RealCrowd co-founder here...
The investments are direct with the real estate operating companies, avoiding layers of fees imposed by the REIT structure.
These sponsors do get traditional funding. The operators we select to be able to post on RealCrowd do not need capital from the internet at large. Instead they augment their fundraising or recapitalize an existing property so they have more free capital, allowing them to do more deals. Since we do not charge any carry or other fees to investors, sponsors also bring their traditional investors onto the site to make the fundraising process easier.
More info on our operator-focused page: https://operators.realcrowd.com