A review on Housers – a Spanish real estate crowdfunding platform

Housers offers 3 types of investments on the platform:

• Buy to sell – these generate no monthly income and the investor recovers their investment only after the property is sold
• Buy to let – investors get monthly rental income and the sale of the property is not considered in the short term; the investments typically last from 5 to 10 years
• Development loans – these have an estimated term between 12 and 60 months; the interest is paid monthly to investors until the end of the loan term

All investment opportunities are ranked with a risk level scoring from A to G. Opportunities with lower risk (A or B) also have lower annual yields. The risk level is based on both the property (location, sale price, construction, valuation price) and financials (working capital, credit capacity, guarantees ).

The average yield returns for investors so far have been 5.5% for buy to sell projects, 4% for buy to let, and 9.7% for development loans.

Who can join Housers

Residents from most of the countries can join Housers and invest in the opportunities available. There’s a list of around 30 countries that are not allowed to invest (for whatever reason). Of course, the US is included in this list of 30 countries.

What fees are on the platform

There are no fees when entering an investment opportunity or an annual management fee. Housers charges a 10% fee on the profit obtained.

Additionally, your income tax is deducted automatically, it doesn’t matter if your residence is in Spain or any other country. The tax percentage depends on where the real-estate developer company is registered: 19% for Spain, 26% for Italy, and 28% for Portugal.

Platform experience

There’s a healthy amount of available investments in the market with good return rates. Each investment opportunity has details about the property, current market condition, financials, and exit plan.

The annual yield shown is the expected return of the investment based on market analysis, property, etc. The actual return might be a bit different.

My dashboard

You can view your investments and follow their status on the user dashboard. It has some cool features like a diversification index graph that shows the current risk level of your portfolio.

My current portfolio is decently diversified, but I should add a few more investments in other geographical regions to minimize my risks.

Conclusions on Housers

Housers is a good platform to invest in if you plan to expand your real estate investment portfolio into Southern Europe.

Things I don’t like about Housers:

• you don’t really own shares of the real estate properties you invest in; instead, the legal form is a loan to the development company, for a period of 5 to 10 years
• taxes are deducted automatically; I would only need to pay 10% tax in Romania for my income on the platform; instead, I’m paying from 19% to 28% tax in Spain, Italy, or Portugal

I’m going to keep for now a small investment on the platform and see how it evolves. Meanwhile, I’ll get more familiar with Housers and the investments they offer and how they are doing their risk assessments on the opportunities presented.