Total Funded:
€114,011,945
Average Return:
8.83%*
Housers
Housers is a marketplace for direct peer-to-peer lending that allows users to invest in loans granted on the platform directly to borrowers. All loans are real estate or property development loans. The loans are all collateral backed and the platform is the first of its kind in Spain. The platform has been around since 2015 helping develop properties and fund working capital for real estate companies in Spain, Italy and Portugal.
| Company: | Housers Global Properties PFP, SL |
| Business: | Real Estate Lending |
| Founded: | 2015 |
| Founders: | Alvaro Luna & Tono Brusola |
| Origin: | Spain |
| Ownership: | Private |
| Operating in: | Spain, Italy & Portugal |
| Users: | 120,567 |
Office location in Madrid
Table of Contents
Investor Introduction Video - How does Housers work?
Housers Pros & Cons
Pros
- High interest rates
- All loans are collateral backed (Real Estate)
- New opportunities launched every month
- Only direct investment structure
Cons
- All alternative investments with potential for high returns come with high risk
- No automatic investing
- Slow customer support
Characteristics of Loans
Interest Rates
5% – 18%
Loan Durations
6 – 120 months
Currency
Euro
Asset as Collateral ⇙
Minimum Investment ⇙
Direct Investment Structure
Loans on Housers
Housers displays the real estate loan projects on sale, “DCC”, past projects and advanced view in the dashboard. The loan projects on sale is the primary market, DDC stands for Direct Communication Channel and is the secondary market where you can buy loan shares directly from other users. The overview of loans on Housers covers the most useful information a lender would want. Most loans are bullet loans ranging from 6 – 24 months. The projects are mainly high-end property in Spain, but also covers Italy and Portugal. Housers works with a lot of different developers and besides standard residential property they have featured more spectacular properties like castles, premium hotels, vacation homes and other commercial real estate in need of development. All projects are rated A to E and usually with an interest in the range of 8 – 14 %.
Two great things about Housers are the large range of available projects allowing lenders to diversify in different risk categories and the comprehensive amount of available documented information about the projects. With documents about financials, the project and legal necessities it is possible for investors to get a good idea about the risks involved with lending to a specific project. The standard formal description and financial information is only answering the basic questions one might have, but digging deeper into the documents presented will reveal more information than presented on most real estate platforms in the market.
Buyback Guarantee on Housers
Loans on Housers do not come with a buyback guarantee so expect to see defaults now and then. A downside of this is that lenders must take diversification seriously and it is recommended to have 100+ loans (which is € 5,000 if you use the minimum investment). Read more about risks, downsides and benefits associated with the buyback guarantees here.
Direct Investment Structure
There are two different types of investment structures in P2P investing:
- The direct structure means you are buying a claim against the borrower directly.
- The indirect structure means you obtain exposure to a loan by investing in a loan issued by a platform company to the loan originator.
Housers is a traditional lending-based crowdfunding platform and every loan is structured in a direct investment structure. This results in a simple and transparent investment structure making it possible to better evaluate the risks involved because you know that you are lending directly to the company/owner of the property.
Platform Features
Manual Investing
Manual investing on Housers is easy and simple. The loans are usually presented as shown in the image below. The loan amounts on this platform are usually in the higher end, since it is most often high-end property. The amount of loans published will satisfy most investors and the consistency in new projects is what one would expect at a direct investment structured platform. Usually between 1-5 projects are open for funding and a lot more are available on the secondary market. This means that is possible to quickly diversify into many different real estate projects.
The projects listed on the primary marked is available in a more comparable way under the “Advanced View”. This enables you to quickly get an idea about the real estate projects searching for lenders right this moment. All loan shares are listed with a market value of 1 euro and to participate the minimum purchase is 50 loan shares. This price can vary when sold on the secondary market.
Secondary Market
Housers has a Secondary Market called the Direct Communication Channel. This market is for buying and selling loan shares directly to and from other users. The prices of the shares is determined by the seller and can range anywhere from -10 % to +10 %. There is no cap or limit on the discount and premium on the loan shares, so it is possible to get some good deals. However, you also need to be careful not to overpay when buying on the DCC. The secondary market is searchable by country and loan type (Development, Buy-to-Sell, Buy-to-Let).
Automatic Investing
Automatic investing is not available on Housers and it is not expected to be presented in the near future. This can be a downside for lenders just want to be diversified into as many loans as possible without being willing to browse and look through every project for the best deals. On the other side, having no automatic investing feature forces lenders to actively make decisions on every project instead of just blindly placing money into all kinds of different projects that could cause an overweight in for example vacation homes or any other specific risk category.
Nice to Know for Investors
Registration Process
Registering at Housers is very simple and easy. Whether you’re an individual investor or investing as a company, creating an account requires just an email, phone number and selecting a password. After creating an account, the platform will send an email with instructions to register. The platform complies with KYC (Know Your Customer) and you therefore need to provide an identification document and additional information to be able to withdraw money from the platform. Thus, you can create an account and invest, but you will have to complete the KYC before unlocking withdrawing. It is possible to receive 25 euro if you sign up using this link.
Deposit & Withdrawal Process
Depositing funds to your investor account is done in three steps:
- Transfer money to your Housers account from your bank with traditional bank transfer or TransferWise.
- Your funds will be available for investment within the day of confirmed arrival (usually 1-3 banking days).
- After the funds are received and added to the account, you will receive an e-mail confirmation.
Withdrawing funds is very simple if you are already KYC validated. You just click the “withdraw funds”, enter the desired amount and wait the 1 to 3 business days before the requested amount will arrive on your account. There is no minimum withdrawal restrictions and no further additional fees or commission for withdrawing the funds – except maybe from your own bank. Remember, depending on their fee structure, your own bank might charge fees for handling the transaction or exchanging currency.
Funding Method
Reporting
Housers has a portfolio overview/”asset situation” for your loans. This account statement displays a diagram of your funds that are invested in projects, committed to projects and available for investing. The reporting page gives lenders an overview of the asset valuation based on value of the shares, how many projects you’re participating in and the current invested capital per project.
The income statement is then divided into profit and expenses, displaying the results:
- + Profits
- + Extra profits
- + Profits from real estate sale
- + Interest payments
- + Benefits from the purchase of titles
- – Housers Fees
- – Extra expenses
- – Losses
- – Taxes
= Net Profit
Housers Tax
This information should be taken exclusively for informative purposes, but in general terms:
Interest paid to non-resident investors in Spain will be taxed at the 19% rate in Spain. The investor may deduct in his declaration, the amount that according to the regulation of his country of fiscal residence corresponds to taxable income that appears as income obtained and taxed abroad.
Housers FAQ: “How are the interest taxed in the event that the investor is a natural or legal person resident outside of Spain, but invests in a project where the developer is a Spanish resident?”
Support
Housers only has email support and it can at times be very slow. This is not the ideal situation for a customer support, but the website contain a lot of the answers one might have. This is a con with Housers – good costumer relation and fast support is an important feature of any peer-to-peer platform.
Housers Competitors
Who Can Invest?
1. Individuals, of legal age, with Spanish or foreign nationality.
2. Legal entities (companies).
Notes: There is a limitation for some countries from where LemonWay does not accept open accounts from where users can invest. Amongst others Afghanistan, Barbados, Belarus, Burma, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosnia, Burundi, Korea, Egipt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, United States of America, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libia, Macau, Mali, Mongolia, Namibia, Panama, Central African Republic, Congo, Russia, Samoa, Somalia, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela or Yémen.
Housers FAQ: “Who can register for Housers?”
Is Housers Regulated?
Housers is a registered Crowdfunding Platform in Spain at Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores(CNMV) with the registration number 20. Housers is not financially regulated and does not offer financial advice and none of the proposed activities should be considered as such.
Housers Bonus - Receive 25 Euro on your first investment
Housers has a referral program giving new investors a bonus on the amount invested within the first three months. P2PMarketData is part of this program that will also return 25 euro to us – without additional costs to you of course. So if you would like to support us while also receiving 25 euro yourself on your first investments, please use this link for signing up at Housers.
Housers Statistics
| Founded: | 2015 |
| Total investments: | €114 million |
| Total returned to investors: | €42.9 million |
| Average IRR: | 8.83% |
| Total users: | 120,567 |
| Total number of projects: | 275 |
| Total number of projects ended: | 83 |
| Total number of projects in Spain: | 220 |
| Total number of projects in Spain closed: | 69 |
| Total number of projects in Italy: | 36 |
| Total number of projects in Italy closed: | 9 |
| Total number of projects in Portugal: | 19 |
| Total number of projects in Portugal closed: | 5 |
| Buy-to-let projects average obtained IRR: | 4.74% |
| Development projects average obtained IRR: | 10.12% |
| Equity projects average obtained IRR: | 8.77% |
| Other projects average obtained IRR: | 8.45% |
Disclosure
Please note that this overview may contain affiliate links. It means that a commission is earned if you decide to invest after using the link without additional costs to you. The information on this site does not constitute investment advice and is solely to give you a simple and easy overview of the platform. Always conduct your own due diligence and consult your financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
* Historical return is not a guarantee of future return. The number is directly from Housers’ website housers.com at on the last update of the article: May 21, 2020.