November 2019: stable above 900 euro

This is the fourth month in a row where my interest income is around 900 euro or above, a good indication that it may stay this way. Somewhere next year I hope this will go over, and stay above, 1,000 euros per month.

Investors in The Netherlands need to write down the sum of their platform account values on January 1st for tax purposes. Please let me know how this works in your country! I want to add a page about the taxations of crowdlending investments in different European countries, and it would be great if your country can be included too!

Having that out of the way, we can continue with this monthly update and go to the returns and results of my crowdfunding and crowdlending investments in the past month.

Portfolio overview November 2019

Last month the interest payments I received totalled € 935.73 and my average rate of return over all platforms is 12.2%. The table below shows the details for each platform.

The XIRR column contains the annualized rate of return since my first deposit into that platform. Click on a column header to sort the table by that column, twice to reverse the sort order. I have an overview page for each platform, you can click on the magnifier glass to visit that page.

Interest income per month

Activities

To show you how little effort is involved when investion via crowdfunding and crowdlending I have added an overview of the manual actions in the last month:

I did check the platforms every now and then, but this was purely for fun. It wasn’t necessary to get these interest payments and return rates.

Platform updates

 Bondora

Bondora has launched a beta-version of their Go&Grow app. Access is limited, anyone who wants to get the app now is put on a waiting list.

For now the app is limited to just the overview screen, but according to Bondora next year the app will offer all functionality of the current website and more.

My investments at Bondora returned € 29.28 last month, and my average return rate is now 6.8%.

When you register through this link you’ll receive a 5 euro bonus. Just give their Go & Grow option a try for a few months, and don’t try the other advanced options.

 Bulkestate

Bulkestate published three new projects this month, 2 full-bullit loans and one loan that pays interest monthly. All 3 projects have an interest rate of 12%, but one offers an additional 1-2% interest if you invest more than 10,000 or 25,000 euro into the project. In the past Bulkestate offered projects with interest rates of 14-15% and more, hopefully the new projects are not a signal that all new projects will have lower interest rates. Of course 12% is not that bad, espacially when you take the securities into account as all projects have the real estate properties as collateral via first rank mortgages.

I deposited 100 euro the day before a new project opened via a SEPA transaction, and it was added to my account the next day. I invested it in the new project which has a repayment term of 8 months and an interest rate of 12%. The interest is paid at the end of the payment term, as a lot of other projects (only a few pay interest monthly). I try to invest a little bit in each project so I’ll have a more regular income flow after a year or so. And it also helps me to get information about funded loans: you can only get information about a project if you have invested in it.

My investments at Bulkestate returned € 5.72 last month, and my average return rate is now 2.4%.

 Crowdestate

Crowdestate expanded operations to Romania, and this month the first Romanian project was published on the Crowdestate site. It offers 14.7% interest, and the loan is secured by a first rank mortgage on the property. This shows a lot of promise for the future.

My investments at Crowdestate returned € 102.62 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.9%. the graph below shows the effect of loans that pay interest quarterly instead of monthly:

 Crowdestor

Crowdestor renewed their website, and it is easier to work with now. Information such as payment schedules and upcoming payments are easily accessable now and statistics are being added:

Room has already been reserved for the auto-invest functionality, so hopefully we can expect this soon.

Currently there are 4 projects to invest in (with interest rates ranging from 12-15%), and soon 2 more will be added. One of these even offers 18% interest. A few months ago we had to wait days or weeks between projects, and investors jumped on it as soon as a project was opened for investments. With so many new projects it is even better when the auto-invest becomes available, making it a low maintenance platform like many others (but still with higher interest rates than most).

One of the projects is repaid early, and I was expecting this email from Crowdestor after a new project was published at Envestio. You can read more about it in my Envestio update:

My investments at Crowdestor returned € 54.33 last month, and my average return rate is now 12.7%.

 Envestio

Three projects were added at Envestio, three tiers belonging to the same project (“Financing of refurbishment of hostel– Mezaparks, tier 3”). What is interesting is that the project states that part of it will be used to refinance existing liabilities with Crowdestor, besides construction work. Of course it is logical when companies shop around at different platforms, after all consumers do this all the time to refinance loans and mortgages when they can get these at a better interest rate.

Even more interesting is that round 2 of the project at Crowdestor was published last july and august. Company data and floor plans show this is for the renovation of the same hostel, and that the Crowdestor project was offered at 15% compared to the 19% for the Envestio project.

So it does not look as if the company switched to Envestio for the lower interest rates.. Envestio does not accept loans without due diligence and risk analysis, and the project page indicates a preliminary agreement with a bank to refinance the loans next year when the first revenue is generated. Still, this is a little bit suspicious and something to keep an eye on. My auto-invest invested 116 euro in it, so I will be able to follow the project and get updates in case there are problems.

My investments at Envestio returned € 176.29 last month, and my average return rate is now 19.0%.

When you register via this link you’ll receive a 5 euro bonus with your first deposit (minimum 100 euro), plus a bonus of 0.5% over all your investments in the first 270 days.

 EstateGuru

EstateGuru is a platform with real estate development projects. There is no buyback guarantee, but all loans are secured via mortgages and have the properties as collateral for the loan. Over 1064 loans have been financed by EstateGuru since 2014, with a total value of 156 million euros. 450 projects have been successfully completed and repaid to the investors (€ 70M).

There are currently 22 defaulted projects (with 41 loans), with a total value of 5.6 million euro. Most of these projects are located in Estonia, and a few in Latvia. There are no defaulted projects in Lithuania, Finland, Spain or Portugal.

The beauty of EstateGuru is that they haven’t lost any investor funds so far. 11 of the defaulted loans have been recovered (e.g. by selling the collateral), and not only were the investor funds returned, but the average return rate of those loans was 11.6%. So even defaulted loans result in profit for investors, although it takes a while for the recovery process to be completed.

My investments at EstateGuru returned € 15.20 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.3%.

 Fast Invest

Fast Invest has added loans from Iceland via the Danish originator eCommerce 2020. These loans have a 7 day buyback guarantee (investment will be returned if borrower is 7 days behind with payments).

If you want to invest in these loans you will have to adjust your auto-invest settings and add Icenland to the list of loan countries, and ‘7 days’ to the buyback options. Just like other platforms, Fast Invest does not activate additions automatically in existing auto-invests, you will need to do this manually. It is advisable to check your auto-invest settings from time to time, for all platforms.

Russian loans have been added, from the originator Kviku. The loans have a 15 day buyback guarantee and interest rates up to 12%.

This is very good news: Fast Invest is beginning to reveal the names of the originators. According to Fast Invest this was prevented by the contracts with the originators, but a lot of people compained about this lack of transparancy. Now that Fast Invest increases transparency my trust in this platform rises, and of course the nice results help as well.

My investments at Fast Invest returned € 109.50 last month, and my average return rate is now 13.8%.

 Flender

Next month I expect to receive my first interest payments at Flender. The auto-invest (“AutoFlend”) works like a charm, the last free funds were invested a few days ago into a loan with 8.95% interest. This brings the average to 8.45%, according to Flender. The average return rate on the platform is 10.4% and the default rate is very low (0.7%). There are limited options to tune the auto-invest, but I changed it to accept higher risks/interest rates for loans that have a payment term under one year.

Het gemiddelde rendement op het platform is 10,4% en het aantal leningen met problemen is erg laag (slechts 0,7%). Daarom heb ik de auto-invest iets aangepast, zodat er voor leningen met een looptijd tot een jaar een wat hoger risico, en bijbehorend hoger rentepercentage, gekozen wordt.

My investments at Flender returned € 0.00 last month, and my average return rate is still 0%.

Flender has a very lucrative bonus deal: register and invest via this link and you’ll get a 5% cashback bonus over all your investments in the first 30 days.

 Funding Circle NL

My investments at Funding Circle NL returned € 37.17 last month, and my average return rate is now 8.6%.

 Grupeer

Grupeer is one of the few platforms with both consumer loans and real estate development projects. Last month one of the development projects matured and the principal was returned into my account:

The new development project looks interesting too, with a payment term of 6 months and an interest rate of 13%:

Grupeer published their loan originator ratings, ranging from A (low risk) to F (high risk), but all loans have buyback guarantee (after 60 days, including accrued interest):

Grupeer saw some changes in the loan originators. Monify stopped offering loans, but continues to service the funded loans. Lion Lender and EpicCash are both new originators from Russia. In the introduction they give some statistics: the default rate of their loans is 18%, but they expect this to drop to 14% (all loans on Grupeer have buyback guarantee though).

The announcement also showed a reason for the high interest rates that many of the loans in that region have: in Russia the maximum interest that may be charged is 365% per year, or 1% per day for shortterm loans. No that is not a typo, you are reading that correctly. It even states that one of the challenges for the companies is the fact that the Russion central bank recently lowered the maximum interest rate from 2% per day to 1% per day…

My investments at Grupeer returned € 90.54 last month, and my average return rate is now 14.6%.

Grupeer has a 1% cashback bonus until December 15th: invest 1000 euro or more in loans of Finsputnik Platforma, PlanetaCash, Lion Lender or EpicCash and you’ll get the 1% cashback bonus paid to your account by December 20th.

 Iuvo

After my vacation I noticed that over 800 euros was not invested automatically at Iuvo. My auto-invest was set to a minimum interest rate of 13%, but there were no loans that matched this (not even in the high risk classes). A look at the primary market showed the highest available interest rate was 10.8%, so I added another auto-invest and set the minimum interest rate to 10.5%.

It is possible that higher interest rate loans will become available in the (near) future again, so I’ll have a look regularly and when that is the case I will disable this new “low interest auto-invest”. Another option is to start investing in other currencies, just like I have done at Mintos.

My investments at Iuvo returned € 75.91 last month, and my average return rate is now 12.1%.

 Kuetzal

At the beginning of this month Kuetzal sent an email to all investors in ‘Marina Code SP’. According to Kuetzal the company was not transparant and supplied incorrect data. This was not detected during the due diligence by Kuetzal, it was found out later by investors. Kuetzal decided to end the project and refund all investors. Interest payments were all on time up to that point. I invested 250 euro into this project back in April, and this was deposited back into my account the very same day.

Kuetzal promised to strengthen their legal department, to avoid this from happening in the future. This is really needed, because next time the project might blow up and investors could loose their money (this was one of the few projects that did not have the buyback guarantee).

My investments at Kuetzal returned € 61.92 last month, and my average return rate is now 18.3%.

When you register via this link you’ll receive a 0.5% cashback bonus over all your investments in the first 180 days.

 Lender & Spender

Lender & Spender is a Dutch only platform where you can invest in consumer loans. It really shows the difference in interest rates between loans in the Netherlands and loans in the Baltics, Russia, and other Eastern European countries:

The return rate is very low, around 4%. Actually it is 5%, but 1% is charged in service costs. But it diversifies my portfolio and it beats every regular savings account at the traditional banks. And it is fully automatic, my funds are spread over more than 1,100 consumer loans.

My investments at Lender & Spender returned € 9.29 last month, and my average return rate is now 4.0%.

 Mintos

I updated my auto-invest at Mintos, and lowered the interest rate to 11%. More and more funds were uninvested, and I rather invest in loans with lower interest rates than allowing my auto-invest to invest in the higher risk categories.

I also converted 500 euro in Russian Rubles (RUB) and 500 euro in Kazakhstani Tenge (KZT). There are more loans available in these currencies with higher interest rates (and they do have buyback guarantee as well). I have placed my account overviews side by side, so you can see the different return rates:

Each currency has it’s own account within Mintos, and with separate auto-invests. Free funds can be converted from one currency to another, but you want to minimize this as there are conversion fees involved.

Each account shows the values in it’s own currency, which makes it difficult to include in my portfolio overviews. That’s why I use historical currency rates to convert each value to the equivalent Euro value. The advantage is that the total account values and balances can be added and included into my portfolio overviews, and it is clear how much I have invested exactly in Mintos.

The disadvantage is that currency rate fluctuations can really distort the historical overviews for that platform/currency. That’s why my Mintos overview page shows the values and return rates for the individual accounts (‘Mintos EUR’, ‘Mintos KZT’, and ‘Mintos RUB’). Soon I will add the historical return rates and revenues in the original currencies.

My investments at Mintos returned € 62.12 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.8%.

When you register via this link you’ll receive a 1% cashback bonus over all your investments in the first 90 days.

 Reinvest24

I received my first interest payment at Reinvest24 this month. My return rate is still negative, but this is “normal”. When you invest you buy shares in a residential property or commercial property, so you become partial owner. All investments are secured by mortgages. From the moment you invest you receive a pro rata part of the rental income, until the property is sold. In the mean time you can sell your shares on a secondary market. Most properties are bought cheap, under market value, and the market value will increase in time. When the property is sold you will profit from this increase in value, as the value of your shares will be higher.

So why the negative return rate? There are costs involved when investing at Reinvest24: 2% transaction costs (to cover the costs of buying the property), and there is also a change of up to 10% of the rental revenue to cover maintenance and property management. The 2% transaction costs are clearly shown when investing:

So it is only a matter of time before the rental income will have compensated the transaction costs and the return rate will be positive. Below you can see some of the real estate properties on this platform:

I think this is an interesting form of investment in real estate, and the minimum investment of just 100 euro makes investing in real estate possible for everyone. There aren’t any properties available at the moment though, so you should check for new properties before depositing your money here.

My investments at Reinvest24 returned € 1.55 last month, and my average return rate is now -10.3%.

 Robocash

I regularly hear from people that they suffer from cashdrag, sometimes up to 40%. Personally I haven’t seen this, when I check my account I rarely see any significant cashdrag. Since 2017 this platform has financed over 110 million euros of loans, and cashdrah is a common thing for platforms with rapid growths. When the number of investors grows, the number of available loans is sometimes not enough to invest all free funds.

My investments at Robocash returned € 7.85 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.0%.

 TFG Crowd

My first loan at TFG Crowd successfully matured: Healthy Food Delivery. On November 29th the invested 500 euro was returned. The loan had a 6 month term with a 17% interest rate. The interest payments totalled € 42.50 which is pretty nice! It is a new platform, so having the first loan mature successfully without any problems feels really good.

My investments at TFG Crowd returned € 32.85 last month, and my average return rate is now 16.3%.

 Twino

Last month was a good month for me at Twino, my return rate is higher than before. The platform itself keeps growing too: last month over 18 million euro in loans was originated, a 16% growth compared to the month before. And the platform attracts around 200 new investors each month. The platform was started in 2015, but the company has been originating loans since 2009 and has originated over 1 billion euros in loans.

My investments at Twino returned € 53.34 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.9%.

 Viainvest

My return rates at Viainvest keep climbing, from 9.1% last month to 10% now. According to the Viainvest site this can go up to 11.5%.

My investments at Viainvest returned € 10.25 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.0%.

Blog traffic

Statistics from my Dutch blog (FinancieleVrijheid.blog) and this English blog are keeping me very happy. It is a great reward to see people are reading and appreciating this effort, as it takes a lot of time to keep this blogs going.

Of course there are always things to improve or clarify, so please let me know when you see possible improvements!

And finally…

That was it for this monthly update. You can subscribe via the contact page and you’ll receive an email the moment a new update is published. Or just visit again next month, that’s up to you.

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Below you can also find the link to my previous posts, where you can find my tips and results of the previous months.