Category: Money | Page 30

💶 The Best European P2P Lending Platforms in 2025

Last updated: March 17, 202593 Comments

Amongst all the online investment platforms available today, European peer-to-peer lending sites are the ones that offer the highest returns.

Let’s have a look at how P2P lending works and which are the best European P2P lending sites.

Why do I focus on Europe? Simply because I am European and currently based in Europe. Most US lending sites, as well as some UK lending platforms, prohibit European citizens from investing, so this post focuses exclusively on those platforms that are available to all European citizens. The nice thing is that the majority of European P2P platforms accept international investors.

Another reason for focusing on Europe is that currently, the European platforms offer higher returns than those in the United States or Asia.

Without further ado, let’s jump straight into a list of what I consider the best platforms available nowadays. I will then proceed to talk about the P2P lending space in general for those who are new and want to learn more about this asset class.

The Best European P2P Lending Platforms

Now let’s explore each of them further.

If you’re unsure which platform to invest in, one of the best things you could do is to check the platforms’ ratings on multiple channels. I’ve analyzed most of the platforms out there, used several, and taken a look at their Facebook, Trustpilot, and Google scores, so here’s the list of top P2P platforms in Europe at the moment.

I also keep an eye on the market data on European P2P lending every month, as this is an important indicator of whether any of the platforms are in trouble or whether they are in a healthy growth and profitability stage.

Mintos

Mintos is undoubtedly the powerhouse of European P2P lending platforms. Founded in 2015 in Riga, Latvia, Mintos has quickly grown to become the largest and most trusted platform in the region. It offers a plethora of investment opportunities across a wide variety of loan types, including personal loans, business loans, and mortgages. With more than 340,000 investors and a stunning €7 billion in funded loans, Mintos has established itself as the go-to platform for P2P lending enthusiasts.

The interface is great; everything is understandable and you don’t need to fish around for data. You get a daily report in your inbox and you can also use the auto-invest functionality, which I always do.

See also: My full review of Mintos – I invested €150,000

Mintos has a solid secondary market which provides investors with liquidity. If you want to sell off your loans at any point, you can put them on the secondary market, choosing whether to apply a discount (making them more attractive) or add a premium (less attractive). If you want to sell quickly, applying a discount is the best way to do this.

The minimum investment in any single loan on the primary market is EUR 10, DKK 80, GEL 25, PLN 50 or CZK 300. There is no minimum for investments in the secondary market.

You have to be careful when setting the auto-invest parameters on Mintos. Check out the Mintos lender ratings post on Explorep2p as well as the Mintos loan scanner to see which are the most trustworthy lenders on the platform.

The income earned at Mintos is taxed for each investor based on the legislation of the respective country where the investor is a tax resident. Each investor can receive extensive information necessary for tax returns when logged into their Mintos investor account.

You can add funds safely via your online banking directly in the app, by bank transfer, or with a debit/credit card. I recommend using N26, Wise or Revolut when doing deposits and withdrawals as you avoid fees altogether.

Companies can also invest through Mintos without any problem. There are specific documents that need to be provided in order to comply with AML legislation, but it’s pretty straightforward.

During the past three years, Mintos experienced significant growth, making it the peer-to-peer lending market leader for continental Europe with a 38% market share according to AltFi Data. Since their establishment, they have exceeded EUR 660 million in cumulative investments by investors and they expect the number of loans funded to reach EUR 1 billion by the end of the year.

Over the past years, Mintos have made considerable investments in technology, people and the marketplace, making the service even more convenient for investors. The number of investors has been growing in exponential numbers year on year. As an investor, this is reassuring, as I know I’m not alone using this platform, but I’m joined by tens of thousands of others like me.

On Mintos, you can expect returns between 6% and 18%, and the minimum investment per loan is €10.

Lonvest

Lonvest is a promising newcomer in the European P2P lending space, offering investors an opportunity to earn passive income through carefully selected loans. Despite being a relatively new platform, Lonvest has positioned itself as a serious player by focusing on transparency, investor security, and attractive returns.

The platform provides investors with access to loans that are backed by a reputable loan originator, ensuring a layer of protection against potential defaults. With a straightforward and user-friendly interface, investors can easily navigate their portfolios, set up automated strategies, and track their earnings in real time. Lonvest also offers competitive interest rates, making it an appealing choice for those looking to diversify their investment portfolios beyond traditional assets.

See also: In-depth review of Lonvest

One of the standout aspects of Lonvest is its commitment to building a sustainable and secure lending environment. The platform implements rigorous due diligence processes to assess loan quality and borrower credibility, ensuring that investors are exposed to well-vetted opportunities. Additionally, with buyback guarantees in place on many loans, investors have an extra layer of confidence when deploying their capital.

For those seeking a fresh yet reliable P2P lending option in Europe, Lonvest is certainly worth considering. Its combination of solid returns, transparency, and security features make it an attractive addition to any investor’s passive income strategy.

Swaper

Swaper is one of the latest entries into the P2P lending space in Europe, having started operations in May 2019. They have found success pretty quickly though, amassing more than 4000 active investors, 160m euro in investments and 2.1m euro in interest paid back to investors.

See also: In-depth review of Swaper

I really like this platform and the team has been extremely pleasant to deal with whenever I contacted them.

Join Swaper

PeerBerry

Launched in 2017, PeerBerry has been gaining quite a lot of popularity among peer-to-peer platforms recently. As with many crowdlending platforms, PeerBerry originated in the Baltics – specifically Riga, Latvia.

This platform has an average annual investment return of 11.51%, a solid return for most platforms. With more than 18,000 investors and over €212 million in funded loans, PeerBerry is certainly making some waves in the peer-to-peer business.

As with many peer-to-peer platforms, PeerBerry offers an Auto Invest function and a BuyBack guarantee. Unfortunately, however, no secondary market is available yet.

I really like this platform and its website. PeerBerry has the potential to be one of the big players in European P2P over the coming years.

Open an account with Peerberry

LANDE Finance

LANDE was started in 2019, when two experienced professionals from the secured lending sector Ņikita Gončars and Edgars Tālums became aware that there is a niche in the crowdlending market, as none of the existing market players offered low-LTV investment deals.

LANDE is going after the agricultural loans niche. There is currently a big gap between the financing needs of farmers in Eastern Europe and what’s available to them from banks and other lending providers.

Read more: My full review of LANDE

All projects are first rank mortgage, which is the most secure type of mortgage you can get. Other platforms offer second-rank mortgages which are riskier, but can have higher interest rates.

I would recommend having a look at LANDE as it might be one of the most innovative players in the space going forward. It’s worth mentioning that LANDE also has skin-in-the-game for every project launched.

Invest on LANDE

Bondora

Bondora is one of the oldest peer-to-peer lending platforms, and I joined early on in my P2P lending journey, around 2016.

While this platform has been criticized by investors in the past, my portfolio has been chugging along quite well over the years, and my only complaint would be about the graphics and UI of the platform, which I find really ugly.

Read more: My in-depth review of Bondora

I’ve obtained a return of 17% while investing on Bondora.

If you’re looking for a reliable platform I would recommend taking a look at Bondora, as they have one of the best track records in the industry.

Invest on Bondora

Profitus

Profitus is a Lithuanian real estate crowdfunding and investments platform that has been operating successfully since 2019.

Read more: My review of Profitus P2P lending

The platform acts as an intermediary between investors, who are looking to employ their free money and those who want to receive funding for business ideas and real estate projects.

Try Profitus

What about Other Platforms?

There are several other sites that I consider either a scam or badly managed and on the course toward bankruptcy and loss of investor funds. Be very careful who you trust when investing in these platforms.

Many people just want to paint a nice picture for any platform just to take in commissions, and the platforms themselves all try to emphasize how safe they are and what great opportunities they are offering to investors. Don’t believe everything, and check out my list of worst P2P lending platforms before you proceed.

If you’re concerned about the safety of P2P platforms, make sure you also read my post on whether it is safe to invest in P2P lending.

🌍 Who Can Invest in P2P Lending Sites?

These European lending sites are open to all European investors, possibly even those outside of Europe in some cases. The only exceptions are the UK-based platforms, which are typically restricted to investors resident in the UK. CapitalRise is one such example. It’s been around since 2005 but is restricted to UK-based people.

The majority of platforms that are open to other countries are based in the Baltic countries.

Many of these platforms are available in more than one language, precisely to cater for the fact that in Europe people speak so many different languages and might not be comfortable investing their money if the site is only available in English.

From my experience, at the moment in Europe, the country with the most investors in P2P lending is Germany, leading by a long margin. German investors love P2P platforms. Germany is a country where people have a high purchasing power and they are looking for good returns on their savings, and hence P2P lending platforms are a great match for them.

What Returns Can Lenders Expect?

The returns that lenders/investors can expect vary depending on the economic climate. If interest rates are low in general, then we can expect that platforms will offer lower rates as well. This is the current economic outlook worldwide. But 15-20 years ago bank interest rates were very high, so it would not have made sense to invest in P2P platforms when your savings account already rewarded you with 10% returns guaranteed.

Nowadays, you barely find any bank accounts giving you 1% returns, so the returns of 10-15% offered by P2P lending sites are way better in comparison.

It is important to understand that such investments are to be considered alternative investments with a rather high-risk profile. You will most probably have loans that default, but the idea is that the overall returns will eclipse these minor defaults.

Risks of P2P Lending

For each investment class, and indeed every investment you make, you need to carefully consider the risks involved. There’s a lot to say about the safety of P2P lending and what risks you need to consider, so I wrote a separate guide on whether P2P lending can be considered safe that you should find interesting.

Alternatives to P2P Lending

If, like myself, you want to diversify beyond P2P lending, I would suggest you read up on real estate crowdfunding platforms as well as crypto interest accounts. You can obtain similar rates of return (usually 3-4% less than P2P lending) but these other types of investors tend to be safer as they involve collateral.

✅ Conclusion

If you’re interested in trying out peer-to-peer loan platforms, I suggest you start with Peerberry or Swaper.

If you have any questions about any of the platforms I mentioned, or how the model of peer-to-peer loans works, please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Before you make any investment decisions, I also encourage you to have a look at how your country taxes proceeds from peer-to-peer lending. You can check out my article on how peer-to-peer lending is taxed to get started on this topic.

You should also read about the risks of P2P lending before making any investments, and make sure you are comfortable with that level of risk for the money you are putting into P2P lending platforms.

Have you invested in p2p lending platforms? What has been your experience with these platforms?

📈 What is the Best Cryptocurrency Portfolio Tracker?

Last updated: April 02, 202455 Comments

Buy cryptos

With thousands of crypto tradeable assets available, it is hard to keep track of your crypto portfolio these days. Even if you’re just buying and selling one or two different coins, you can quickly lose track of things, especially if you’re using several crypto exchanges or trading apps like Coinbase, Binance etc. Not to mention if you’ve been dabbling around in DeFi and DEXes like Uniswap and Sushiswap.

It is also important to track other crypto-related activities, for example when earning interest on your crypto through platforms like Nexo and YouHodler.

You could also be using one of the various crypto debit and credit cards, like Crypto.com, where for tax purposes you will need to keep track of every single purchase done with your card.

As you can see, it is important to know your positions in an easy way, and there is no better way than to use an app or software solution.

You need to know where you stand at all times:

to keep track of your overall investment
to be prepared when tax time comes along

Here are my favorite portfolio tracking and tax preparation tools.

CoinTracking

CoinTracking is the most complete portfolio tracker on the market. They have automatic import from exchanges built-in, and the interface is very clean. Their support is fantastic, and best of all, everything is free for those with few transactions. This is the system I would have built if I had to build a tracker myself.

CoinTracking analyzes your trades and generates real-time reports on profit and loss, the value of your coins, realized and unrealized gains, reports for taxes and much more. With the prices for 7666 coins and assets, you’ll always have a complete overview.

620K+ Active Users
750+ CPAs & Corporate Clients
11 Years of Historical Data
Coin Trends for 7666 Coins
$4.3B Total Value of all Portfolios

This is one of the earliest and most complete services available out there. They have two offerings, one for crypto traders and the other for crypto companies.

See also: My detailed review of Cointracking

CoinTracking.info has one of the most extensive customer service areas I have seen on tax reporting platforms. It has an elaborate documentation section that covers almost every question you might have. It also has a separate FAQ that caters to the most commonly asked questions.

There is even a CoinTracking.info robot ready at your disposal. This is all aside from the typical customer service tools such as communities, live chat, video tutorials, and email contact. There is also a demo version of the website available that can give you a good idea of what to expect once you start using the platform.

Of course, CoinTracking also calculates crypto taxes every year for you. Given that it’s still so hard to find competent accountants who understand crypto (plus it would be very expensive), it’s well worth it to pay for a tool like this that prepares everything for you. At any point, you can review your tax summary, and download the reports you need to file your taxes. CoinTracking is seamlessly integrated with TurboTax and your accountant’s software. Full support is offered in US, UK, Canada, Australia, and partial support for every other country. They are adding full support for other countries too, so check out the site for the latest list.

I’ve spoken to the founder of CoinTracker on my podcast Mastermind.fm, so check that episode out if you’re interested in learning more about the platform and crypto taxation in general.

You can not only connect it to your exchanges to pull in all the data about trades you’ve made, but you can also mark transfers to your Ledger Nano or other cold wallets so that they are not deducted from your overall balance.

In terms of exchanges, they practically support every exchange out there, including my favorites Binance and Binance. You can import your data automatically via API or upload a CSV of all your trades. Cointracker uses read-only access to your exchange accounts to protect your funds. That is very very important as it means that Cointracker will never have any permission to operate with your crypto.

Read more: The Best Books about Bitcoin and Crypto

This service offers a broad and comprehensive analysis of your crypto portfolio – which allows you to manage all your digital currency accounts at once.

Moreover, its longstanding reputation has allowed the CoinTracking.info team to update the platform regularly to cater to the changing needs of the crypto community.

To ensure the provider is right for you, CoinTracking.info also offers a free account to help you understand whether the platform can fit your tax reporting needs. Overall, CoinTracking.info comes across as one of the most efficient management tools you can use for your crypto portfolios.

Get your 10% discount on Cointracking plans

Koinly

Koinly was established in 2018 and has already generated more than 11,000 tax reports for its clients.

I like it since it’s not 100% US-focused, and as such you can use it to prepare your German, Italian, Spanish, French taxes along with many other countries. The team behind Koinly is composed of tax lawyers, accountants and engineers who study the tax implementations of many countries and make sure the software can support these systems as well as a plethora of worldwide exchanges.

See also: My detailed review of Koinly

Koinly automatically imports your transactions, finds all the market prices at the time of your trades, matches transfers between your own wallets, calculates your crypto gains/losses and generates your tax reports.

Check out Koinly

Cointelli

Cointelli is one of the most recent additions to the crypto tax reporting tools and to date, it is only available to US-based crypto investors who are after obtaining automated US-tax reports.

Established in 2021, Cointelli’s service is intended to ease the pressure of accurate tax reporting by automatically compiling your transactions from across your wallets and exchanges. Once it generates your transaction list, Cointelli’s software will consequently help you to easily fix any errors therein, prepare a comprehensive report for tax purposes based on the latest tax provisions and have it sent out to your accountant or other relevant tax platforms.

Apart from freeing up a great deal of precious time, Cointelli places a lot of effort into helping you generate the required stats and reports as accurately as possible, thus saving you from paying any unnecessary tax.

Cointelli’s pricing structure is lean with a one-size-fits-all price for consumers and customized packages for large transaction-volume enterprises. For a flat annual fee of $49, clients can benefit from all the Cointelli suites and services for up to 100,000 crypto transactions, be it DeFi, margin trades, or NFTs. This is very competitive pricing, particularly when a number of other platforms offering similar services, already start charging a higher fee as soon as transaction volume exceeds 100.

Cointelli also scores high in terms of support. It not only offers customer support via email and chat widget, but also provides 24/7 live customer service with dedicated tax experts.

Get your crypto tax report with Cointelli

CryptoTaxCalculator

Direct support for hundreds of exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase.
Handles staking rewards, airdrops, margin/futures trading, perpetuals, lost/stolen funds, ICOs, and much more.
Direct support for DeFi protocols such as Uniswap, PancakeSwap, Binance Smart Chain.
Pricing is an annual subscription, and you can cancel anytime, with a 30 day money back guarantee.
The plan covers all historical tax years so if you need to amend your tax return for previous tax years the plan has you covered.
Prices range from $49 (100 transactions); $99 (2,500 transactions); $249 (10,000 transactions), $399 (100,000 transactions).

Open an account with CryptoTaxCalculator

TokenTax

TokenTax is a crypto tax software platform and a full-service cryptocurrency tax accounting firm. This tool also takes care of tax-loss harvesting. If you hold assets at a loss, then you can save money on your taxes. TokenTax’s Tax Loss Harvesting dashboard tells you exactly how much losses you can claim by strategically selling off assets.

Read more: My in-depth review of TokenTax

Tax loss harvesting is selling off assets you hold at a loss to reduce your capital gains. When you reduce your capital gains, you owe less taxes. And, if you take a loss in crypto, you can offset other capital gains in assets like stocks.

Support for margin trading is also included.

Check out Tokentax

Cryptotrader

CryptoTrader.Tax takes away the pain of preparing your bitcoin and crypto taxes. Simply connect your exchanges, import trades, and download your tax report in minutes.

Check out Cryptotrader

Kubera

Kubera helps you to organize all your wealth in one place and keep regular track of your net worth in a very simple intuitive way. In fact, Kubera is a more holistic tracker than the above platforms in that apart from automatically tracking your crypto position and NFT holdings, it also captures your bank and brokerage accounts, real estate, vehicles, domains and metals. Kubera also allows you to manually input any other assets you own so that you can obtain a comprehensive view of your net worth in real-time.

Kubera will also provide you charts with analytics showing you how your net worth and investments changed over time. Every update to your asset value is kept in history to go back in time to see how you fared. It also allows you to keep an eye on the asset allocation and statistics indicating which asset experienced the highest appreciation or depreciation.

Kubera also calculates accurate rate of returns (IRR) for all your investments based on the multiple contributions & withdrawals and the time invested. It also benchmarks the IRR with the returns from popular indices and tickers (S&P 500, Dow Jones, AAPL, BTC etc.).

See also: My detailed review of Kubera

Another handy feature of Kubera is the possibility to store important financial or asset documents on the platform.

Through Kubera you will also be able to share a read-only link of your portfolio with others. In addition, with Kubera’s “Life Beat” feature you can allow portfolio and document access to your beneficiary of choice, however only after extended periods of inactivity.

Check out Kubera

How to Easily Prepare Your Crypto Taxes

So you’ve fallen down the crypto rabbit hole, started buying and selling some Bitcoin, then bought some Ether, and perhaps even ventured further to buy some other altcoins.

After some time, seeing that you’re profiting massively, you decide to sell some of your tokens. Sometime later, you decide to buy a new token that you believe will revolutionize the world.

The problem is, of course, keeping track of all these purchases and sales. You want to keep track of whether you’re actually turning a profit or not, plus you need to calculate what you owe your country’s taxman at the end of the year.

Crypto taxes are a complex topic, but I’ve done my best to summarise the situation in several major countries, so check out my post on how Bitcoin and other cryptos are taxed around the world.

So what are your options for crypto tax preparation?

You could keep track of things manually using a tool like Excel, but this quickly gets out of hand, especially if you’re trading on multiple platforms or have multiple wallets.

The better solution is to use an online crypto tax preparation tool.

All the tools mentioned in this post can help you in preparing your taxes apart from acting as a handy crypto portfolio.

If you’re preparing your crypto taxes for the first time, I would suggest you check out my favorite portfolio/tax preparation tools:

Depending on what your needs are, what jurisdiction you’re in, and what your budget is, you can choose one of those platforms. All three of them are excellent and run by serious people, so you cannot go wrong.

What’s your favorite crypto tax preparation tool?

MyTripleA Review – Better Alternatives Exist

Last updated: January 19, 20222 Comments

MyTripleA is a Spanish investment platform launched in 2015. It is the first and only Spanish crowdlending platform that has been granted two licenses to operate:

Payment Entity license granted by the Ministry for Economics and supervised by the Bank of Spain
License to act as a Crowdfunding Platform (since July 2016) registered at the CNMV.

MyTripleA offers two ways to invest:

Fixed and guaranteed returns that are based on the Euribor rate + 2%.
Non-guaranteed loans with a higher interest rate.

Guaranteed and Fixed Returns Loans

They offer guaranteed deposits and returns through collaborating with SGR (Sociedades de Garantia Reciproca). These entities are supervised by the Bank of Spain and guarantee payments in case that other companies are unable to pay.

In this way, there is no need to diversify since all the loans are guaranteed. MyTripleA says that they use the same SGRs as the banks themselves. Hence you are getting the same security as you would when putting your money in a savings account at the bank. However, you get a much better rate of return.

MyTripleA says that the difference between what they offer and what the banks offer is due to the fact that banks keep a much larger commission for themselves, and hence MyTripleA are passing on to their clients a bigger share of the profits.

In case that there are any delays or defaults affecting your loans, the SGR will return any capital invested plus interest. This will take place after the 3rd failed payment. The maximum period between the failed payment and the compensation date is 60 days.

When investing in these fixed returns loans, you commit your money for a total of 36 quotas, in other words, you won’t be able to withdraw your money for three years. During this period you will be receiving monthly interest and capital repayments.

Non-Guaranteed Loans

While the guaranteed loans are certainly a nice way to park a sum of money and get safe returns, they are not that interesting to me at this stage. I am still young and am more interested in generating good returns while undertaking a medium risk rather than focusing fully on low risk. This is why I was more interested in the non-guaranteed loans that MyTripleA offers.

When I decided to invest, there were a few non-guaranteed loans available. I decided to go with a factory that needed the money to buy supplies of rubber and plastic. The company is based in Cantabria and was looking for a total of €7,350 in funding. In return, they offered a 6% annual interest rate. This was a relatively short-term loan of just three months, which made it very attractive to me.

MyTripleA does a good job at providing a risk analysis for each loan as well as details about the company and the loan itself.

Below is the introduction of the loan and its details.

They gave it a D rating with a 3.99% of loss of funds. In that eventuality, I would have not

The MyTripleA website is only available in Spanish at this stage.

As with other Spanish platforms, MyTripleA deducts 19% of all your interest payments.

I feel that the website itself is a bit old-fashioned and there isn’t much activity really. This has made me somewhat lose confidence in MyTripleA and I have decided to pull out all my funds from this platform. The 19% tax deduction doesn’t help either. The idea is good but they need to modernize themselves and make sure that investors always have plenty of diverse loans to choose from.

I would recommend having a look at some better platforms like Mintos, Swaper and Peerberry instead.

Have you invested your money with MyTripleA? What’s your experience so far?

How Are Profits from Peer to Peer Loans Taxed?

Last updated: February 18, 20211 Comment

If you’ve been investing in P2P loan platforms such as Mintos or Twino, you will need to know how the profits you make will be taxed.

This is a general rule for all your investments. Always consider the tax impact of any investment you do. Different asset classes and investments can be taxed in different ways, so you need to look at that as it will affect your net return, sometimes in a drastic way.

The UK tax authority has issued a good guide that should be applicable to many other countries in the EU too, although it’s always important to check with your country’s authorities for specific guidance.

The advantage of peer to peer loans for lenders is that they can generate higher interest rates that exceed the interest that could be earned from banks and other financial institutions.

P2P loan platforms also give borrowers an alternative to the finance which they may get from standard financial intermediaries.

[Read more…]

🏠 Planet Home Review 2024 – How I Invest in German Real Estate

Last updated: September 28, 202415 Comments

In this article, I will tell you why I chose to invest in the German real estate market, specifically through the Planet Home platform.

The German real estate market has been on a boom for a number of years now, so I decided to investigate the situation and see whether it’s potentially a good investment.

It turns out that German cities have statistically been Europe’s most highly favored real estate investment for the past few years, as investors seek out well-performing safe-haven assets.

Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich represent four of the top five European markets for real estate investment and development; the other being Dublin.

Recent data from Real Capital Analytics confirms that Germany has overtaken the UK in post-EU-referendum investment volumes. Although London remains Europe’s primary market for global capital – it has fallen in the city rankings for investment and development prospects.

Since the Brexit vote, Germany has enjoyed a pick-up in interest. Meanwhile, real estate investment trusts in Germany and Scandinavia have risen since the Brexit vote to trade at premiums to the value of their assets, a sign that investors feel their cash is safer there.

With more than 80 million people, Germany is Europe’s highest populated country. It boasts Europe’s strongest economy, which is now the fourth largest in the world, and has approximately 42.8 million people in employment.

Factor in that Germany has one of the most productive economies in the world and a booming export market and it becomes understandable as to why its property market attracts large amounts of international capital. A total of EUR70 billion was invested in the sector, for example, between 2010 and 2015, with Germany attracting nearly half of the capital invested in Europe’s residential property sector.

The German Real Estate Situation

As I was doing research on the German real estate market, I learned some surprising facts. Apartment viewings often turn into mass events, with 50 or 60 would-be tenants turning up at an appointment.

Many bring application portfolios with detailed information on their earnings, their creditworthiness and their family situation. It can be insanely difficult to find an apartment, and you are still expected to pay a deposit of 2-3 months rent. At least the agency fee is paid by the landlord, which is not the case in Spain, for example. One other curiosity is that most apartments don’t come with a fitted kitchen; you have to install it yourself.

In Hamburg, apartment prices rose by 70 percent between 2010 and 2015. They are expected to surge by another 50 percent by 2030. A three-room flat can cost around $450,000 (400,000 euros) in residential areas close to the city center.

Not all regions have registered rapid property price increases, however. Even in cities like Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, high rental prices in the newbuild segment have not necessarily been matched by high rents in the existing rental property sector.

Secondly, price increases have been driven by population growth, the ongoing trend toward urbanization, and strong economic fundamentals, combined with historically low interest rates. At the same time, Germany’s rental housing sector has seen vacancy rates fall close to zero.

Finally, loan-to-value ratios are typically no more than 75 percent, which underscores the financial soundness of the German market.

Let’s have a look at some of the major cities and how they’re faring. One important rule of real estate investing is that you need to be looking at cities rather than countries in general, as the dynamics can be totally different from one city to another with the same country.

Berlin: Full boom at the moment, with a rapidly growing demographic as more people move into the city from all over Europe given its development in sectors such as technology.

Frankfurt: Another city that is in full swing, it is benefiting from Brexit news and the promise to become the financial centre of Europe in the coming years.

Cologne: Demand exceeds supply in this city, so the forecast is good for investment in the next few years.

Dusseldorf: The luxury property market is getting saturated, but there is still demand for basic housing.

Hamburg: Gentrification is underway in several areas and this is paving the way for further growth in the property market.

Munich: Prices have risen very far and are approaching London territory. Locals find it very hard to keep up with rental prices and are even more priced out when it comes to buying. Rent has not yet risen as much in comparison to purchase prices.

The PB3C website is an excellent source for updated news about the real estate market in Germany, it is worth following.

How to Invest in German Property – The Easy Way

The volume of investment raised by crowd-investing platforms for property developments and redevelopments has been doubling every year and there are no signs of saturation yet.

Planet Home, previously known as iFunded, is the leading property crowdfunding website in Germany. They have a very nice interface and all the information is well presented in German and also in English. They are open to investors all over Europe and signing up is super easy.

To get verified, you will need to download the Deutsche Post app and then arrange for a video chat through the app. A Deutsche Post employee will call you and take a photo of yourself and your passport in order to complete verification. It’s one of the swiftest and most straightforward ways of verification that I’ve encountered so far. In this sense, the platform lives up to the German standards of professionalism and organized way of working.

Planet Home offers two types of investments: bonds and loans.

Bonds belong to the investment class of securities under the German Securities Trading Act (Wertpapierhandelsgesetz, WpHG), in which creditor rights, in particular interest and repayment of the borrowed money, are securitized.

A subordinated loan is a debt to the receiver which ranks below senior loans and is regulated under the provisions of the German Investment Provisions Act (Vermögensanlagengesetz, VermAnlG).

The minimum investment is EUR500 and the maximum is EUR10,000 as a private investor. Returns can be as much as 7% per year, which is excellent when you keep in mind the low risk profile of the German market.

The investment is paid back at the end of the investment term, which varies from project to project but is already determined during the Funding Phase. Interest is either paid during the project in the course of the year or at the end of the term. This depends on the project. The Planet Home platform receives marketing fees from the project developers. These include a one-time fee per project and ongoing fees depending on the duration of the project.

My experience

I have so far invested in two projects on the Planet Home platform, and there were absolutely no problems whatsoever. At the end of the loan period, I received a transfer in my bank account to cover the principal plus interest. I also got an easy-to-understand statement about the transaction that I could then use for presenting my tax returns.

Planet Home is definitely a platform that can be relied upon if you’re looking for a safe investment in German real estate, and I’ll continue investing here for the foreseeable future.

Invest in German real estate through Planet Home