One of my investment areas is peer to peer lending. My interest here is split into Real estate and Loans and covered on two different platforms. The following Crowdestate review will cover my online real estate income approach as an EU citizen. As I am not using this anymore, I do not have a working referral to them.
Contents
One year of Crowdestate
Before you read the original review, I though that it would help to give you my 1 year Crowdestate review as this is the first of the three milestones when I have decided to share my insights/experience with my passive income platforms.
Looking back at what happened this year to my ~7000 EUR investment is quite interesting. The only downside was that I bought from the secondary market and not only lost some money due to the fee and extra cost, but also one of those investments defaulted and the owning company transferred it’s assets so that the recovery of the investment has now became a legal topic. This is their first of this kind (based on what I understood) and it would be interesting to see how Crowdestate handles this case. If they do well, then this should up the points for this platforms security.
The good part is that my investment in that property was under 150 EUR. This limits my losses and I can still enjoy the annual returns generated by my other investments.
As you can see, I have some decent investments, but I am not that happy on how the % annual return is calculated in the following summary. As an investor it causes more confusion for me than clarity and I do not rely on it.
The unspecified item it the property which has defaulted and where I am curious about how the investment will be recovered and how long it will take.
Going back to the platform, I noticed that there usually are 2-3 investments per month with a peak in December (this is the 2nd December) where there were more than 3 investments made available. The amount required for these investments is rounded up fast, it seems that investors are eager and the Crowdestate team also added a new country to the investment list – Romania.
Besides this I can state that the auto invest works well for me as most of my investments are made through this after I did some more tweaking on the configuration and that I am eager to fill in my tax report via the extract from their site as it looks simple enough.
Please feel free to go through the original review or if you are just interested in the financial aspects, then you can take a look at my financial portfolio.
Short description
This platform allows investment into real estate opportunities (mainly) with a minimum investment of 100 and an average % p.a. of around 11% (based on the offers I was able to find) and no fees towards the investor.
The majority of investments are senior debt thus backed by collateral and so far no defaults as you will see in this Crowdestate review. This is mainly due to vetting and the fact that only a few of the projects are opened to the investors.
As this is not a bank, and as per my understanding (I would appreciate to be corrected) my account is not guaranteed, but this is expected.
For more questions, I would sincerely recommend you browse their website and take a look at the frequently asked questions or even their blog.
Registration
The registration was simple and easy. Even the identity verification was an ease and went really quick. The login via social media or google also helped out and once I activated the authentication all was set up for me.
To make sure my PC keeps the site to EN was my challenge, but after twiddling around a little it was saved.
Fund transfer
Transferring funds is simple and for a SEPA international payment, it is done in max 2 days. For me it was 1 working day (I transferred on Fri afternoon and the money was in by Monday.
To transfer is also easy, you configure your IBAN and then proceed to the Add Funds button that will prompt a simple and easy guide on how to proceed with the transfer.
For me it was simple & easy as it was with most of the functionalities for the platform described in this Crowdestate review.. Keep in mind that the reference number is key.
How the system behaves
The interface is simple and intuitive. You do not have a lot of areas to fiddle with. I urge you to keep it simple and do not over complicate it. The key is to read carefully the investments and find something that makes sense for you.
Under overview and portfolio you have a high level summary, you can check out at screen at my monthly Crowdestate statistics page.
What I really like about them is the fact that for each investment, besides the summary and story, you get a simple risk analysis and once you invest, you receive the clear contractual documents in both local language and translated in English. This is all stored under your agreements and looked like this:
Transactions, agreement and setting are what they say, but It is worth while to spend some time on Reports and Auto invest.
Secondary marketplace is your EXIT in case you need it, but it may be a hit in your financials as you may need to sell at a loss versus the profit, or even worse, versus the original investment.
Today I checked and there are ~400 offers on the market place. You can find both users that sell to make a profit (invest & sell at +1 EUR the next day) or people cutting losses and selling under their original investment (although this are not that often). I will not post a screen as I do not know if I can share other investments that are not mine, but if you are intending to buy other investments that are sold at a profit for the seller and also appear as a profit to you if you look at the contract end date, please take note that the sellers profits is out of your pocket.
Ending this chapter, the last part that is relevant is the updates related part that happens to both your investments, but which you can also see on other investments even if you did not take part of them. I like this from transparency point of view.
My setup of the system
Not a lot to set up here. The only thing is the auto invest, but I already did all my investments manual. Will start using this once I reel in profit or after next deposit, but it may take a little while as my next deposit is looking at ETFs as there is still a long way to go up reach my dream portfolio.
The auto invest seems easy to configure and required token authentication in order to confirm. Please check out my configuration, but there is not a lot I can talk about it for now.
Update done on 15-04-2019 in order to refresh the auto invest overview in this Crowdestate review. I have reduced the investment period from 48 to 18 months in order to decrease the time required for an exit in order to decrease my risk level on P2P investing. The same approach I used with Mintos.
Reports
As I am a non-resident I need to extract my statistics and submit them within my countries TAX system, Crowdestate will only do that for Estonian tax residents.
The outputted report is simple and contains what you may need, but i do not like the fact that it is .pdf only and you are limited to balance sheet & profit per period (Month & year).
Fund withdrawal
Did not had to do it yet, but there is a big green button called Transfer Funds that links to the IBAN configured to my investment account.
Will let you know once I reel in the first profits or once I exit from Crowdestate.
Profit & Loss
So far I am 4 months+ with Crowdestate and based on the site calculation, the % p.a. is 12.69 as shown on a month by month basis in my monthly extract.
Looking now (15-04-2019) at my transactions, I can state that the loss I had due to buying from the secondary marketplace of 2 positions was recovered. The positions were one of 100 EUR and the other of 300 EUR and gave me a capital loss of 31 EUR (8 + 23) as shown below due to buying at a higher price than the original owner of the positions did (his profit at my loss).
Today (15-04-2019) I am at a profit of 55 EUR which is small, but the main returns are expected later this year, the break even point is next year and the projected profit of ~1300 for a ~7000 investment in 2022 without any other re-investments as shown below.
For now, the objective is to leave auto invest ON as per the already shown configuration and further monitor the profit and loss later his year.
Conclusion
Overall I like Crowdestate and it is fairly easy & simple as a platform. The investments provided within are sufficient enough for me as I invested around 500 to 1000 EUR per each, but looking to change this via auto invest and further diversify by using 100 – 300 EUR investments from the 2nd half of 2019.
There are sufficient reviews online and opinions. I will constantly update this Crowdestate review and make it relevant based on my experience as an EU citizen. You can also check my portfolio page or as you can follow in my monthly statistics.
As a downside I do not like their limited reporting capability, but as I did not yet had to do my taxes, I am not sure if this is a big downside or not. I should know by next year, but the .pdf only format seems like a potential issue if you have multiple 100 EUR investments across the year.
No referral option, thus no profit referring anyone here, but I would recommend you try it out after you go through their FAQ page.