4.1 months, against 7.3–7.8 months for the 2019–20 vintages and 8.3–8.4 months for 2023–24. The 2022 median was 6.6 months. Completion means a filing reported nothing remaining or at least 95% sold; filing dates make these observed times upper bounds. Recent vintages are still incomplete.

Of 1,482 trusts first filed at least 18 months ago, 28.3% never reported a dollar raised in any SEC filing; 41.1%, including those, last reported selling under a quarter of their target. This is an upper bound on failure: completed offerings that require no further amendment can look like stalled offerings. Among 871 trusts with multiple filings, 8.6% cut their target and 5.6% increased it. Downsizing remains more common than upsizing.

Finding 2The $100,000 door

The median DST offering grew from $8–15 million in 2010–16 to $37.7 million in 2026. The median minimum investment moved from $25,000 through 2020 to $50,000 in 2021–23, $75,000 in 2024 and $100,000 in 2025–26. The current distribution by asset type is published daily. The median new commitment per filing rose from $311,000 in 2020 to $430,000 in 2025, a 38% increase.

The clearest measure of the shift is the mega-trust. Trusts with offerings of at least $100 million took 14% of 2018's vintage equity and 60% of 2025's; the threshold measures offering size, the share measures reported equity sold. The largest single raise in the filing record, Boston Logistics Property DST, reported $585 million sold, more than filings reported raised across the whole market in any year before 2015; ADREX Diversified 10 DST ($490 million) and DTW Air Cargo Logistics DST ($480 million) follow, all 2024–25 vintages, alongside the current largest offerings.

Finding 3The sponsor economy opened up, then tightened after 2023

The Sponsor market opened for a decade, then concentrated again after 2023 before easing slightly. Larger deals and a broader field of Sponsors can coexist.

In 2016 the top five held 90.4% of vintage equity, and Inland Private Capital alone took 59.4% of attributed equity raised by trusts first filed before 2019. Then it opened up: by the 2023 vintage the top five held 55.4% and the concentration index reached 825, its low. The reversal since is the part worth watching: the top-five share rose to 67.5% in 2024 and has eased since, to 63.3% in 2025 and 61.4% so far in 2026, still well above 2023's low. The concentration index ran 1,195 for 2025 vintages and 1,053 for the incomplete 2026 vintage. New sponsors keep arriving, and the biggest platforms write the biggest deals. (Shares use attributed equity and recompute the leaders each year; current Sponsor assignments can revise historical shares, separately assigned platforms stay separate, and 59 trusts lack an attribution.)

Institutional platforms did both. JLL filed its first DST in February 2020, Hines in September 2022 and Blue Owl in December 2023; Ares entered in July 2021 by acquiring Black Creek Group's real estate advisory and distribution business, and its ADREX platform filed its first DST that December. In 2023–26 vintages, Ares' exchange platform ADREX is the market's top raiser at 20.0% of attributed equity, ahead of Net Lease Capital Advisors (10.6%) and JLL's exchange platform (9.5%), with Inland, the founding incumbent, fourth at 8.6%. The five biggest raisers' trusts average $112 million of reported equity; everyone else's average $17 million.

Beneath the leaders, the sponsor economy is thin. Of 146 sponsor names attributed in Form D filings since 2009 (Top1031 publishes record cards for 98 Sponsors), 74 have launched a trust in the past two years; 62, over two in five, launched exactly one trust and have not launched another. The median sponsor name's lifetime reported raise is $12.8 million; Inland's is $8.9 billion across 235 trusts, nearly 700 times that. Nine of these names have ever reported $1 billion. The DST business is easy to enter and hard to stay in. (These are reported-equity totals, not complete subscription histories.)

Finding 4Where the buildings are

1,350 property records across 822 trusts account for $16.74 billion of reported equity, 42% of the market total. 1,346 records have a state. Every geographic share below describes this located subset; equity is divided equally across each trust's located records, not valued property by property.

Texas holds 213 state-located records and $2.38 billion of allocated equity. Florida has 162 records, Georgia 73 and North Carolina 61.

The Sun Belt holds 56% of state-located records. The region here comprises Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona, Nevada, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and New Mexico. Located records span 48 states; none is in Hawaii, Wyoming or Washington, D.C. Coverage is incomplete, and a large trust can dominate a state's allocated equity. Property counts are the firmer guide to geographic breadth.

Finding 5How long DSTs actually last

Among 308 trusts first filed at least ten years ago, 223, or at least 72%, have documented terminal outcomes: property sale, conversion or foreclosure. 4% are confirmed still operating. The remainder includes unknown, partial-sale and distressed outcomes; the full-cycle share is a floor. The directory's published Historical records are a separate publication cohort.

Across the 164 mature trusts with a dated terminal exit, the median exit came 6.2 years after first filing: 60% of those exits came by year seven and 87% by year ten. Across all 308 mature trusts, 32% have a dated exit by year seven and 46% by year ten; the rest exited later, have no dated exit, or are still operating. The median across all 355 dated completed sale or conversion events is 4.8 years. That figure skews low because unfinished, longer-lived trusts are excluded. Mature cohorts provide the fairer timing comparison.

Offering documents state an anticipated hold, not a fixed term. Of 20 current offering documents that state a target hold, 15 put its end at ten years: seven say about ten, seven say five to ten and one says seven to ten. The other five end between four and nine years. From the offering documents of 14 sponsors (Aug 2024–Aug 2026). These are today's documents; they do not show what the mature trusts above stated when they were sold.

Lifetimes can stretch, because Rev. Rul. 2004-86, the IRS ruling that makes DSTs exchange-eligible, generally bars the trustee from renegotiating or replacing the trust's debt: a deal that cannot refinance waits out the cycle. The open book still holds substantial capital. 599 trusts classified as still operating or partly sold hold $15.0 billion of reported equity. Of that, $1.7 billion has passed seven years since first filing; including unclassified trusts raises the bound to $3.2 billion, and some of those unknowns may already have exited. The oldest trust confirmed still operating, Discount Retail Portfolio III DST, first filed in January 2012.

Finding 6How DSTs end now

In the pooled 2024–26 record of 149 dated exits, 56% were property sales, 21% were Section 721 conversions and 15% were foreclosure or distress. The other 11 are partial sales and exits whose outcome is unknown; they stay in the denominator. Dated records that show a trust still operating are not exits and are excluded.

Dated conversions numbered 16 in 2024 and 11 of 48 dated exits in 2026 through October 10. One Sponsor platform can move a year's conversion mix; these shares do not describe a uniform probability for each trust. A Section 721 conversion exchanges DST interests for REIT operating-partnership units instead of sale proceeds. It ends the investor's 1031 chain, because operating-partnership units are partnership interests rather than like-kind real property, and the trade is permanent. Its advocates make a real argument for it: a conversion removes the pressure of finding and closing a replacement property inside the 45- and 180-day windows every time a trust goes full-cycle, and it swaps a single building for a diversified portfolio.

Across the outcome census, 40 of 608 outcome records with a known result are classified as foreclosure or distress. The 608 are one record per trust outcome with a known result in the exit database (sale, conversion, partial sale, foreclosure or distress), a broader set than terminal full-cycle exits. In fully observed four-year exposures, 3 of 417 trusts from the 2021–22 vintages have dated distress or foreclosure within four years, against zero of 678 from 2013–20. All 3 current early classifications are high-confidence. This is a documented signal, not a market loss rate.

Published full-cycle multiples, as reported by sponsors, cover 162 of 608 outcome records with a known result in the outcome census. None of the 40 foreclosed or distressed records carries a multiple. These are disclosure-coverage counts, not an estimate of returns. Voluntary disclosures cannot establish performance or losses across the full market.

What the record shows next

The record sets up the next twelve months, and each of these is checkable in the filings as they land.

Through October 10, filings reported $6.01 billion for 2026, $0.38 billion short of 2025's total; the fourth quarter decides whether 2026 becomes a second record year in the filing record. Launches are running 3% ahead of 2025. The concentration index, 825 for 2023 vintages and 1,195 for 2025, will show whether the past decade's deconcentration survives an era in which trusts of $100 million or more took 60% of the 2025 vintage's equity. The conversion share of dated exits, 11 of 48 so far in 2026, will show whether REIT conversion becomes a co-equal exit door. The 2021–22 vintages, now entering the ages at which mature cohorts began exiting in volume, will either resolve their early distress signal into noise or into the market's first true vintage story. And the aging book, up to $3.2 billion past year seven, is the number we will re-count first.

Top1031.com is a media and data platform, not a broker-dealer or investment adviser; nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation of any sponsor or offering.