If you are looking to add developing countries to your European real estate investment portfolio, look no further, as I might have one interesting option for your consideration – Moldova

I have some friends from Moldova with whom I enjoyed chatting about this topic. Want to know what I found out? Continue reading…

First, I wasn’t in a hurry to invest straight away, as I wanted to take some time to observe how things will develop over time. As a general rule, I’m quite wary about investing in such a developing market as there can be a lot of uncertainty due to various factors that I might not be used to. Meanwhile, I gathered some additional information in order to understand what potential there was, as well as the risks.

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StockCrowd IN is a Spanish real estate investing platform with properties available all across the country.

Regulation

StockCrowd IN is regulated by the CNMV in Spain. This is a good thing but doesn’t mean much more than the fact that the platform has been approved by the national authorities. In fact, Housers is also regulated by the same authority, which gives you an indication of the usefulness of this Spanish authority.

On the other hand, Privalore, one of my previous favorites, and a very good platform backed by honest people, was denied approval by the CNMV due to its inflexibility and archaic rules for such platforms. I won’t delve deeper into criticisms of the CNMV, but we are seeing newer platforms like Brickstarter not even bothering with basing themselves in Spain, instead moving to Estonia where regulations are more modern.

My Experience

After a horrible experience with Housers, I’ve decided to start slow with StockCrowd IN, making a €500 investment in an apartment in Diagonal Mar, Barcelona. I’m very familiar with the area and the properties for sale there. It’s a district that is highly popular with both local and foreign buyers, and the quality of the buildings is pretty good compared to the rest of Barcelona.

Have you tried StockCrowd IN? Let me know how things went for you in the comments section.

LANDE (formerly LendSecured) is one of the top real estate-backed crowdlending platforms in Europe, and it’s worth noting that it’s an offshoot of an existing lending business that has been operating successfully for several years.

LANDE was started in 2017, 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. At first, it was available exclusively for high-net-worth private investors and local banks. Since July 2020 it has been open for any European investor.

LANDE is a brand managed by Secured Finance MGMT Ltd, registered in the Latvian company register with No.50103266451, which forms a part of a group of companies providing mortgage lending and other services related to real estate and construction with 2 beneficial owners Nikita Goncars and Edgars Talums.

LANDE publishes investment projects with low LTV (Loan to Value ratio). The lower, the ratio, the lower the risk. As LANDE also invests in each project, there is an extra incentive to do proper due diligence.

Unfortunately, many platforms these days only act as promoters, indiscriminately publishing many projects and letting the lenders take all the risks, not giving a care in the world whether projects make sense or whether the repayments will ever be made. I’m looking at you, Housers. Other platforms ended up being outright scams, like Envestio, Fast Invest, Monethera, Grupeer. I don’t see any such risk at all with LANDE.

Some highlights about this platform:

• Knowledge and experience in real estate market since 2008 when first mortgage brand was established and is still working successfully;
• 5% co-funding for every project;
• Avg. LTV 37%;
• Partnership with Lemonway, all investments are held on a segregated account on the BNP Paribas;
• Certificated real estate appraisal in English.
• LANDE issues loans to SME’s, real estate developers and farmers. No consumer credits.

LANDE’s achievements so far:

• 30 million sold real estate in collateral value;
• Since 2013 mortgage brands have received consumer credit license (which now cost 250k eur);
• Average LTV for all portfolio is 37%;
• 16 million – total loans issued with collateral value of 21 million;
• 8 million outstanding portfolio;
• More than 800 real estate objects sold;
• 10 million market value of renovated projects;
• One of the brands (Loan MGMT) has a debt collection license since 2018

How does LANDE Work?

After careful evaluation procedures, projects are published on LANDE.finance where investors can find detailed information about the project, appraisal of the collateral and details on the loan terms.

No hidden details – LANDE has a strong belief that transparency is the key to build strong relationships with investors, therefore ensuring success in the future.

LANDE’s business model is to finance projects using a first-rank mortgage which is the most straightforward and secure type of funding real estate lending.

All mortgages can be monitored online on the Land Register of Republic of Latvia.

LANDE requires a minimum of 50 EUR to start investing in real estate projects operating in Latvia. LANDE reaches its clients with associated brand activity on social media and local mass media, by promoting agricultural lending on TV, radio and newspapers. All applications are carefully evaluated as their acceptance rate is 5.8-6.5% from all applications.

Investment process and cashflow

The Loan Contract is between the borrower and investor and is available online on LANDE for both parties. In the Loan Contract, it is clearly stated that the investor lends money directly to the borrower and that no third parties are involved.

Who can invest?

LANDE accepts investments from private individuals and registered legal entities. The registration process is similar for both, only different type of documentation is requested.

In order to register on LANDE, a person must be at least 18 years old and submit 2 types of identification documents. Once all KYC and AML procedures are done, the client can invest.

As for legal entities – upon registration, the representative must upload identification documents and certificate from local company/commercial register that proves the person’s ability to act in the interests of the company.

Registration process

First, choose “start to invest”

You will be asked to enter an email and password, afterwards, you will be asked to verify your email:

After that, you will be asked to choose if you are registering as an individual or legal person;

When choosing “Individual person”, personal data will be requested.

The last step in the registration process is identification upload. Registration requires 2 types of identification documents. After ID upload, the registration process is completed and the request is being processed by Lemonway.

After completing registration, you can start to invest!

Secondary Market

This feature allows investors to sell their claim rights arising from investments to other registered users of the platform and exit projects early, while giving other users an opportunity to join the project and earn passive income.

Also, the seller will receive interest while the investment is listed for sale until someone buys the claim rights and the deal is finalized. There are no extra fees for this feature.

Professional Team

The LANDE team has extensive experience in real estate, mortgage lending and construction.

How stable is the platform?

The paid-up capital of LANDE (company name Secured Finance MGMT) has reached EUR 100K. Upon starting operation, in order to raise the financial stability of the company, Secured Finance MGMT increased its share capital and now has also paid it up and registered the changes in the Commercial register of Latvia.

LANDE has done a lot and continues to take steps towards making the platform as safe as possible. They are the first to receive the ECSP license in Latvia

It is also worth mentioning that investor funds are held separately, and LANDE has relationships with Lemon Way and BNP Paribas for handling investor payments.

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.

The existing Latvia-only private secured lending business under the leadership of Ņikita and Edgars had bought its strategic investors a return of over 10%. They thus decided to launch the platform to expand publicly and internationally.

LANDE benefits from a debt collection license (Loan MGMT Ltd.). Besides that, LANDE is a member of the European Crowdfunding Network since 2020.

The team has considerable experience in Latvia and they want to expand to the rest of Europe, with Germany and Spain being one of the first big markets they are targeting.

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.

The new product – seasonal funding for farmers with grain as collateral – will offer a possibility for investors to diversify their portfolio and invest in loans with added value to the whole EU economy. The financial gap in the EU agricultural sector is between EUR 7.06 billion and 18.6 billion, thus LANDE goal is to narrow it down by offering farmers better access to funding.

Funds Safety

To ensure the safety of investor funds, LANDE have partnered with one of the most successful French banks and Payment Solution service providers – BNP Paribas and Lemon Way.

Lemon Way is regulated by the Banque de France and is currently providing its services to almost 200 platforms all around Europe. Since 2012, Lemon Way has been in possession of an APCR Payment Institution license from Banque de France.

Do they have good support?

Support is great, you can easily contact the team through their website. You can ask them about any of the projects they have available for funding and they’ll be happy to give any further information you need. Although I must say that every project comes with a section with all the relevant information nicely presented.

Regulation

LANDE is already a step ahead in putting into practice the obligations set out in the available crowdfunding regulation. As previously stated, LANDE already uses the services of the payment institution Lemon Way to perform investment operations within the LANDE platform.

This requirement is essential for investor’s safety.

Final Verdict

The website itself is professionally done, with good English being used throughout.

LANDE is already a step ahead in putting into practice the obligations set out in the crowdfunding regulation. As previously stated, LANDE already uses the services of the payment institution Lemon Way to perform investment operations within the LANDE platform. This requirement is essential for the investor’s safety.

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 with LANDE

I spent the latter half of my twenties traveling the world, and now that I’m in my mid-thirties, a topic that comes up with my wife and friends is whether it makes financial sense to still do any long-term traveling while also renting an apartment at our home base.

In our twenties, we could fit all our possessions in a pair of suitcases, and once we left a country we would terminate the rental agreement and then rent another apartment in the new country we move to. However, since we settled in Barcelona we have a nice apartment that we rented long-term, and rental prices in Barcelona are not exactly on the cheaper end.

Hence if we were to consider spending a few months every year traveling and therefore renting an apartment in another city or country, it is worth considering if that would make financial sense.

The initial knee-jerk reaction is usually that it doesn’t make any sense to be paying two rents. However, let’s see if we can assuage our panicking brains.

Before I continue, I need to say that as a family we would never be comfortable renting out our apartment while we travel. There are many people who feel totally comfortable doing so, and that was actually the motivation behind Airbnb, however, it’s just not for us. Our home is too much of a personal space to be able to rent it out.

That is why if we travel for a few months every year, we would not be able to offset the extra costs by renting out our home.

Now let’s move on to see if we can figure out a way to make this work.

A good apartment in Barcelona costs around €600,000. We could buy an apartment and then still travel, thus having no guilt feelings about paying rent for two places while only using one.

Buying the apartment outright, apart from requiring a big sum of money to be tied up and practically killing any notions of diversification in our net worth, would eliminate any possible investment income.

There’s also the other option of taking out a loan, but you’d still need to pay the mortgage which of course includes interest apart from the principal. For the purposes of this calculation, and because I am not a big fan of debt, I’ll leave that option out of the equation.

I feel confident in being able to make 8-10% per year when investing, so that would return €50,000 if I invested that sum of money. Remove tax of around 30% and we are left with €35,000.

The rent per month of that same apartment costs around €2,000, so we get a total yearly cost of €24,000. The money earned from the investment more than covers the rent, meaning that I should not be worrying about whether this traveling is a bad financial decision.

Every financial decision has to be taken in the context of life ambitions and what we want to achieve. If traveling for a few months a year will really enhance our enjoyment of life, and we are earning enough money from investments to cover the costs, then there is absolutely no problem in doing so.

Do you agree?