CrowdProperty – My Review of the P2P Lending Platform

I started to invest in CrowdProperty £2k in July 2020 (minimum lending £500). I started small with a number of platforms as I was brand new to property crowdfunding at that point. I added another £4k by December 2020 and further topped it up to £16k at December 2021 and maintained it at £20k from December 2022 (split evenly between IFSA and non-IFSA accounts). However, I have started to divest from this platform. Below is the detail of the CrowdProperty review and reports on returns after 4 years investing with this Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending platform. For more review of P2P lending, please view here: P2P Lending Platform Review.

Overall

While I like CrowdProperty because of how quickly the fund is utilised into projects, I must admit I’m slightly concerned with their high rate of loan defaults. They have a very low rating of 2.2 on Trustpilot with similar concerns raised by other investors. I have started to stop the auto invest and plan to withdraw the money from the platform over time.

My experience with CrowdProperty so far

Returns

My current contract rate of return is 8.11%. My realised average return is 7.94%. The current Bank of England rate is 5%. This is a decent rate among the property crowdfunding platforms.

Risks

Loan default risks:

All loans are secured by UK property. However, the platform has a high number of complaints regarding the long overdue loans. Below is an example of the recent Trustpilot feedback in August 2024.

There was also similar discussion on Property Tribes website:

As at August 2024, half of my portfolio is overdue, of which £4.5k (almost 50%) is more than 12 months overdue. I have decided to stop the auto invest and withdraw my money and will provide an update on how quickly the money will be returned.

Platform risks:

CrowdProperty does have a glowing review on 4thWay website with an Exceptional 3/3 rating. The platform was launched in 2014. As per their financial statements for the year ended March 2023, they had 48 staff. The profit was £377k and the net asset was positive at £5m.

While I’m quite concerned about their loan overdue, there was some discussion in the Property Tribes website that they appeared to have a reasonable funding line through institutional investors and private investors and they did an exhibition at the Property Investor Show in April 2024. So hopefully the platform is going long enough for me to recover my investments.

“Lazy Investor” Rating

CrowdProperty is one of the best platforms for lazy investors with their auto-invest option. The fund is being used very quickly into projects. You can set the pledge size to ensure the diversification of funds and also can choose to skip projects that you don’t like.

Customer support

Customer support is decent. They often responded to my queries with 2 or 3 working days.