Estateguru Review: Is it good? Don't invest before you read this!
Author
Reza Machdi-Ghazvini, CAIAWhat is EstateGuru?
EstateGuru is a P2P platform from Tallinn, Estonia, founded in 2013.
The platform offers real estate loans that real estate developers use to finance their projects.
Since its inception, the platform has funded more than €600 million worth of P2P loans, making it one of the mid-sized P2P platforms in Europe.
And among real estate platforms, it is the market leader.
How does EstateGuru make money?
EstateGuru makes 90% of its money from commissions charged to real estate developers.
There are also management fees and other revenues.
Who owns EstateGuru?
EstateGuru was founded by Marek Pärtel, Kaspar Kaljuvee and Marko Arro, who together hold the largest stake in the platform to date, at around 70%.
The remaining 30% is divided between angel investors, venture capital funds and smaller private investors (crowdfunding).
How secure (reputable) is EstateGuru? Is EstateGuru legal?
EstateGuru is regulated by an official financial market regulator.
Estateguru received a red flag from us as defaults have increased over the past months.
Nevertheless, we would rate EstateGuru as a safe platform, but we would keep an eye on developments of the defaults.
This is supported by the fact that the platform has financed loans worth more than €600 million, and this would not have been possible without a legal business model.
How does EstateGuru work?
To get started as an investor on EstateGuru, you must first register and deposit money into your account via a bank transfer.
By the way, with a first transfer you also confirm the bank account to which you can make future withdrawals.
After that, you can invest directly in the offered P2P loans.
For investments, the platform requires a minimum investment amount of 50 €, otherwise you do not have to observe any other conditions.
You can choose whether you want to invest manually or automatically.
Moreover, you can invest EstateGuru both on the primary market (initial issuance of loans) and on the secondary market (loans from other investors).
How can I invest on EstateGuru?
On EstateGuru you have the possibility to choose each loan you want to invest in individually.
This makes sense especially in the beginning, when you want to invest your amount quickly.
You can also use the secondary market, if there are not enough loans on the primary market that meet your requirements.
You can automatically invest in the loans with Auto Invest.
Especially convenient in this context is that you can also choose from three preset strategies, which differ according to return and risk expectation:
Conservative,
balanced and
Individual (set your own strategy).
We have taken a closer look at the suggested strategies and consider them to be appropriate.
However, if you want to follow your own strategy, you can set various preferences.
The most important ones are:
Investment per credit,
interest rate,
loan term,
loan type,
Repayment type,
LTV and
Security.
How do I get cashback on my investments at EstateGuru?
You can get a cashback of 0.5% on EstateGuru if you use our cashback link*.
For the calculation of the cashback, your investments during the first 90 days (3 months) after your registration are taken into account.
What are the warning signs to watch out for at EstateGuru?
At EstateGuru, we currently have noticed one warning signal that investors should be aware of.
#1 Rapid increase in loan defaults
The development of the global and European real estate market (high inflation & interest rates) also has an impact on the platform\'s loans.
In recent weeks and months, a very large number of difficulties and also defaults occurred on several loans.
This is not necessarily a problem of the platform, but more the fact that on EstateGuru exclusively real estate loans are offered.