Last updated in March 2023.
What is Max Crowdfund?
Max Crowdfund is a fairly new player in the European marketplace lending market. It opened in 2020 in the Netherlands, offering investments in real estate loans. The platform has funded more than 150 real estate projects worth beyond €45 million in loans to date. P2PMarketData gets information directly from Max Crowdfund on all previous and new projects. See Max Crowdfund statistics for more historical insights.
Key Takeaways
- A platform owned by a larger real estate investment group
- Investments in short-term property-backed loans, mostly in the UK
- Interest rates of 8%+ with claims of zero default rate and a transparent fee structure
How Investing on Max Crowdfund Works
Max Crowdfund offers short-term property-backed loans for real estate developers. The loans are on average €315.000, but bigger deals of over a million can also be spotted. Investments mature in 6-24 months (although most last no longer than 12 months). All investments are structured as bullet loans and secured with real estate collateral. The underlying properties are usually residential buildings in the UK (majority of deals), Germany (fewer), the Netherlands, and Belgium (only a handful of projects). You can view all Max Crowdfund projects directly at P2PMarketData.
There is no auto-invest feature or secondary market.
Max Crowdfund Returns & Fees
At P2PMarketData, based on API integration of all live and historical Max Crowdfund loans, we have calculated the average nominal interest rate to be 10.26%.
Additional factors such as delays, defaults, and fees can decrease the real returns. According to Max Crowdfund, the 1.800 investors have made a 9.09% average annual return. The platform claims that so far, there have been no defaults in the platform history.
The platform charges fees on both lenders and borrowers - their price list details all the fees, including a monthly transaction fee of 0.1% charged to investors.
Max Crowdfund Management
The platform is run by Max Property Group (MPG), which has operated since 2016 and offers investment in real estate funds. Felix Berkhout currently holds the CEO role at the Group.
In early financing rounds (2016-2018), the Group raised over €1m to develop the Max Crowdfund platform. A later equity round (2021) brought an additional €4.25m of equity funding, representing just over 14% of shares in MPG. However, it’s unclear who holds the rest of the shares or who founded the company in the first place.
Neither the Group nor the platform publishes financial statements.
Special Considerations
The platform is clearly into blockchain technologies. Max Crowdfund registers all investment opportunities on the blockchain - according to the platform management, it provides additional transparency. They also issue an MCF Token, which offers incentives and rewards to investors.
In a written interview from March 2022 with P2PMarketData, Max Crowdfund CEO shared some near-future plans. He said the platform is currently applying for the EU-wide ECSP license, which will facilitate investments across the Union. But he said the platform wouldn’t stop there:
Besides the EU, with Max Crowdfund we aim to have the platform up and running in every interesting country around the world. Currently, the Max Crowdfund platform operates in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium and even New Zealand. In the next 5 years, we will add more countries to our portfolio, with which we will gain more investors and thus our platform will grow even more.
