If you’re looking to invest in French, Belgian and Swiss real estate, you can take a look at Raizers.

The French market is one that has been in constant growth for the past decade, so it’s quite a solid market.

While Raizers also operates in Belgium and Switzerland, there is currently more demand in French for borrowing. This is mostly due to the fact that real estate development deals are structured in France versus Switzerland. Nevertheless, we should be seeing opportunities in other countries too when the conditions are right. So if your aim is to geographically diversify your real estate investments, you should still consider Raizers.

I interviewed the CEO of Raizers, Maxime Pallain, on my podcast Mastermind.fm. There are a lot of gold nuggets about real estate crowdfunding in general, so I highly suggest listening to that episode if you’re interested in this space or Raizers in particular.

Raizers’ Founding Story

Associated in the creation of a first company in 2012, Maxime Pallain and Grégoire Linder encountered difficulties in finding financing. After five refusals from banks, the sixth agreed to finance this company which has moreover become a success.

Following this experience, the two founders wanted to respond to this difficulty of access to financing by launching a platform that could remedy this difficulty of finding equity capital. This is how Raizers was born in 2014, bringing together companies and investors, allowing individuals as well as professionals to lend to real estate developers, thus providing access to investment opportunities previously limited to institutional investors.

A little later, in 2018, Raizers specialized 100% in financing real estate developers and property traders.

Since its accreditation in France by the AMF (Autorité des Marchés Financiers), Raizers has opened offices in Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Today, Raizers registers more than 90 million euros invested with an average return of 10% and a default rate remaining at 0%, on more than 140 transactions.

Investment Opportunities

The vast majority of investment opportunities are in France, so we can say that this country is the current focus of Raizers. There have been other opportunities in Switzerland and Belgium, as well as Martinique and Guadalupe.

Raizers, on the one hand, provides the web platform and attracts investors, while on the other end establishes good contacts in the markets it operates in to find property developers and property projects that the team believes offer a good return at a minimal level of risk.

The minimum investment amount is €1,000. While others have criticized this limitation and see it as a con for this platform, I think it is a low enough limit. It simply does not make sense for investors to invest less than €1,000 in anything in my opinion. Many of the investors who do invest lower amounts tend to be less financially savvy and should be spending their time amassing a bigger investment pot through side hustles, their main job, or entrepreneurship. When they have sufficient funds they can look at setting aside part of that for investing. I’ve written more about this topic in my post about whether you should invest in P2P lending, and in my other post about FIRE.

The average length for investments is 20 months and the preferred vehicle for investments is short-term bonds. There have been no defaults so far in the five years that Raizers has been in operation.

Taxes

Raizers does not withhold any taxes for you. You can read more about taxation of P2P lending in my post on the subject.

Support

Phone and live chat support are available in English and French, and I found the support staff to be professional and helpful. No problems whatsoever.

Secondary Market

Raizers does not currently provide a secondary market, which is a disadvantage compared to other platforms that offer the ability to liquidate investments early should the need arise.

On the other hand, you probably don’t need a secondary market for investments that are less than two years anyway. When investing in such platforms you should only invest money that you won’t need in a few months.

I have also confirmed with Raizers, that in the eventuality that an investor wants to sell his investments to another investor of his choice, Raizers will have no problem in changing the contract to assign ownership of the investment to the new investor.

Partnership with Capitalium

Recently, Raizers launched with Capitalium, a Swiss-based asset manager and family office, a partnership investment fund to co-invest alongside the crowdfunders in real estate transactions funded on the platform.

The two companies are stepping up their development in a market acknowledging a strong growth in demand, +102% in 2019, demonstrating their ability to innovate for the benefit of their clients.

This partnership seeks to combine the best of both worlds, the one of traditional but innovative finance, seeking alternative and responsible investment opportunities, and the world of fintechs, which brings transparency and simplicity to investor and entrepreneur clients.

Final Thoughts

Alternatives to consider include EstateGuru, iFunded and Rendity. Check out all the real estate crowdfunding platforms I’ve used in my dedicated post on the best European real estate crowdfunding platforms.

If it’s the French market you’re targeting, then I can say I haven’t come across a better option thus far. Most of the platforms are only available to French investors, either legally or de facto by only providing the website in the French language.

Raizers, on the other hand, is clearly focused on the international investor community, which is a big plus for those of us whose French is non-existent or shaky at best. You don’t want to be taking investment decisions when you don’t properly understand the project descriptions, financial documentation and contracts you’re signing.

Raizers has a team of 10 motivated employees and, despite the corona crisis, and considering the crowdfunding constant growth in demand, are seeing a steady growth in their business.

I am monitoring this platform and will be updating this post as the months go by, but in the meantime, please feel free to leave your comments below if you have already used this platform yourself.

Join Raizers

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

Property Partner is arguably one of the better-known real estate crowdfunding platforms in the UK. The platform was founded in 2014 and gives you the opportunity to enter the UK property arena with an investment of just £1,000.

With property prices – at least in the case of London, much heftier than much of mainland Europe, this is ideal for those of you that want to gain exposure to UK real estate without breaking the bank. London is also where the super-rich all clamor to by some real estate, and I would argue it’s the most prestigious real estate market in Europe.

In this review, I look at the Property Partner platform from top to bottom. This includes an in-depth overview of how the platform works, the types of property you can invest in, how much you should expect to make, and what risks you need to consider before parting with your funds.

[Read more…]

If you’re looking to gain exposure to the real estate space – but you don’t quite have the means to go through the traditional channels, it might be worth considering a crowdfunding alternative. One such example is that of Rendity. The platform allows you to access the (primarily) Austrian real estate arena with an investment of just €500.

In my Rendity review, I cover everything you need to know about the crowdfunding site. This includes the types of real estate you will be investing in. what sort of returns you should expect, and of course – whether or not your money is safe.

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Founded in 2014, Crowdestate is one of the oldest real estate crowdfunding platforms in Europe with a 16.87% annual return rate, 48360 active users from 123 countries and 249 investment opportunities completed.

Here are some benefits for investors:

• Pre-vetted investments only
• No investment fees
• No trading fees
• Private and business accounts
• EUR 100 minimum investment

How does Crowdestate Work?

As described, Crowdestate is a real estate crowdfunding platform.

The platform’s relationships with experienced real estate developers gives it access to a large number of off-market real estate investments.

According to Crowdestate, only the best opportunities surviving in the rigorous due diligence process are published for investing. Extensive background information, business plans, and financial models combined with a low 100 euro minimum investment are making investing quick and easy.

Crowdestate makes it clear on their website that they are open for business to both investors and those seeking funding.

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