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

Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing the CEO of Brickstarter on my podcast Mastermind.fm. Brickstarter is a crowdfunding platform based in Estonia and it currently focuses on Spanish vacation rental properties. These properties are available on Airbnb, so the idea is that instead of buying one property and managing it to obtain returns on Airbnb, you as an ainvesttor are able to put up the money on Brickstarter and reap the benefits of diversification, Brickstarter’s data analysis advantage as well as their economies of scale in managing the apartments.

What intrigued me about Brickstarter when talking to their CEO, was the data-heavy approach they have taken. These are not a bunch of guys that are in this for a quick buck and relying on their experience to make the choices for apartments to invest in. All the decision process is based on hard facts and data analysis based on Airbnb’s data about hot location, apartment types, prices, amenities etc.

This is very attractive to me as an investor, as in many areas of life I prefer to rely on hard facts and data rather than the whims of some person or team of people. Of course, the team is important, and Brickstarter does not disappoint in this regard, as the people behind this platform have a great track record within the finance and real estate industries. However, they themselves prefer to put most of the weight in the decision process on data analysis.

Brickstarter have stated that their goal is to become the safest investment platform. This is why they decided to be focused on real estate assets and mezzanine loans, where you have 2 sources of profit: rental yield and capital appreciation when the apartment is sold.

Let’s take a deeper look at how this all works.

Opening an Account on Brickstarter

Brickstarter is available to investors worldwide, and opening an account is simple enough. Once you’ve logged in and transferred the money (using Lemonway, an extra layer of security for the investor), you are able to choose from the available investments and go ahead and invest. The minimum investment is just €50.

Coronavirus Effects and Coliving

Sadly, Coronavirus is hitting Europe and forcing millions of people around the world to be in quarantine, and this has dealt a severe blow to the vacation rental market.

There is uncertainty in the economy as we are seeing the stock markets and other alternative investments collapse (Bitcoin, Oil, Forex…).

Brickstarter has not been lying on its laurels, however. The plan B investigation has started and Brickstarter has been studying other verticals. In particular, they have several co-living opportunities on the table that they are studying with their partners.

Coliving assets are a great business and the Brickstarter team is confident that they will be the next real estate revolution the same way vacation rental properties did in the past.

Brickstater wants to help you invest in the best coliving opportunities out there, and they are therefore working on becoming the 1st real estate crowdlending platform focused on coliving.

How Brickstarter Investments Work

Real estate investment has always been a safe haven during times of financial stress. In this scenario of uncertainty, with close-to-zero interest rates, and not knowing the real impact of this crisis on the different industries, investors will probably focus again on real estate. Brickstarter have a strong product, since they choose apartments in the best city centers with a high rental yield.

The way you invest in apartments on Brickstarter is through mezzanine loans. All investment opportunities are debt-free. This means that the opportunities don’t have any debt commitments and therefore are risk-free. The capital of your investment is secure, so the only risk is not achieving the forecast yield, but investors won’t lose the original invested capital.

How do investors profit? Here’s the simple calculation:

Total yield = rental yield + capital yield.

Your yield in the sum of the monthly interest you get from renting the apartment and the capital appreciation of the property when its sold.

Brickstarter is focused on vacation rental properties as it has many benefits in comparison to traditional rentals: higher yields, prepaid model, insurance by the main platforms (Airbnb, booking.com) and short-term rentals.

It also means that the impact of the coronavirus is going to be limited in time. Defaults on traditional rentals are more difficult to deal with, and we already know that this crisis is going to affect also traditional rentals.

So in the current scenario of uncertainty and bearish markets caused by COVID-19, having invested in real estate with Brickstarter is probably one of your safest investments.

Conclusion

The Spanish real estate market is notoriously difficult to invest in due to the bureaucracy involved. Even crowdfunding platforms are hard to sign up to for international investors, as they are typically only available in Spanish and require investors to register for a NIE number in Spain before being able to invest.

Therefore by being based in Estonia Brickstarter has removed a lot of these problems for investors, which is a very positive thing. On the other hand, the team that runs the platform and negotiates the apartments is all Spanish and based in Spain, so you get the best of both worlds.

As I described earlier, you profit from your investments in two ways with Brickstarter. On one hand, you will receive monthly benefits from renting the apartment to tourists and, when the property is sold, you will be able to receive the surplus of your investment. Using Big Data analysis, Brickstarter also estimate the best selling time. It is also able to determine the next hot spots in Spain and enter while the prices for buying are still relatively low.

Based on what I’ve seen so far and having spoken to the team behind Brickstarter, I would not have any reservations about recommending Brickstarter.

Invest with Brickstarter