Review - Housers - Real Estate Crowdfunding platform

Lukas

Review Intro

In 2017 I started to look around for real estate crowdinvesting/crowdfunding platforms. I had practice with Real Estate investment funds and REIT ETF, but they usually consist of stocks of real-estate related companies and thus their market price correlate with stock market in general.

A lot of private investors with enough money decides to buy an apartment and rent it, but not everyone has enough money for such investment or want their money better diversified.

Housers is a real estate crowdfunding company from Spain, which focus on several types of investments mostly in residential properties.

In this discussion I would like to review my experience with this platform.

Lukas

Short characteristics

Types of assets
- Buy-to-let (Property is bought for long-term rent with monthly payments)
- Buy-to-sell (Property is bougth, renovated/reconstructed and sold in 12-24 months)
- Development loan (Loan for developer projects with fixed interest rate)
Registration: free
Autoinvest: no
Registration Bonus: 25 € through referral link (not available for withdraval, only for investment in Housers)
Minimum investment: 50 €
Money transfer
- Bank transfer
- Credit card
Regulators:
- CNMV (Spanish financial markets regulator)
More statistics

Lukas

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

Enough opportunities to invest in (cca 3-5 published each month)
Low minimum investment amount (50€) - easy to diversify even for small portfolio
Spain financial markets regulation
Internal Housers Marketplace (to sell/buy your "property" shares)
Opportunities have score assigned, which indicates risk of potential investment

Weaknesses

Most of the properties are residential, it would be better to offer also commercial properties
Ownership of the properties is "virtual", you cannot just walk to the apartment, you cannot check who rent the apartment etc. (This can be also a strength from one point of view)

Opportunities

Invest in real estate properties with small amount of money
Invest in real estate properties in several european countries

Threats

Potential cyber attack on Housers system (not sure how secure the system is)
Potential bankrupcy of the Housers company (not sure, what would happen to the properties owned)

Lukas

I attach a few screenshots from Housers web application.

From my point of view, GUI is quite intuitive and good looking.
Most of the time I work with Housers from my 5'' smartphone with no problem - it is well optimized also for mobile devices.

Dashboard 1
Housers Dashboard 1
Dashboard 2
Housers Dashboard 2

joe

@Lukas Hello, did any of the real estate projects you invested in exited? What was the real return compared to the promised expected return? If yes, how fast were the money transfered to your internal Housers account?

Lukas

joe I started to invest via Housers about a year ago and yes, several "buy to let" projects already existed with IRR about 8%-12%. Money are available in my Housers account approx. 1 week after property is sold.

List of exited opportunities I invested in and corresponding return rates:

CLARA DEL REY: 6.50%
PLAZA DE LAS VENTAS: 7.55%
RÍOS ROSAS: 9.15%
PONZANO: 7.44%
SENDA DEL AIRE: 10.00%
PRADILLO: 6.67%
LÓPEZ DE HOYOS: 8.17%

I'm quite satisfied so far ? ?

Web page with the list of user's exited opportunities looks like this:

Housers exited opportunities

joe

Looks promising, I am not interested in these P2P lending platforms, but I was specially looking for real estate online investment platforms. I have experience with REIT ETF's but want to try something more close to the actual real estate properties.

Lukas

joe Housers is focused more on residential properties and it would be nice to have some platform operating with commercial properties. If you find one, write here about it, please.

Lukas

As I started investing in Housers a year ago, quite a lot of buy to let opportunities I invested in 2017 are being sold. Apart from those I mentioned in my post above, I have IRR from another 2:
- Bravo Murillo: 14,22 %
- Joaquín Sorolla: 9,81%

Chart of development of my investments:
Housers investments chart

joe

Housers just reached 100.000 users (investors). Could someone compare it to the other platforms?