EstateGuru Review: A look at one of the fastest growing cross-border real estate platforms offering secured low risk property investments

Considering joining or expanding your property crowd investing platform? Our EstateGuru review below will analyze one of the most successful European real estate crowd investing platform.

For many years, the real estate market has been dominated by banking and other major financial institutions. Real estate was the most preferred method of investing due to its high returns; this attracted more investors interested in entering the market.

But there was a problem, the barriers put in place by the traditional banks and financial institutions made it available only to the wealthy, well, until crowdfunding became a thing. In this EstateGuru review, we look at one of the real estate crowdfunding platforms that opened the market to cash strapped investors and developers.

EstateGuru Overview

Crowdfunding platforms developed and became popular due to the convenience it offered over the traditional financial institutions. In real estate, many investors and developers were getting tired of the ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions offered by banks as they did not look at the project individually but instead operated within set processes with little to no flexibility. Crowdfunding provided the developers and investors an opportunity to make their own terms and make it a win-win for everyone.

EstateGuru is a real estate crowd investing platform that was formed in 2014 by a group of real estate and fintech experts in Estonia. The company has its headquarters in Estonia, and it has representative offices in Lithuania, Latvia, and the UK.

It deals with property investments in Estonia, Spain, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland. By February 2019, the platform had funded 646 loans with the average loan size being 152,717 Euros. The total money lent is 98.7 million Euros with the average return being 12.23%. as of 2019, the platform had 19770 investors from 45 countries.

Opening an account on EstateGuru

Registration on EstateGuru has an extra-long verification process than most crowd investing platforms, however, this remains easy to do. The registration process is divided into four levels. In the first level, you will create an account by filling your active email and choosing your password. Unlike other platforms, you have to verify your email by clicking on the link sent to you to proceed to the next level.

Level two requires you to input your first and last name, country of residence, referral code if you were referred and an active phone number. You have to verify your phone number using the code sent to you by text message to move to the next level.

The third level requires you to verify your identity, you can do it manually by uploading your ID, passport or residence permit or driver’s license. You can also use the webcam verification offered by Veriff which is a third party verification service. Level four requires you to verify your bank account. After which you will be ready to invest.

Click here to open your account with EstateGuru

Special offer from EstateGuru for October 2019

EstateGuru has 1% referral bonus for the whole month of October. The investor gets a 1% investment bonus from their EstateGuru investments. You can sign up any time in October, and the bonus is effective for 30 days. This means that even if you sign up on 30 October, the bonus will last until 30 November.  Once the initial 30 days have passed, you’ll continue to get a 0.5% bonus for two more months. All investments must be funded and the collected bonus will be added as a one time payment to investor’s accounts after the end of the campaign period in 7 days.

How to invest in EstateGuru

After verifying your phone number in level two of the registration process, you will able to browse around the platform freely. You will still need to complete the verification process to be able to invest.

After registration, you have to deposit funds into your EstateGuru account, the minimum amount you can invest is 50 Euros. You then have to choose a project to invest in, the projects available for funding are accessed by clicking ‘’LOANS’’ on the top menu. You can also choose to activate the auto-invest tool. The financing round is open for up to two weeks, if the target is not achieved, the money is returned to investors.

Types of investments on EstateGuru

The platform offers any type of loan as long as property backs it. Therefore the platform deals with business loans, bridge loans and development loans with real estate as collateral. Here are the two options the platform works as their payment schedules:

• Repayment schedule is where your interest is paid periodically with the principle being paid at the end of the loan period.
• Schedule refers to when the interest and the principle are both paid at the end of the loan term.

EstateGuru Auto Invest Tool

The platform has an auto invest tool to help you diversify your portfolio conveniently. However, if you choose to invest less than 250 euros per project, you can only set the maximum loan duration on the auto invest. Otherwise, you can set other criteria such as loan security type, refinancing, loan type, LTV, and interest. The 250 Euros minimum will force many investors to invest manually.

How much can you earn on EstateGuru

The interest rates on the platform are quite high, ranging between 10% to 12%. With the average loan size since 2014 being over 152,717 Euros, the investors can expect return interests of up to 12.23%. Since 2014, investors have earned more than 5.9 million Euros on the platform. The average LTV (loan to value) is 57.89%.

Who can invest in EstateGuru?

The requirements to join EstateGuru are similar to most European property crowd investing platforms. You must be at least 18 years and have a bank account in any of the EEA member states or in Switzerland.

EstateGuru Pros

• Loans are secured and backed by real estate.
• High interest rates, usually between 10 and 12 %
• LTVs are less than 75%

EstateGuru Cons

• No secondary market
• Few loans per month to diversify your portfolio

EstateGuru Verdict

EstateGuru is one of the fastest property crowdfunding platforms in Europe. Their loans have a low amount of risk and provide property as collateral. This combined with the very low default rate of the platform makes it one of the best platform to invest in.

EstateGuru also has a referral program, which is certainly a plus. You can get 0.5% of the investments your friend makes in the first 90 days using their referral pogram. Your friend will also get 0.5% of his own investment back in the first 90 days.

Here is a chart from EstateGuru showing their rather impressive growth:

Other Crowd Investing Resources

Looking for more options? You might want to read some of our other crowd investing and peer to peer lending reviews. There are many peer to peer lending and investing platforms currently available, and you can diversify your interest income by using several of them simultaneously.

You can consider some other peer to peer companies checking our Estate Guru review and our PropertyPartner review. Check our post on the best peer 2 peer lending platforms in Europe, and the best real estate crowdfunding platforms in Europe.

Are you already investing in EstateGuru or in any other peer to peer lending platform? Leave your thoughts and questions about this EstateGuru review below.