I have invested in P2P lending and real estate crowdfunding sites in Europe since 2016.
Real estate crowdfunding sites have been booming in recent years with many new players are emerging each month.
Given my experience with many of the platforms and knowledge about the industry, I thought I would make an overview of the best platforms to help others.
If you don’t have the patience to read the full comparison, I believe these five are the best real estate crowdfunding sites in Europe:
I have first-hand experience with some of the platforms and others I know through years of investing experience, news, contact with their customer service and my research. The list is a prioritized list of where I would place my money.
Remember that the list is based on my preferences, but you might have other preferences than I do, so always do your research 🙂
How does the real estate crowdfunding market in Europe look?
I always like to start by getting an overview. There are many real estate crowdfunding sites out there, but it is hard to get an overview of who’s big and small.
In my list of the best real estate crowdfunding platforms, I have included eight sites. I believe they are all good investment opportunities, although I prefer some over the others.
The eight platforms vary a lot in size, so below is the amount of real estate that has been crowdfunded (loans, development projects, etc.) in total for each platform:
European real estate crowdfunding sites by the size of loans/projects funded (self-reported)
Million Euro
However, the size of loans/projects funded isn’t everything. As you will see, the returns on the different platforms vary quite a lot, and the biggest platforms are not the ones giving the best returns historically:
European real estate crowdfunding sites by average annual return (self-reported)
%
Choosing the right platform for you should be about much more than only looking at the size and return. There are quite a few other things to be aware of:
- How old is the site?
- Who is the management team and how experienced are they?
- How do the financials look?
- Is it a single- or multi-loan originator platform?
- Do they offer a buyback guarantee on your projects/loans?
- What is the minimum investment in one loan?
- Which loan/project types do they offer?
- Does the platform have autoinvest functionality?
- Which countries do they accept investors from?
I’ll do my best to cover some of these topics in the following platform list.
Which real estate crowdfunding platform is the best in Europe in 2022?
The following list of the best real estate crowdfunding platforms in 2022 is based on my personal view of them. I use a mix of credibility, size, functionality, and support as criteria for ranking these platforms – as well as the word on the street from other investors.
#1 – Crowdestate
Crowdestate is my favorite real estate crowdfunding platform, but only by a small margin.
The platform is from Estonia and was established in 2015. In a relatively short amount of time, the platform has gotten more than 25,000 users and funded more than EUR 45 million in real estate, corporate finance, and mortgage loans.
My favorite thing about Crowdestate is the high average returns of +20% that are far above all competitors – especially the bigger players whose average returns recently have been declining. If it hadn’t been for the high returns, Crowdestate wouldn’t have been my preferred platform compared to EstateGuru or Grupeer, but if they can keep up the high average returns, I would choose them. I believe potential future investors should watch this closely. Know high returns usually mean high risk, although I have not found anything suggesting that the risk should be higher at Crowdestate than other platforms.
The platform offers a full range of features including a secondary marketplace (if you want to sell your investments), autoinvesting feature, visually appealing investment overviews and very detailed information about the different loans (e.g. building, location, project information, trends, etc.). What I like about the detailed loan information is the executive summary and the detailed “Crowdestate rating” for each loan assessing the risk on a variety of parameters.
However, there are a few things about Crowdestate that I don’t like. The platform does not offer a buyback guarantee on its loans, which I am normally quite a big fan of. This means that if a borrower defaults, you will not automatically get your money back from the loan originator (or the “sponsor” as Crowdestate calls them). However, as far as I know, their quite detailed due diligence has ensured zero defaults so far, although that doesn’t guarantee anything in the future.
Also, most of my favorite platforms do not charge investors anything, but Crowdestate does. While it is free to be a member, they charge a success fee if the investment performance exceeds a hurdle rate. If the hurdle rate agreed is 10%, then Crowdestate would usually charge 20% in a success fee above the hurdle rate. The success fee is paid out after an investment has been exited. This is mostly a technical thing as this is already calculated into the expected yield shown meaning it is not deducted from interest payments to investors.
All in all, Crowdestate is a great real estate crowdfunding platform and if they can keep up the high returns, they will remain my first choice.
Click here to sign up with Crowdestate
Origin: Estonia
Founded: 2015
Funded loans/projects (cumulative): EUR 46 million
Average annual return: 20.1% pre-tax (self-reported)
Loan types: Real estate loans, corporate finance and mortgage loans
Investors from: Globally (except the US)
Minimum investment: 100 EUR
Buyback guarantee: No
Autoinvest: Yes
Secondary marketplace: Yes
Trustpilot TrustScore: N/A
#2 – EstateGuru
EstateGuru is the runner-up of my favorite real estate crowdfunding platforms, but it is just behind Crowdestate.
The platform is from Estonia and was established in 2013. EstateGuru offers short-term real estate loans to property developers, has more than 17,000 users and has funded more than EUR 90 million making it the third biggest real estate crowdfunding site in Europe.
EstateGuru offers a great platform with a good user interface, autoinvest and very decent returns of 12.3% on average. I like the way the platform looks and the detailed loan information you can get when deciding the loans to invest in.
The returns are slightly lower than the smaller competitors, but of the larger platforms (which I like investing in due to a higher sense of security), EstateGuru offers the highest interest rate.
EstateGuru doesn’t offer buyback guarantees on their loans and doesn’t have a secondary marketplace. Given that the loans are short-term (~12 months on average), a secondary marketplace also makes less sense. The far majority of EstateGuru’s loans has been repaid, although at the time of writing there have been a few defaulted loans too.
I like EstateGuru as a real estate crowdfunding platform and my only concern is that the interest rates could be slightly higher.
Origin: Estonia
Founded: 2013
Funded loans/projects (cumulative): EUR 90 million
Average annual return: 12.3% pre-tax (self-reported)
Loan types: Short term real estate loans (property developers)
Investors from: European countries
Minimum investment: 50 EUR
Buyback guarantee: No
Autoinvest: Yes
Secondary marketplace: No
Trustpilot TrustScore: 8.0/10
#3 – Grupeer
Grupeer is one of the newer platforms from Latvia and has been growing rapidly with more than 4,000 investors and EUR 16 million loans funded since its launch in 2017.
I have had a really good experience investing with Grupeer so far. The platform is great and I like both the auto-investing functionality, low minimum investment and buyback guarantee offered. Grupeer is the only real estate crowdfunding website offering a buyback guarantee.
The platform offers loans from multiple loan originators and is focused on development projects (and business loans). I have so far made close the self-reported average annual return of 14.42%, so for me, the returns have been great so far. I like the depth of information for each project such as detailed loan, project and financial information. I am curious to see if Grupeer can keep up with the demand and keep on offering high return development projects – so far their projects are not that big, so the good ones might sell out relatively quickly.
Grupeer is a lot smaller than my other favorite platforms, and this is of course also comes at a higher risk, but so far I believe the risk is worth the higher return.
Click here to sign up with Grupeer
Origin: Latvia
Founded: 2016
Funded loans (cumulative): 16 million EUR
Average annual return: 14.4% pre-tax (self-reported)
Loan originators: +10
Loan types: Business loans and development projects
Investors from: +60 countries
Minimum investment: 1 EUR
Buyback guarantee: Yes
Autoinvest: Yes
Trustpilot TrustScore: 8.1/10
#4 – Reinvest24
Reinvest24 is the newest real estate crowdfunding platform around and was established in 2017.
The platform has users from all over the world and has funded loans/projects for more than EUR 10 million. At the time of writing, there’s only a few, larger projects on the side, but I like the depth of information each loan has. It gives much more transparency on your loans than in normal peer-to-peer lending.
Reinvest24 lacks some of the core functionality you see on other platforms such as autoinvest and detailed investment overviews, but nothing’s wrong with the platform and even without the bells and whistles, you can still invest in real estate projects and earn decent average annual returns of 14.6% (self-reported).
Click here to sign up with Reinvest24
Origin: Estonia
Founded: 2016
Funded loans/projects (cumulative): EUR 15 million
Average annual return: 14.6% pre-tax (self-reported)
Loan types: Buy-to-sell and buy-to-let
Investors from: Globally
Minimum investment: 100 EUR
Buyback guarantee: No
Autoinvest: No
Secondary marketplace: Yes
Trustpilot TrustScore: 7.8/10
#5 – Housers
Housers is a real estate crowdfunding site founded in 2016 in Spain and has close to 100,000 users making it the biggest platform on the list based on users. To me, it seems like one of the most professionally driven platforms out there.
Housers is a great platform with many opportunities to invest in real estate through buy-to-let, buy-to-sell and development loans. There’s also a possibility to invest in art loans. The platform has a great overview of your investments and very detailed loan information. The properties listed for investment are complete with pictures and floor plans. I also like that Housers has a secondary marketplace if you want to cash out early. Compared to other platforms, you cannot sell your loans/projects on a premium or a discount, which is both good and bad. Housers’ customer service explained it like this:
“You can’t choose the price of the shares because of the laws of our regulator. The Marketplace is only a liquidity window for the investors so they can sell the shares at the same price and exit a project or invest in one.“
In my opinion, Housers lacks an autoinvest function and I am a bit uncertain of whether they can keep up the average annual return of 10.2%. At the time of writing, the offers available on the platform (not including secondary marketplace) are not above 10% any of them.
For me, Housers is just bordering the minimum amount of return I want from investing in risky assets. If it decreases going forward, I believe the other platforms are more attractive. However, I do like the platform and its size and three different investment opportunities might still make it attractive to some.
Click here to sign up with Housers
Origin: Spain
Founded: 2016
Funded loans/projects (cumulative): EUR 72 million
Average annual return: 10.2% pre-tax (self-reported weighted average)
Loan types: Buy-to-let, buy-to-sell, development loans and art loans
Investors from: Globally
Minimum investment: 50
Buyback guarantee: No
Autoinvest: No
Secondary marketplace: Yes
Trustpilot TrustScore: 7.4/10
#6 – The House Crowd
The House Crowd is the second-largest real estate crowdfunding platform with more than 24,000 users and EUR 100 million loans/projects funded base in the UK.
The House Crowd offers peer-to-peer lending (secured on UK property), property development projects and property crowdfunding which essentially is crowdfunded buy-to-let properties.
The platform offers a wide range of features including very detailed loan information and autoinvest.
However, The House Crowd does not have a secondary market and it can be quite hard to exit investments and withdraw investments before the loans/projects run out. Peer-to-peer loans are impossible to withdraw before the loan is repaid by the borrower, and for the property crowdfunding, you have to find a buyer of your shares yourself or pay a fee of 50 GBP per buyer The House Crowd sources for you. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of the platform for me.
The average annual return of 9.2% is great but still lower than other platforms in the space, and then I believe the minimum investment of 1,000 GBP is a tad high for new investors.
Click here to sign up with The House Crowd
Origin: United Kingdom
Founded: 2012
Funded loans/projects (cumulative): EUR 105 million
Average annual return: 9.2% pre-tax (self-reported)
Loan types: Peer-to-peer lending loans, property development and property crowdfunding (buy-to-let)
Investors from: European countries and selected other countries (Switzerland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.)
Minimum investment: 1,000 GBP
Buyback guarantee: No
Autoinvest: Yes
Secondary marketplace: No
Trustpilot TrustScore: 8.7/10
#7 – Bulkestate
Bulkestate is the smallest of the platforms on the list with just EUR 3 million in funded loans. The platform offers investments in real estate development projects and reports an average of 14.4% in return.
Bulkestate has a decent platform with autoinvest functionality and a fine amount of information per loan, although it currently doesn’t have a secondary market and the depth of the loan information is not equal to other players on the list.
The platform has group-buying deals as well making it possible to own an entire apartment as part of a larger bulk-deal with others, although not relevant for real estate crowdfunding, it could be relevant for some investors.
I still find it too early to invest in Bulkestate due to its size, but I believe it is a promising platform to keep an eye on.
Click here to sign up with Bulkestate
Origin: Estonia
Founded: 2016
Funded loans/projects (cumulative): EUR 3 million
Average annual return: 14.5% pre-tax (self-reported)
Loan types: Real estate development projects
Investors from: Globally
Minimum investment: 50 EUR
Buyback guarantee: No
Autoinvest: Yes
Secondary marketplace: No
Trustpilot TrustScore: N/A
#8 – Property Partner
Property Partner is the biggest real estate crowdfunding site in Europe based in the UK with more than EUR 147 million in assets under management (current investments). It is also the best-rated platform by users on Trustpilot.
This platform works a bit differently than the other platforms above. You can both invest in individual projects, but you can also choose an investment plan.
Property Partner offers three investment plans; an income plan, a balanced plan, and a growth plan. The income plan mostly focuses on monthly dividends and less on capital gains (with an average return of 6.5%), whereas the balanced plan focuses equally on both (with an average return of 7.5%) and the growth plan focuses mostly on capital gains (with an average return of 8.5%).
The good thing about the plans is that you can create a very diversified portfolio quickly. However, to choose a plan you need to invest at least 5,000 GBP. For individual projects, the minimum investment is 250 GBP.
The real estate properties offered are mostly buy-to-let, which means that you buy a share of the property and keep them for several years. Normally, you would regard the investment in existing physical property as a lower risk than investing in development projects and loans, which is also why the average return is lower with Property Partner than what you have seen on the platforms above. I like the split between dividend yield and capital gains as it gives you great insight into where your return is coming from.
If you want to withdraw your investment, you can either sell it on the resale market or exit at market value after five years with Property Partner’s “5-yearly exit protection”.
The reason why I don’t rank Property Partner higher is that the average annual returns have been declining quite a lot in recent years (from 9.3% in 2016 to 5.1% in 2018). I simply expect a higher return from my investments even if it means taking on higher risk as some of the higher-ranked platforms here. At an average return of 5.1%, I simply believe the other platforms on the list are better options. For me, there are other asset classes (e.g. stocks) that are simply more attractive at the same risk/return you take on yourself on these crowdfunding platforms
Lastly, they charge a one-off 2% fee on your investment, which I am not a big fan of – it is free to sell your investment though. Apart from that, I like the idea of actually owning real estate and not only earn a rental income, but also reaping the potential rewards from capital gains.
Click here to sign up with Property Partner
Origin: United Kingdom
Founded: 2015
Funded loans/projects (cumulative): EUR 148 million
Average annual return: 7.3% pre-tax (self-reported)
Loan types: Buy-to-let investment plans
Investors from: Globally
Minimum investment: 250-5,000 GBP
Buyback guarantee: No
Autoinvest: Yes
Secondary marketplace: Yes
Trustpilot TrustScore: 9.0/10
That was my list of the eight best real estate crowdfunding platforms in Europe. I’ll keep it updated as new platforms emerge!
What is real estate crowdfunding and how does it work?
Real estate crowdfunding comes in a variety of different shapes and forms.
As a rule of thumb, it always involves an individual or business lending money to other individuals or businesses related to real estate. By using a platform, the lender can act as a traditional bank and earn interest/return on the investment. Similarly, the borrower can bypass traditional banks that usually charge higher rates or have strict credit requirements.
The loans/projects offered on the crowdfunding platforms are different, but could include:
- Buy-to-let: Buying a share of a real estate development project to make money on rental income
- Buy-to-sell: Buying a share of a real estate development project to make money on a future sale
- Development loans: Lending money to a real estate development project like a bank (just as you do in P2P lending)
- Real estate-backed loans: Lending money to an individual or business secured by real estate meaning the real estate will be used to try to get your money back if the borrower defaults
Usually, the real estate crowdfunding platforms are free to use and charge the borrowers, but a few of the sites charge a fee for either investing or selling your investment. If the platform charges a fee, it is often calculated into the projected returns.
In the list above, I have only included real estate crowdfunding websites in Europe, but you could also consider looking at P2P lending platforms if you don’t want your investments to be related to real estate.
What are the risks of investing in real estate crowdfunding in Europe?
Investing your money always comes at a risk. This is also the case for real estate crowdfunding.
I never invest more than 5-10% of my net worth in high-risk assets such as crowdfunding. Generally, you shouldn’t invest money you are not ready to lose.
There are a few risks associated with investing in real estate crowdfunding that are like P2P lending risks. The two biggest risks are:
- The borrower cannot repay the loan (e.g. the development project goes bankrupt)
- The platform goes bankrupt
If the borrower goes bankrupt and cannot/doesn’t want to repay the loan you risk losing all your money if the platform doesn’t have a buyback guarantee. If this happens, usually normal bankruptcy procedures kick in and you might or might not get your money back. You can normally mitigate this risk by investing in many different loans.
If the platform goes bankrupt, you risk losing all your money invested across different projects depending on how the loans are structured. If the platform gives you an actual share of a property, you might still have that after the platform goes bankrupt, but this might not be the case if you invest in an investment pool on the platform and not directly in specific projects or loans. If the platform goes bankrupt, normal bankruptcy procedures would also kick in here and you might get some of your money back.
Investing in real estate crowdfunding is not risk-free and you should be aware of this if you decide to start. For me, it has yielded great returns so far, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to the risk. For example, we haven’t seen how these platforms perform during an economic crisis yet.
I hope this comparison has helped you. Before you leave, remember the above is my own opinion and you should always do your research before investing 🙂