Property Crowdfunding

roy73

Hi Guys,

I'm new here. I wanted to ask if anyone had used any property crowdfunding sites. There's a few out there.

Have you had any good or bad experiences with any of the companies out there.

Currently my shortlist of companies I'm looking at:

- Property Partner
- UOWN
- Property Moose
- House crowd

Best,

Roy

msallen

I have a small amount in UOWN. Its still a very young site and the secondary market isn't up and running yet so I'm not investing more with them (apart from reinvesting the income) until that is established.

Having said that I like them best of the various property p2p/crowdfunding sites (all the rest of my non standard S&S investment is in more traditional p2p). They are the newest part of an established family owned group of Leeds based property businesses, which include the ownership of a number of properties let out by their own student letting agency. This is where the initial properties for UOWN are sourced/bought from and explains why they are able to "buy them slowly" as they need to do until the rate of investment via UOWN grows.

msallen

I should have said ... you'll probably find more info at p2pindependentforum.com/

ChesterDog

I have used The House Crowd for a few years - I forget when they first got going, but I have had investments with them ever since.

I concentrate very much on the buy-to-let side of it, but do have a bit in the peer-to-peer offerings they do, and their development (ground up) loans.

They have expanded very rapidly but seem to have managed it all very well.

I have some gripes with them, which they are aware of and - apparently - working to rectify.

These relate primarily to the functionality of the website and its inability to acknowledge the total amount you have invested with them at any given moment. That's a pretty basic failing, isn't it? It seems chiefly to relate to not anticipating at the outset that simply totting up how much money a client had invested over time would not take account of subsequent withdrawals.

A problem also arose when they branched out into p2p and development loans. At that point the invested totals became split over three website tabs, with no overall summary (which - see above - might well be wrong anyway).

I have had more than £60k with them at any one time, but have allowed this to dwindle (mid forties k now) because of the above issues. I don't believe they would have gained FCA approval/recognition/accreditation or whatever if the FCA had been aware that an investor csnnot easily reconcile his or her own records with the company's valuation of their investments.

Those things aside, I have found them efficient, honest, friendly, very quick to respond to queries and so on.

In fact, I have no complaints at all other than the above.

They have told me their website is being brought in-house this month and that the issues will be attended to soon after.

From an investment point of view, it's all gone smoothly for me (I have £1-2k per investment with them, so a good number of individual investments). Dividends and so on are paid in a timely manner, as are returns of capital and any profit.

Over the years, it must have become a very complex operation to run, but (based on my own limited interactions with the people there), they have remained very customer-focussed and attentive, and the whole operation appears - from the outside at least - to function efficiently, professionally and well.

roy73

Thanks for that guys.

Msallen thats a really useful thread there. I had a read through and they (UOWN) seem like a good outfit. I like the look of their site the most, but I was a little concerned that there were only three properties up, I didn't realise that they have a strong outfit behind them. Thats always promising.

I was leaning toward property moose, but after seeing some of the threads on here I have been completely put off.

Housecrowd seem good, I found their site a little hard to use, but the properties seemed like the type I wanted.

It comes down to returns and consistency, I might invest a small amount with a couple of different sites and then see who delivers the best real service and returns

firestone

roy73 wrote: »

Hi Guys,

I'm new here. I wanted to ask if anyone had used any property crowdfunding sites. There's a few out there.

Have you had any good or bad experiences with any of the companies out there.

Currently my shortlist of companies I'm looking at:

- Property Partner
- UOWN
- Property Moose
- House crowd

Best,

Roy

not in any - but for size Property Partner are by far the biggest i would guess.There is also Bricklane who "partner" with Zoopla which you may want to look at

djpix99

I have personally had experiences with Uown and property Moose.

Uown - Good yields but no secondary market. I got the opportunity to meet one of the Uown staff for an interview for their online marketing and came away with a positive outlook of the company and choose to invest more with them.

Property Moose - Low/no yields on some properties and hard to sell on the secondary market, this is why I choose to sell all my investments.

In the future I plan to invest with Property Partner, I am waiting until I have a lump sum to invest in their auto investment product.

roy73

Hi Guys,

Just thought I would give you a quick update on this. Really appreciate the help.

I decided to invest in three platforms after hearing about your experiences, I'll trial them out over the next month or so and then invest a larger amount into the one I feel is the best.

Property moose

Property Partner

UOWN

Would have liked to do housecrowd but their minimum investment seemed to be £1000 and because this is a bit of a test it seemed a bit too much of a push.

So first things first, the sign up.

Property moose 6/10

I thought I liked this sign up the best until I made a mistake somewhere. The sign process completely broke down. I had to exit and start again. Not to worry though I managed to get through it, eventually. Looks nice clean and pretty straight forward could work better.

Property Partner 8/10

It was really light touch to get in. I had to give all my details when I went ahead an invested in one of the properties including answering some fit and proper type questions.
Worked well.

UOWN 9/10

I liked this one the best. It worked fine for me and I was through it very quickly. Two stand out things for me was the little bit of text here and there explaining what it was I was doing or why I was doing it and the email follow up. There's four or five emails that come through I haven't got them all yet, but they explain who they are and a good overview of their strategy.
Their personality came through which for me was a cherry on top.

I'll update you guys on the investment process later,

takesyourchances

Does the dividend payment from rentals in crowd funding come under the annual dividend allowance?

Thanks

roy73

Yes they do count towards your dividends allowance.

I believe that the capital gains also count towards your CGT allowance which is £11300 for 17/18

msallen

roy73 wrote: »

I believe that the capital gains also count towards your CGT allowance which is £11300 for 17/18

Yes, but only when you sell.