Real estate has become the most popular form of alternative investing. And real estate investment trusts, or REITs, have been getting their fair share of the capital pie lately.

Evidence of this is the $8.1 billion in real estate equity raised in 2013 by American Realty Capital. The sum is remarkable when you consider the average individual investment is between $30,000 and $40,000.

“We have so many investors — thousands of them coming in — and they are mostly retail,” says Sameer Jain, chief economist and managing director of the New York City–based advisory firm. “This is what allows us to raise that $8.1 billion a year. And when we lever up, we can buy lots of properties.”

While growing ranks of investors have accessed real estate through publicly traded REITs over the past quarter-century or so, the more recent growth of the nontraded REIT sector has further broadened the investment landscape. “The less affluent are now gaining the kind of ac