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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CrowdProperty is a fintech/proptech online-lending innovator, exceptionally efficiently matching the demand (quality property professionals undertaking quality property projects) and supply (retail/institutional investors) of capital for value-creating property projects, delivering a better deal for all – borrowers, lenders, the under-supplied UK housing environment and spend in the UK economy.

CrowdProperty has lent £120,000,000, funding the development of over 1,200 homes worth over £220m since 2014, carefully curated from over £4.5bn of applications.

CrowdProperty became the first and only property P2P lender to become Brismo Verified, independently validating CrowdProperty’s market-leading performance, showing significant outperformance of Brismo’s UK P2P Index. CrowdProperty was recognised in the Deloitte Fast 50 list 2020 as one of the 50 fastest-growing tech businesses in the UK (#41) and the #1 fastest growing tech businesses in the Midlands.

Actual property development and investment experience lies at the heart of the business meaning hands-on, expertise-led due diligence and loan monitoring.

How does CrowdProperty Work?

Lending is focused on the SME property professional market, a key segment for supplying much-needed UK housing stock, which is poorly and inefficiently served by traditional funding sources.

CrowdProperty funds property professionals undertaking any sort of property project (including auction purchases and bridging), structuring the perfect funding product and doing so with greater speed, ease, certainty and expertise than anyone in the market. As property people providing property finance, we intimately understand the market needs.

How is CrowdProperty Regulated?

CrowdProperty is directly authorized and regulated by the FCA, is an HMRC-approved ISA / IFISA manager, attracts significant SSAS Pension and SIPP Pension capital and is a founding member of the Innovate Finance 36H Group (and formerly on the board of the P2PFA / Peer-to-Peer Finance Association).

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Join Reinvest24 – 1% Cashback

Reinvest24 is a real estate crowdfunding platform that currently specializes in Baltic real estate but is also expanding into other countries including Spain.

The hottest cities in the Baltics at the moment Tallinn (Estonia), Riga (Latvia) and Vilnius (Lithuania). Reinvest24, apart from Estonia-based projects, also offers investment possibilities in Latvia, Moldova and Spain.

They have financed 10+ projects with €12,000,000 invested and €4,000,000 returned back as profits to investors.

I had the opportunity of interviewing the CEO of this platform, Tanel Orro, on my podcast Mastermind.fm, and I found him to be a very likable and knowledgeable person. That is consistent with the impression I had formed of the platform after having gone through their website and invested in a few of the projects available over the past year.

Reinvest24 is one of my favorite real estate crowdfunding platforms, but let’s dig deeper to see why I like them.

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EstateGuru is one of the leading European P2P platforms for short-term, property-backed loans. Founded in Tallin, Estonia, in 2014, Estate Guru now also has satellite offices in Latvia, Lithuania, the UK, and Finland.

“A short-term loan from EstateGuru is designed to meet a variety of niche needs with which traditional financial institutions are often unwilling or unable to assist property developers”

The aim behind the company is to provide everyone, regardless of where they come from, with the opportunity to invest in real estate from as little as €50.

What is interesting and different from platforms such as PeerBerry and Swaper is that EstateGuru offers investors and borrowers loans based exclusively on real estate, and more importantly, loans are only given to businesses, not private individuals. At present, only companies registered in and with a bank account in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain, Finland, and Ireland are allowed to borrow through the platform.

Over the past 6 years, EstateGuru has developed an average return of 11.95%, on par with Mintos. With over 1,000 funded loans worth over €170,000,000 granted and 48,000 investors worldwide, this platform is certainly one to look out for.

Here are a few notable achievements of this platform:

• EstateGuru has funded more than €200 million worth of real estate backed loans in 7 countries – Germany, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal and earned investors €14 million in interest;
• Revenue earned in 2019 is €2.5 million, Q1 2020 revenue is €0.94 million (2.5x growth compared to Q1 2019);
• EstateGuru is operating profitably;
• Successful pre-A round with VC fund Speedinvest in 2018;
• Repetitive investor rate 90%, repetitive borrower rate 50%;
• €100+ million of assets under management;
• Market-leading returns – average historical annual return for platform’s retail investors has been 11.8% and as of today, loss of capital on the platform is €0;
• Successful cooperation with multiple institutional investors, most prominent being Varengold bank from Germany;
• Largest alternative property lender in continental Europe (Brismo.com);
• Having started in Estonia – the most digital society in the world – 90% of EstateGuru’s core processes are automated and digitalized. This helps enable them to cost-efficiently expand business to new markets using agile processes;
• EstateGuru has operating licenses in Lithuania and the UK (FCA p2p lending license);
• First API connection with a traditional bank (LHV) that enables its users to see their EstateGuru profile directly from the LHV banking interface;
• Nominated three years in a row (2017-2019) as top 100 Proptech in Europe by Real Estate Innovation Network;
• EstateGuru was nominated Top 3 Best Fintechs in 2019 by German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce;
• International team of 44 experts.

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A common question in the property scene is whether one should buy a south or north facing property.

South facing provides the best conditions for sunlight, considering factors like the difference between morning and afternoon sun. Suitable lighting and direct sunlight impact directly in a very significant way many things from mood to electricity costs. A south-facing apartment tends to be warmer in winter, and breezy and not as hot in summer.

You should also think about how you are going to use the house? Are you a night owl or an early riser?…..sunset or sunrise? How will you use it at different times of the year? Now that so many kids go to daycare and most parents work, many prefer a West-facing house or apartment because you get the sun and light in the evening when you are home from work.

However, when buying a property as an investment, it might be worth thinking twice about automatically going for a south-facing property. A study in Japan found that North-facing property is actually a better deal if you plan to resell that property.

On average, north-facing units tend to increase in value after purchasing from the developer, while South-facing units tend to depreciate.

This is an interesting point to consider when you are looking to purchase a new apartment from a developer.

Data on over 196,000 apartment sales from 2006 to 2010 was collected by Attractors Lab. The price of north-facing units on the second-hand market increased by an average of 11.4% from their original price when new.

The price of south-facing units, however, decreased by an average of 5.4% from new.

Some of the reasons for the change in prices are:

• Developers price south-facing units higher, and north-facing units lower.
• In the second-hand market, units of various types and directions appear randomly for sale.
• Purchasers will prefer a north-facing unit with a wider frontage and good views over a south-facing unit with narrow frontage and less impressive views.
• Many people prefer an open view that is not blocked by other buildings and are less concerned about all-day sunlight if they are both working full-time and return home late in the evening.

I’ve lived in both south and north facing apartments in Barcelona, and found advantages and disadvantages in both; I personally don’t have a firm favorite if I have to choose between the two.

Do you prefer south or north facing properties? Why?