The House Crowd

missslbell

http://www.thehousecrowd.com/

Anyone have any experience of this crowd sourcing investment in property

- seem to offer
A Income and equity- 6%per year and 50% profit share on sale (min 1k)
B Income only- 7,5% semi annual (min 3k)

I

ChesterDog

Yes.

Been with them for quite a while.

I haven't benefitted from a property sale yet (but know of people who have), but the 6% dividends come like clockwork.

A genuine, honest company, but not without risks, obviously.

Perelandra

The cynic in me would say it's easy to pay a 6% income for a large number of years from the original capital if needed, before anyone suspected that there was a problem.

Having said that, I can understand how this business model could work- it looks interesting.

Biggles

Perelandra wrote: »

The cynic in me would say it's easy to pay a 6% income for a large number of years from the original capital if needed, before anyone suspected that there was a problem.

Bernard Madoff knew that well....

Reaper

Their web site home page has a prominent box saying "As Featured In" and loads of logos. What tends to ring alarm bells with me is when these fail to link to the original articles, it makes me suspect it is because they got negative reports. Most do have links on this page but two of the biggest names - Investors Chronicle & The Guardian do not.

On Investors Chronicle doing (a brief) search found the owner being quoted on a number of occasions but I can't find any review of this business.

I checked the Guardian one which is worth a read for how these types of investment companies have done in the past including one set up previously by the person behind this one.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/mar/27/property-investment-crowdsourcing-generation

On the whole an interesting idea, but not without risk and remember your investment will not be covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

P.S. Also note some of the press links are to articles written by the founder himself, such as the This Is Money one.

richard686

Yes, been in over a year, started with property number 11 and they are now on number 50 something.

No issues so far and certainly a better return than buy to let...

If I lived up North and had a reliable team of builders, I'd do the same, but down here house prices are so high, you just don't get a decent return.

A £350k house gets you about £1100 a month rental income less all the costs like maintenance etc. It only takes a boiler replacement to wipe out 3 or 4 months rent. So roughly 3% return after costs.

Mind you with House Crowd you won't see much increase in capital value.

So in the South, we are seeing 3% rental return plus 5% on the value of the house.

If you don't have big money to buy to let, House Crowd seems like a no brainer!