Jean Galea

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How to Easily Invest in Portuguese Real Estate

Last updated: February 09, 20213 Comments

Earlier on in another post, I wrote about how I invest in Spanish real estate, and this time I’d like to take a look at another hot European market: Portugal.

The best platform I have found for investing lower amounts and building a diversified portfolio of Portuguese property is Housers. Apart from investing in Portuguese real estate, with Housers you can also invest in Spanish and Italian property.

So how do you go about it?

The first step is to join Housers. When clicking this link you get a free 50 Euros to invest. This platform is open to all European investors, and it’s very easy to join.

Once you have created your account, you can take a look at all the investment opportunities that are available at that point in time. Keep in mind that most opportunities are filled pretty quickly, so don’t dwell on things too long. My strategy is to invest small amounts in many properties. In this way, I can briefly skim through the financials and plans for each property and make a quick decision, knowing that in the worst case I wouldn’t be hit with a big financial loss.

As you can see in the screenshot above, there are different types of opportunities and they each present different rates of return. At the moment, Housers you can invest in properties in Spain, Portugal and Italy. No doubt more countries will be added later on.

Let’s use our Portuguese investment as a case study. To invest in the Campo de Ourique property, you would need to click on the opportunity and you will be taken to the details page. Here you will be able to check out the plans for this apartment including graphical renders as well as financial projections. You can then take a decision on what amount of money you wish to invest.

In this particular case, Housers is looking for a total of 193,000 Euro in order to finance the purchase and refurbishing of the property. The plan is to sell after 5 years, so this is a property that will be refurbished and rented out, giving us a monthly return (dividend). As you can deduce, this is the same as buying a property, renting it out and collecting the monthly rent. With Housers however, you don’t have to worry about maintenance and all the other administrative tasks, plus you get the opportunity to diversify over many different locations, types of buildings and countries.

The listing includes location information, building plans and renders. The annual return is projected to be around 4%, which is quite good considering what the banks are currently offering for savings accounts. Of course, you are assuming more risk than when you leave money in the bank account, but you are being well compensated for it.

Keep in mind that your profits from Portuguese Housers investments will be taxed at 28% at source, but you can credit that against the tax payable in your country of residence. Portugal might also have a double taxation treaty in place with your country which reduces the tax rate further, but you’d have to claim that from the Portuguese authorities which isn’t very practical.

So once you’re ready to invest, you enter the amount, in this example 2,000 Euro. You can then finance the purchase of shares using your Housers account or using your bank’s credit/debit card. Once that selection is done, you can go ahead and confirm the investment. That’s it, you’re now an investor in Portuguese property. You will be updated regularly with new developments about the property.

Let me know if you have any questions about investing in Portuguese real estate via Houses, and I’ll be happy to help based on my experience.

Invest in Portuguese real estate via Housers

Filed under: Money, Real estate

🏠 iFunded Review 2021 – How I Invest in German Real Estate

Last updated: February 24, 202112 Comments

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

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.

iFunded 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 iFunded 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.

Alternatives

There are many other real estate platforms that you could check out, although most of them do not offer properties in Germany. The top three I would recommend checking out are the following, with the first one also offering properties in Germany:

  • Rendity
  • Reinvest24
  • Crowdestate

My experience

I have so far invested in one project on the iFunded 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.

iFunded 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.

At the moment they are running a promotion whereby you get a €50 bonus on your first investment with the code BANN3R. Click the link below and then apply the code during sign up.

Invest in German real estate through the iFunded platform

Filed under: Money, Real estate

The Best Crypto Resources

Last updated: April 20, 20218 Comments

Here’s a collection of my favorite resources from the world of cryptocurrency, ICOs, tokens and blockchains.

If you’re new to the world of crypto and you’re feeling overwhelmed, I’ll start out with a section that’s just for you.

Books

Crypto History

  • Digital Gold (story of Bitcoin)
  • The Infinite Machine (story of Ethereum)
  • The Book of Satoshi

Crypto Economics

  • The Bitcoin Standard
  • Layered Money
  • The Price of Tomorrow
  • Cryptoassets
  • This Book Will Save You Time

Technical

  • Grokking Bitcoin
  • Mastering Bitcoin
  • Mastering Ethereum
  • Programming Bitcoin
  • Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies
  • Smart Custody

General Concepts

  • The Internet of Money (3 volumes)
  • The Little Bitcoin Book
  • Blockchain Bubble or Revolution
  • Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains
  • Cryptoassets guide for investment professionals (pdf)
  • How to DeFi

Binance Research

Courses

  • Saylor Academy Bitcoin for Everybody

Crypto Twitter

  • My Crypto list

Crypto Prices and Exchange Liquidity

  • Coinmarketcap

Exchanges

  • Coinbase
  • Binance
  • Bitpanda
  • Bitwala
  • Kraken
  • Localbitcoins
  • Comparison of many platforms

Leveraged Trading Platforms

  • Bitfinex
  • Bitmex
  • Exmo
  • CEX
  • Fulrum

Decentralized Exchanges

  • Uniswap
  • 0X
  • Bisq

Crypto Borrowing & Lending

  • BlockFi
  • YouHodler

See my post on the best crypto interest accounts and lending platforms.

Important Websites

  • Bitcoin.org
  • Ethereum Project
  • Nakamoto Institute

Ethereum

  • Gas Prices

Lightning Network

  • Lightning Network official page
  • Breez
  • Lightning Labs
  • Lightning information

Crypto News & Blogs

  • Cryptoheadlines – Crypto news aggregator
  • Dailycoin – Your daily crypto guide
  • Advancing Bitcoin Blog

Resource Websites

  • The Case for Bitcoin
  • Keepitsimple Bitcoin
  • UpFolio’s Crypto Guides

Inheritance

  • Crypto inheritance guides

Cryptocurrency Hedge and VC Funds

  • 1confirmation
  • A16z
  • Alameda Research
  • Arrington XRP Capital
  • Binance Labs
  • Bitwise index fund
  • Blockchain Capital
  • BoostVC
  • CMS Holdings
  • Coinbase Ventures
  • Coinfund
  • DeFiance Capital
  • Digital Currency Group
  • Dragonfly Capital
  • Electric Capital
  • Fabric Ventures
  • Framework Ventures
  • Fenbushi Capital
  • Galaxy Digital
  • Grayscale
  • Hashkey Capital
  • Huobi Capital/Exchange
  • Kinetic Capital
  • LedgerPrime Capital
  • Multicoin Capital
  • Pantera Capital
  • ParaFi Capital
  • Paradigm
  • Placeholder Ventures
  • Polychain Capital
  • Three Arrows Capital
  • Union Square Ventures
  • Winklevoss Capital
  • Crypto fund costs

Crypto Tax Calculators

  • Cointracker
  • Cryptotrader
  • Cointracking
  • Taxbit

Crypto Custodians

  • BitGo Custody
  • Vo1t
  • Gemini Custody
  • Bitcoin Suisse Vault
  • Coinbase Custody
  • Fidelity Custody
  • Bakkt
  • itBit
  • Knox Custody
  • Kingdom Trust
  • Onchain Custodian
  • Copper
  • Unchained Capital (collaborative custody)
  • Casa (collaborative custody) – see docs too
  • Sygnum Bank

You can also check the custodian comparison site for further options.

Crypto-Friendly Banks in Europe

  • Bankera (an EMI with a shady past – use only as a last resort)

News Sites (Spanish)

  • El Bitcoin

Newsletters

  • Bravenewcoin
  • Cryptocompare

Portfolio Managers

  • Cointracker
  • Excel sheet

Consultancy

  • Jakub from Finematics
  • Ministry of Nodes

Run Your Own Node

  • Umbrel
  • RaspiBlitz
  • RoninDojo
  • MyNode
  • Feature Comparison

Inheritance Solutions

  • Casa Inheritance

APIs

  • Nomics
  • Whale Alert

Wallets

  • Mobile wallet – Exodus
  • Mobile wallet – Argent (for DeFi)
  • Mobile wallet – MyCelium (Android)
  • Hardware wallet – Ledger Nano X
  • Hardware wallet – Trezor Model T
  • Wallet Scrutiny

Read my article about hot wallets too.

The Software wallet comparison compiled by Veriphi is a very good additional resource if you’re not sure what to go for.

Price Alerts

  • TargetMoon (10 free alerts)
  • Coindera (free for email alert, paid for SMS alerts)
  • Coinmarketalert
  • Coinwink
  • Cryptoloom

ICOs

  • ICO Stats and performance
  • ICO Calendar
  • Valuing crypto tokens
  • Useless Ethereum Token

Earn Bitcoin

  • Microlancer

Bitcoin Art

  • Lucho Poletti

Stats and Analytics

  • Santiment
  • Clarkmoody’s dashboard
  • Mempool space
  • Mempool observer
  • Transaction stats
  • Bytetree Terminal
  • Currencies used to trade Bitcoin
  • Barchart Crypto
  • Bitinfocharts Crypto
  • Intotheblock
  • Defi pulse
  • Coin.dance
  • Bitcoin treasuries – Bitcoin treasuries in public companies
  • Statoshi – node stats
  • Howmanyconfs

Block Explorers

  • Blockstream
  • OXT
  • KYCP
  • Sochain

Accepting Bitcoin Payments

  • BTCPay
  • Bitpay
  • GoCrypto

Debit Cards

  • Wirex
  • Cryptopay
  • Uquid
  • Spectro

Charts

  • Bitcoinvisuals – many Bitcoin charts under one roof – especially technical related.
  • Moonstats
  • Cryptowatch
  • Bitcoincharts
  • Tradingview
  • Wallminer
  • Tradinglite
  • Metatrader

Bitcoin ATMs

  • FindBitcoinATM

Domain Registrars

  • Unstoppable domains
  • Ethereum Name Service

Trading Courses

  • Technical Analysis for Cryptocurrencies
  • Entries and Exits

Podcasts

  • What Bitcoin Did
  • The Pomp
  • Stephan Livera Podcast
  • The Flippening
  • Unchained
  • The Breakdown
  • Base Layer
  • The Delphi Podcast
  • Untold Stories
  • Epicenter
  • Let’s Talk Bitcoin
  • Epicenter
  • The Bitcoin Game
  • Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast
  • The Gift of Bitcoin – excellent for beginners

YouTube Channels

  • Andreas Antonopoulos – Fundamentals and Technical
  • DataDash – Trading
  • Technical Roundup – Trading
  • Off Chain with Jimmy Song – Bitcoin

Research

  • The Block Crypto
  • Arcane Research
  • Delphi Digital
  • Bitwise Investments
  • Consensys

DeFi

  • Fast DeFi tutorial
  • Bankless
  • DeFi Pulse
  • DeFi Rate
  • DeFi Dad
  • The Daily Gwei
  • DeFi Weekly
  • The Defiant
  • Pools.fyi – Top Liquidity Pools
  • DAPP Radar

DeFi Aggregators

  • Zerion
  • Matcha
  • Harvest
  • Zapper

White Papers

  • Bitcoin white paper
  • Ethereum white paper

Trading Bots and Automation

  • Coinrule
  • Shrimpy
  • 3Commas
  • Zenbot
  • Gekko
  • Kryll
  • Gunbot
  • Cryptohopper
  • Tradesanta
  • Zignaly
  • Mudrex
  • ExchangeValet

Forums

  • BitcoinTalk
  • Reddit
  • Forobits (Spanish)

Privacy

  • Hodl Privacy FAQ
  • Bitcoin-only

Mining Pools

  • F2Pool

Deals

  • Bitcoinblackfriday

Bitcoin-only sites

  • Bitcoin Q n A
  • Keep it Simple Bitcoin
  • Casebitcoin
  • 10 hours of Bitcoin
  • Bitcoin Only
  • Bitcoiner Guide
  • Bitcoinwallet guide
  • Bitcoin node guide
  • Bitcoin intro
  • Bitcoin optech
  • Bitcoin devlist
  • 21ism – bitcoin inspired creativity
  • We run Bitcoin
  • Lopp’s bitcoin information and resources
  • Advancing Bitcoin
  • 10X security guide
  • Wallets recovery

Telegram Groups

  • No Bullshit Bitcoin

Articles

  • What is Cryptocurrency?
  • Money, Blockchains and Social Scalability by Nick Szabo
  • A Beginner’s Guide to Ethereum
  • What is Ethereum? A step-by-step guide
  • Fat Protocols
  • Why Bitcoin Matters
  • Privacy coins; how they work and why they’re needed
  • Why HODL not HOLD

More Resource Lists

  • Bitcoin Only
  • Jameson Lopp’s list
  • GitHub List

Any other resources I forgot to mention?

Filed under: Cryptoassets, Money

📈 I’m New to Investing, Where do I Start From?

Last updated: April 18, 202117 Comments

Many people think that their money is safe at the bank and they don’t need to do anything with their savings. Well, here’s the inconvenient truth: by leaving money in the bank and not investing it, you’re actually losing money every year, to the tune of around 3% in most developed nations. This is due to the effects of inflation.

Here’s the way inflation works. One euro today will buy more products than one euro next year, and the effect is compounded over the years.

If you’re 30 years old or over, you will probably remember clearly the times when everything was much cheaper. I remember, for example, the price of a pizza around 25 years ago being just a quarter of what it is now. That means that if I had kept all my money in the bank without investing it, over this period of time it would be worth much less, hence I would have actually lost a lot of value.

The obvious remedy to the problem of inflation is therefore that of investing our savings. Before you rush out and invest everything, make sure you know where you’re putting your money and have a proper strategy in place. I suggest you learn as much as possible about investing, without relying too much on financial advisers, as typically they will be looking after their own interests not yours.

Apart from traditional investments where you get a yearly return in the shape of dividends, profits or returns on loans, many people are now deciding to convert their fiat currencies into cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The major attraction in Bitcoin is that it is deflationary rather than inflationary. Since it has a limited supply, as time goes by the value of each bitcoin will increase rather than increase. This is the total opposite of fiat currencies, where, as we mentioned earlier, one dollar/euro today will be worth less tomorrow.

How are you fighting the effects of inflation?

I get this question frequently enough from friends and people who land on this blog. To provide a quick reference, if you want to start investing your money through online platforms, there are a few different ways you can do it:

  • Property crowdfunding
  • Business and personal finance (loans)
  • Stock market
  • Online properties (websites, apps etc)
  • Cryptocurrencies
  • Forex

The level of risk and expertise needed to operate in the above markets differs wildly, so I’ll try to give some further pointers as to what to start off from. I will also include the expected level of return per year one should be aiming for.

Property Crowdfunding

I think this is a pretty safe and low-risk investment given that you are purchasing real estate, which historically has held its value very well. As always, you need to be vigilant in what properties you invest in and diversify as much as possible.

I recommend diversifying geographically, for examples having properties in various locations around the UK, Spain, and Italy. You can also diversify on property types, such as buy-to-let, flipping, and even property-backed loans.

These are my favorite platforms:

  • iFunded – Germany
  • Bulkestate – Estonia
  • Brickstarter – Spain
  • Property Moose – UK
  • CrowdProperty– UK

You can read about my favorite real estate platforms in Europe as of 2020, where I go into more depth about these platforms and online real estate investment in general.

I have already posted about how to invest in the Spanish property market, and I think it is one of the hottest markets at the moment, so definitely give that article a look if you’re interested in this asset class. If you’re interested in other markets, check out my guides on investing in the German market, the Portuguese real estate market, and the Italian property market.

Expected yearly return: 4-12%

Business and Personal Finance (Loans)

This might initially sound like a fishy area, but really it’s not. After the last financial crisis, banks tightened up their lending procedures, and while that was, in general, a good thing, it also left a lot of people out in the cold and unable to get a loan.

In Europe, this is a big problem in many Eastern European countries as well as other Western European countries like Spain too. With interest rates being as low as they are at the moment, the situation created was that of people in Western Europe having money to invest and on the other hand people in Eastern Europe needing cash for business or personal needs. The resulting opportunity created the rise of loan platforms that are doing so well today.

With these loan platforms, you can choose to diversify your investments over hundreds or thousands of loans across many countries. You can also choose to diversify as to what types of loans you want to invest in. For example: business loans, car loans, home refurbishing loans, bridging loans, etc.

My recommended platforms in this space:

  • Mintos
  • Peerberry
  • October

You can read more about what I consider to be the best P2P lending platforms in Europe 2020, or my mega review of Mintos.

Expected yearly return: 8-12%

Stock Market

The stock market is one of the most well-known ways of investing, so I won’t spend much time on it. I will only say that you should really think twice about using financial advisors and investment brokers, as they are mostly just salesmen who make money on the amount of products they manage to sell to you. In other words, they aren’t really on your side.

Research has shown that most index funds perform better than actively managed funds, so you don’t need to be paying hefty commissions every year for someone to manage your funds. You can use index investing to your benefit, especially now that roboadvisors are taking the place of fund managers. A great European platform for roboadvisor-based index investing is Finizens.

Another great strategy would be to go for dividend growth investing. There are tons of websites of investors who detail their month to month earnings using this strategy. I like the idea of dividend growth investing when compared to index investing for the following reasons:

  • No yearly commissions to pay (indexing can cost 0.5 to 1% of your total sum invested)
  • You choose which companies to put in your portfolio. You can thus avoid companies that you don’t want to support. For example, being a health-conscious person, I don’t want to invest in and support Coca-Cola. So that company would be out of my dividend growth portfolio, even though it has a great track record. Same goes for McDonalds.
  • It’s more exciting, depending on your personality, to actually choose which companies you want to be a part-owner of, and track them year over year. On the downside, it also takes more time.

If you’re interested in learning more about dividend growth investing, I would recommend the Dividend Growth Investor website.

With both strategies, you would then use an online stock broker to purchase your shares or ETFs.

Expected yearly return: 10%+

Gold and Silver Bullion

First of all, what the heck is bullion? Bullion is gold and silver that is officially recognized as being at least 99.5% pure and is in the form of bars or ingots rather than coins.

The word bullion comes from the French Minister of Finance under Louis XIII, Claude de Bullion. To create bullion, gold first must be discovered by mining companies and removed from the earth in the form of gold ore, a combination of gold and mineralized rock. The gold is then extracted from the ore with the use of chemicals or extreme heat.

See also: Should you invest in gold right now?

With that out of the way, we can now talk about where to buy, store and sell bullion online. The storage part is key here. Most probably, you won’t want to worry about storing your own gold or silver in a safe place. That’s why platforms like BullionVault take care of storage for you. Of course, you can also buy and sell on the platform.

One important factor to consider with bullion: Gold and silver have no intrinsic value.  They aren’t a productive asset. Compare them to stocks. When you own a share of stock, you own a piece of a business that produces goods and/or services to consumers.  A good business generates a profit.  Every year that passes, gold remains sitting in the vault, but the owner of a company such as Apple or Nike might have a giant pile of cash from the profit generated over that same year.

When evaluating the performance of gold as an investment over the long term, it really depends on how long a term one is considering. Over a 45-year period, gold has outperformed stocks and bonds; over a 30-year period, stocks and bonds have outperformed gold; and over a 15-year period, gold has outperformed stocks and bonds.

Gold returns in recent decades

Many investors don’t really consider bullion to be an investment at all. Rather, the precious metal acts as a hedge, or a way to try to protect wealth against the risk of loss in such asset classes as real estate, equities, and bonds. There’s the doomsday scenario reasoning too, which argues that in the case of a global financial collapse or armageddon, gold and silver will be some of the only things with value attached. People will first value food and shelter that cover their basic needs, and soon after demand will start again for gold and silver as people seek to build a store of wealth or impress others.

Needless to say, gold and silver are a very contentious asset, with strong arguments both for and against. In my opinion, if you have money to spare, it wouldn’t hurt to keep some of your net worth in gold as a hedging mechanism. I would give priority to nailing good investments in some of the other categories above, however.

You can use Bullionvault to invest in gold.

Expected yearly return: Nobody knows really, it could be negative returns to double-digit positive returns. It’s more of a hedging mechanism than something you invest with hopes of a specific rate of return.

Online Properties

By online properties, I mean websites or mobile apps. Chances are you know of a friend or friend of a friend who has achieved some degree of success by owning a website or a mobile app. This is your chance to do the same, but rather than starting from scratch, you buy an existing up-and-coming website, or indeed one that’s well established and turning a healthy profit.

You need to be careful in evaluating such online properties, but they can give returns of 40% plus per year, which is super attractive compared to other opportunities. If you know what you’re doing, the risk-reward ratio is very much in your favor.

Bew careful about pure Amazon affiliate sites. If you’re relying 100% on Amazon commissions and you think that you’re your own boss – think again. Amazon owns your ass. For example, they recently decided to cut the commissions for a set of categories by up to 80%.

It’s a good business move by them, IMO, and nothing new (link). Diversification is key. Sites that have multiple traffic and revenue sources are the ones that achieve the highest multiples. If you rely on one or two sources, you’re not playing the long-term game. You’re just looking for quick-wins.

To learn more about buying and selling online properties, check out my guide to flipping websites and the Empire Flippers podcast.

Domain Magnate and OnFolio are two platforms that you can use to invest in website group buys where you don’t necessarily have to manage things yourself.

I think that there are some niches that are better than others. I’ve been looking at several niches and so far the best I’ve seen are online marketing, personal finance, investing, and technology. Fitness websites also interest me a lot but it’s really hard to make a decent dime on those without ending up promoting rubbish products.

Expected yearly return: 40%+

Cryptocurrencies

This is probably the only current way to make really big profits (or losses) in a relatively short time. You can refer to my post about cryptocurrency resources to learn more about this area. It’s definitely a super interesting way to invest your money, and possibly cryptos will revolutionize our lives in the very near future. At the very least, you should keep yourself informed about what’s happening in this space, even if you don’t invest.

To get started with cryptos, read my guide to investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and my opinion on whether you should buy Bitcoin now.

As for resources, you can check out my list of favorite cryptocurrency resources.

Projected returns are hard to predict in such a nascent space. David Fauchier, the founder and chief investment officer at Cambrial Capital, said 20% net returns is the benchmark for him in terms of crypto trading. It’s about being able to achieve those returns even when the overall market is flat, not just in times of volatility.

I think that 20% figure makes sense for a fund, but as an individual investor/trader, the returns can be much higher.

Expected yearly return: 100%+

Forex

I have very little experience in this area of investing, but from what I can gather you really need to know what you’re doing to be successful. It is also very hands-on and you need to be monitoring charts daily to buy and sell currencies for profit. I would suggest staying away from forex unless you’re really attracted to it and love technical analysis and charting.

Expected yearly return (with a good dose of luck): 30-40%

My recommended platform: eToro

Other Platforms

The United States is a veritable treasure trove of investing platforms, and some of them are also open to international investors. Because there are too many to mention one-by-one, you can check this mega-list of investing platforms below and explore further on your own.

I hope this short summary will help you get a good idea of all the options available. If you have any questions or would like me to write more in-depth about any of these topics, please let me know.

I also recommend checking out JP Morgan’s market insights page for a deep and comprehensive overview of the world’s markets and expectations.

Need further advice?

If you still feel lost or unsure on how to progress with your finances and investment, it would be a good idea to get some coaching or consultancy. I don’t offer such services myself, however I can recommend my friend Shlomo Freund who does an excellent job and is truly dedicated to helping people with their finances.

Check out Shlomo’s consultancy offering here

Filed under: Money

👎 Housers Review 2021 – Avoid this platform!

Last updated: February 16, 202113 Comments


Update March 2021:

So far I’ve had a few loans get delayed, SAN ANDRÉS, La Boladilla Village, La Boladilla Beach. I’m not too happy with how things were done on these projects. All investors were called to vote, however, the results of the vote were not announced nor have investors been notified via email about the results. In the case of San Andres, the developer promised to have the project completed before the end of 2019, but then failed to communicate again before the end of the year.

At this point, I have decided to exercise more caution when investing in Spanish properties. I’m going to concentrate on other countries for the majority of my investments, as the Spanish investments have been lacking professionalism in some ways. Development loans, in particular, are quite risky in my opinion.

As of March 2021, 36% of the projects on Housers have been delayed. Rather than address this problem, Housers seems to continue focusing on marketing with great aplomb as if everything is fine. Therefore my respect for this platform has greatly diminished and I will not continue investing in it.

I had written some parts of the review below before the COVID crisis and I’ll keep it here until we know for sure how things turn out with Housers. However, I suggest you avoid this platform for the time being.


Housers is the largest online real-estate crowdfunding platform in Southern Europe and allows you to invest in property from any part of the world.

When investing with Housers, your investment is backed by a tangible asset (“brick and mortar”), and hence it is considered a much safer investment than, say, cryptocurrencies. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t invest in cryptocurrencies, but real estate investment is definitely a lower risk investment.

When investing at Housers, you will earn monthly rent and also benefit from capital gains. Properties in southern Europe are currently rapidly rising in value.

You can easily diversify your portfolio. Compare investing in tens or hundreds of properties all over Europe to buying one apartment in your home country. You’re spreading your risk much better if you use Housers.

A great advantage is that all this is hassle-free. Everything relating to the property is taken care of. You won’t receive any calls from tenants asking to fix their broken pipes or have to fight to collect your rent.

The Spanish and Italian markets are recovering very rapidly and are projected to continue rising in the next few years at least. The rental yields in both markets are among the highest in Europe.

When investing in property, you also need to pay more attention to cities rather than countries as a whole. That’s why Housers focuses on high-growth and successful cities such as Madrid, Barcelona and Milan.

Housers itself as a platform has achieved tremendous success. There are more than 115,000 registered users and more than 95 million euros have flowed into the platform to fund properties. The average reported annual yield is 4%.

Exploring one of my projects

To illustrate how Housers works, let me take you through one of the projects I invested in. Note that this is one of the earlier and successful projects, most other projects I had have yet to supply a return and unfortunately this positive project is the exception not the norm.

We’ll be considering the project named Pez; a buy-to-sell opportunity in Madrid. In this case, the legal form of the investment was a loan to the developer.

Here’s how the project timeline went:

  • I invested on 22/06/17, the day the funding period started.
  • The project was fully financed on 11/07/17.
  • The property was acquired on 02/10/17.
  • Refurbishment works started on 20/10/17 and completed 20/02/18.
  • The project was finally sold on 05/07/18.
  • Project fully finalized on 25/07/18 and money sent to investors.

The visual information provided for the project was actually quite scant. As investors, we only got a few standard photos of the area where the apartment is located, the floor plans and two renders of how the refurbished apartment would look like.

We did, however, get some PDFs about the project which gave us more insight into the strategy:

  • Business plan
  • Loan information
  • Budget
  • Dossier
  • Real-estate evaluation

Based on that information I decided to invest in the project, although I would have liked some more photos and plans for the project.

A bit more than a year later, the project was sold.

Once the project was sold, there was some more information available about the internals of the project.

  • Average investment per investor: 213.65€
  • Number of investors: 412

Pez was a buy-to-sell opportunity with an expected return of 6,59% in 12 months, that ended with an annualized IRR of 4,42%. The yield is the same 4,42% since the project took 12 months from start to finish. 

Net Yield from the Sale: Represents the dividends that the investor will receive derived from the sale. (12 months)

IRR: Internal rate of annualized return of the investor. It’s the interest rate or yield offered by this investment. It serves to evaluate the profitability of the project and compare it with other types of investment in the market.

A few days after the project was sold, I received capital and interest in my Housers account, closing off a successful investment.

From the interest paid by the developer, a 10% Housers commission was deducted along with 19% for IRPF (Spanish tax). The net interest was then sent to my account.

How Things Work

Housers is currently operating in three markets:

  • Italy
  • Spain
  • Portugal

Housers operate an opaque fees structure that is hard to understand. In fact, I have not found a single good explanation of the fees they charge. They started off in the early days saying that they would only earn commissions when the project was successful, taking a chunk out of investors’ profit, but things changed along the way.

I have to be honest and say that after spending 20 minutes trying to figure out the latest fee structures I gave up, but it’s definitely not the best fee structure for investors.

I was also bemused to see how their CMO totally avoided answering a direct question about commissions in a recent interview in Spanish::

Here is more information about Housers fees taken directly from their website:

– Application of fees to investors:

For making the necessary model contracts for participation in the projects available to the parties: a percentage to be determined on the value of the financing project in accordance with the documentary needs of the project in question shall be applied at the time of making the above documentation available. The commission will be charged only once for each project and not for each document or contract made available to the developer.

• For communication to investors of information provided by the developer regarding the progress of the project: a percentage to be determined on the value of the financing project shall be applied in accordance with the documentary needs of the project in question.

• For services of judicial and extrajudicial claiming of the credit rights (forced or unforced): at the time the judicial or extrajudicial claim is presented, the investor must pay a percentage to be determined on the value of the unpaid claims in order to cover related expenses.

• For the service of formalising loan and share subscription contracts, based on agreement expressed through the platform, acting on behalf of investors: In this case a percentage to be determined will be applied on the value invested or lent by each investor when the financing objective has been reached and the loan contract or share subscription is formalised. The accrual and collection of the same is deferred to when investors begin to receive a return derived from and proportional to their investment (both ordinary interests generated by the loan and interest for delay due to breach of contract).

Many projects are designed to attract investors with special promotions like extra interest or cashback. Once the project is funded, typically the interest repayments start going out regularly and later stop abruptly. Once this happens, you will be asked to vote on whether you want to engage a debt recovery company or give the borrower more time to repay. All the projects I was involved in ended the voting with investors giving more time to the borrower and hoping for the best.

Curiously, Housers customer service gets back to life in these events, and are very proactive in calling you to urge you to cast your vote. I’m not sure why they are so motivated to get people to vote, perhaps there is some legal reason behind it, but it definitely feels fishy given they fail to respond to investors’ emails.

Keep in mind that if you live outside these three countries you will incur withholding taxes that are applied by the countries in question. I have not found a way to offset those taxes so it’s a further reduction in returns.

Projects Available

Housers grew very rapidly, and after starting with Spain soon expanded into Portugal and Italy.

They even briefly delved into art projects, although that was a one-off and probably not something they will do again as it requires a totally different set of skills to evaluate, not that Housers do much evaluation on their projects anyway.

You can invest in the following project types:

  • Buy-to-let (5 years+ investments with monthly payouts)
  • Buy-to-sell (12-24 months window to refurbish and sell)
  • Development loans

Investors seem to still be very keen on putting in their money, as all projects are quickly fully funded, but I’m starting to suspect it’s a case of dumb money at this point, as the projects themselves have become more and more speculative over time.

I’ve seen many projects in the south of Spain, mostly around the Malaga and Marbella regions, which by the looks of it seem to have been in some kind of bubble, as more and more development loans kept showing up for grandiose projects, which we now know were never completed due to various reasons/mismanagement cases/excuses.

Housers seem to be branching off into two new lines, Green and Corporate. Green is for sustainable and environmentally friendly projects while Corporate stands for development loans to open new businesses.

Secondary Market

The Housers secondary market seems to be dead at the moment. In fact, it was never really alive so to speak, as it is horribly complicated and very few deals were over struck on it.

Platform Interface

I’m not a fan of the current interface. The User Area uses a side menu with icons that really don’t mean much to me, so I end up having to click through all the items in order to finally find what I want.

It should be easier to see what amount investors have invested in each project, but it’s not easy to find out that information unless you click through the individual project’s page, which can be very tedious if you have many investments.

Team

In 2018, the current CEO Juan Antonio Balcázar replaced Tono Brusola, who was one of the co-founders. I’m not sure what led to Mr Brusola stepping down, but things have definitely gone downhill after he left. Perhaps he saw bigger opportunities in the Fintech space as he is now leading Fundsfy, a savings platform. He is a well-known serial entrepreneur in Spain and things were going great at Housers while he was in charge.

I know very little about Mr Balcázar, although a scroll down his Twitter feed doesn’t really provide me with much reassurance. This is just one of many factors I consider, and in this case I was not impressed.

At this point, I believe there are very few people actually running the platform; I don’t believe one bit the idea that Housers has 40+ employees, as they claim.

Customer Support

In the first two years, Housers had very good customer support both over email and via phone. During 2020, support has gone down the drain. Nobody answers emails anymore and phone support, while friendly, basically promises that things will be done and then never get back to you.

One thing that has absolutely diminished my trust in the platform is the use of a tactic in support whereby any finance-related questions are deflected with words along the following lines:

“We’ll pass on your query to the finance department and wait for them to get back to us”.

I’ve seen this tactic one other time, coincidentally (or maybe not) on another Spanish platform, and all it means is that they are never going to get back to you.

This is no way to treat customers. If you have a customer service line open then they should be able to answer any questions within normal limits. Questions related to the status of certain projects or the finances in our accounts should definitely fall under their remit.

Public Reputation and Social Media

If you take a look at the Housers rating page on Trustpilot you will find many other investors expressing their concerns and disappointment at the way Housers have been handling things.

The same happens on Twitter and Facebook. In most cases, Housers promptly reply asking the investor to contact them privately so that they can look into their case. This is quite ridiculous given that the investor would have typically contacted them several times before and received no reply. It is pretty obvious that they are just trying to politely silence all negative opinions.

Their latest strategy is to delete all negative comments or ask Trustpilot to take them down for supposedly breaking some guidelines. Housers are just trying to silence all negative opinion, but it’s only a matter of time before it becomes obvious to all that Housers is not to be trusted.

On the other hand, there are also several reviews that have not yet been taken down and clearly share many of the same concerns that I and others do. Here’s are a few:

In January 2021, Trustpilot itself started showing a warning saying that Housers have been caught manipulating the reviews. Basically what they did was to buy a bunch of fake reviews in an effort to counter the many negative reviews that many real users were leaving. Another scammy move from this company; at least Trustpilot called them out on it.

On the Spanish investing forums you will find a lot of feedback about this platform. Some investors even went to their offices to demand explanations for certain things and never got anywhere.

Here’s one of the Google reviews in Spanish for those of you who speak the language, I think it sums up the platform perfectly:

NO INVERTIR AQUÍ

La idea era buena desde que empezaron los proyectos, pero la plataforma nada tiene que ver con la inversión inmobiliaria.

La forma de actuar de Housers es la siguiente:
Lanzan un proyecto con un tipo de interés prometido. Los inversores entran y dejan su dinero. Cuando Housers consigue el dinero objetivo de la financiación, se queda una parte como comisión entre el 8-10% sin haber hecho nada, solo por ser intermediarios.

Ese dinero que se va perdiendo por el camino hace que su negocio sea financiar proyectos más que la parte inmobiliaria. Que luego funcionen o no los proyectos eso ya es secundario. Su objetivo es captar inversores.

La prueba está en que la mayor parte de los proyectos siempre tienen problemas y no se cumplen plazos, alegando toda culpa al promotor.

Cuando Housers te vende la idea te dice que ellos solo cobran si el proyecto funciona quedándose el 5% de los intereses generados, pero si fuera así no tendrían ni para pagar las oficinas de Madrid.

Por supuesto, las opiniones con 5 estrellas son tan falsas como decir que Housers es una plataforma seria.

Nada profesionales. No tienen ni idea del negocio, bueno sí, del negocio de la estafa y la publicidad engañosa son los reyes.

I’ve also read reports from architects saying that the project plans and actual photos of the project did not match at all, but I have been unable to confirm that myself.

As of June 2020 there are several Telegram groups you can join, where the discussion centers around whether Housers is a scam or not, and legal proceedings against them.

Here’s a list of all the Housers Telegram groups I know about:

  • https://t.me/housers_foro
  • https://t.me/HousersCom

Returns

Most of the money I invested in this platform is still tied up as several development loans have failed to be repaid in time due to various reasons. The developers have not shown any remorse for the delays caused to investors, and as things stand it is quite uncertain whether we will ever get our money back.

I have had some projects exit successfully, but most of my money is still stuck in there, so at the moment, things are looking very grim. The biggest issues seem to be the development loans, with a significant percentage of them being restructured with uncertain outcomes.

Fishy Happenings

Things have been looking very suspicious lately with Housers, with many investors outright calling the platform a scam. It certainly is looking like Housers is becoming so.

Consider the project Puerto de la Torre IV.

The project was meant to close the financing phase on 28/05/20. Last time I checked it was well below 90% of funds needed to close the phase.

At 0:10 on 29/05/20, the project was showing in the list of Non-Financed projects, as expected.

At 09:00 on the same day, the project appeared in the Financed projects list. It appears that someone from Housers manually moved the project.

Housers thus appear to be breaking the law article 68.2 de la Ley 5/2015 de Fomento de la financiación empresarial. The law requires at least 90% financing of such projects, which was clearly not achieved in this case.

I have contacted Housers for an explanation and they replies saying that the 90% applies to the financing of the projects but since there were several phases, they can include the other previous phases in the computation. They are probably right, but it is still misleading to the investor.

There are also developers that have obviously abused the fact that they could easily raise money via Housers, and they have several projects that are delayed for many months with no intention to pay back the investors. ByNok is one of the most shameful developers in this regard. They are supposed to be a luxury developer but their lack of professionalism is incredible.

Here’s another incredible thing that happened in June 2020. It concerns the project Bellevue Green.

In this case, the project developer, Puebloliving, is claiming that the loan was for 24 months and not for 12 months, as it appeared on the website and in the contract signed by all investors. The owner of this company, Morten Ostberg, is claiming that in initial emails with Housers they had discussed 24 months as the timeline. It seems like another obvious scam to me, and another shameless developer trying to defraud investors.

Conclusions

Do they really?

I was really excited about Housers in the early years of the platform, but I cannot honestly recommend it anymore, even though for my own money-preservation reasons I would like it to succeed long-term.

Housers seem to only care about the fact that they get their commission of 8-10 % on the capital raised, and whether the loans ever get repaid is the investors’ problem, they have no skin in the game and hence don’t care. They have the incentive to just keep adding projects to the platform without doing any fact-checking, and this doesn’t augur well for the future.

Housers have also been sanctioned in September 2019 by the CNMV in Spain. A group of investors who have lost their money with Housers has also been formed, and you can join it here. Possibly there will be the chance to get legal recourse at some point.

The platform is already under police investigations in Spain according to the CEO of ByNok, one of the project promoters on Housers, although this is not yet a well-known fact.

There was some news that an individual investor won a case against them, although I don’t have the details on that unfortunately.

The platform has a lot of Spanish investors, so it is not as well known outside Spain, but the Spanish investors and FIRE enthusiasts are livid about the platform.

In order to get back on track, if at all possible, Housers need to get their customer service team back in place, do better due diligence on new projects, and offer better communication about existing projects, especially those with an uncertain future due to severe delays.

At this point, after having spoken with many other investors in the same situation, and given their terrible customer service, continuous promotion of flaky projects, and ridiculous replies to people who reach out to them publicly on social media or on Trustpilot, I have to conclude that this platform is pretty close to being labeled a scam.

There are several other bloggers who have raised the issue of Housers being one of the worst platforms in terms of transparency, and they are also very disappointed with Housers. If you’ve also lost money with Housers, I urge you to have your word online, through your social media accounts or through a platform like Trustpilot. I’m well aware of the fact that it would be beneficial for me as an investor to say good things about Housers, but that’s not the purpose of why I write here. Housers are running a despicable business model and they don’t care one bit about investors on the platform. So I want people who are considering investing in this platform to know the truth.

The lessons I draw for myself from this debacle is that I should be more skeptical about online platforms and give them a few years to have a track record in place before investing heavily. In the case of Housers, I invested too much and too soon into projects that I didn’t have the means to properly evaluate.

As I’ve mentioned before, over the past five years I’ve taken some extra risks in my investments as I was investing in many different asset classes at the same time without being an expert in any of those classes. However, I am a firm believer in the idea that you learn things much better and in a deeper way when you have real skin in the game. Yes, these lessons might be expensive, but as a young investor with hopefully several decades ahead these losses can be recouped and the valuable lessons learned now will serve to guide my way towards a better investment strategy in the coming years.

If you’re still feeling positive about Housers, invest at your own risk, and I would strongly suggest staying away from development loans as those have been the source of the biggest problems so far.

Spanish property (and other countries too) is most certainly heading for tough times after the COVID-19 crisis, so I would bide my time before making real estate investments in this country unless there is a better sense of direction from the market. The government and overall political situation in Spain is a circus of incompetence of all sorts at the moment as well, and that’s yet another reason not to continue investing our hard-earned money.

If you still want to explore real estate opportunities in Spain, the best platform at the moment is StockCrowdIN.

Have you invested with Housers?

Do you have any questions about Housers or property crowdfunding? Let me know in the comments section and I’ll do my best to answer from my experience.

Click here to check out the Housers website

Filed under: Money, Real estate

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Jean Galea

Investor | Dad | Global Citizen | Athlete.

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