- What do real estate investment platforms and their technological tools contribute to optimizing an investment portfolio? We analyze what their strengths are.
When it comes to investing, we are all familiar with the maxim “don't put all your eggs in the same basket” and in any investment portfolio, real estate assets are essential if one seeks to diversify. Currently, investing in brick through real estate investment platforms is increasingly common: they are transparent, intuitive, provide all the information, but what are really the benefits that these software present in portfolio optimization?
Let's first talk about what the basics are, the essential requirements to invest in one or another platform: “Security in real estate investment is based on three fundamental pillars:
- Safe environment: "The platform must be authorized and supervised by the CNMV, with a payment entity licensed by the Bank of Spain", says Pedro Arroyo, General Director of icrowdhouse. In addition, there are two other aspects:
- Safe promoter: “A developer / originator of reference in the sector, with experience, with balanced financial balances, with sufficient structure to undertake the projects it offers. In short, a quality investment partner ”.
- Safe project: "The real estate project, whether small or large, has to have a validated feasibility study, not only by the developer, obviously also by our Projects department, who analyze in detail all the parameters to offer investors the security of the supervision of it. In the coming months, we will incorporate a third validation by an external reference company that will definitively validate it. Triple validation ”, he adds.
And an important caveat that should not lead to error: “It is important to emphasize that security is not a guarantee. Security provides an environment and managers that are validated, authorized and supervised, but it is not synonymous with guarantee. The guarantee in the business world, when you are part of a company, buy shares and share benefits, does not exist, therefore investors have to assume certain risks, risks that they know and that thanks to the total transparency that we offer they are able to detect ”, explains Pedro Arroyo.
This would be the basic kit before deciding on one platform or another. Now let's go to the software. The CEO of icrowdhouse highlights what it considers are the four differential benefits of your product:
- Complete cycle of the 100% digital project. “The software not only has to offer the digitization of project presentation and financing round, but the entire complete cycle. After the end of the Financing Round, the “moment of truth for the project” begins, that is, the execution, made up of many phases and actions, all of which have to be digitized. For example, the monitoring of the work, viewing photos and videos, or the monitoring of financial metrics, that is, control of costs and monthly income. Or for example, actions such as shareholders' meetings, being able to vote digitally according to the participation in the company after watching the administrator's webinar. Or, for example, sending annual tax reports is all automatic. Until finally, the dissolution of the company and distribution of dividends, to return the capital and performance to the investor's Wallet. 100% digital.
- Usability and frictionless. “A software has to be structured to be able to complete the previous point, but do it in a 'friendly' way, that is to say that it is attractive, simple, easy, manageable by all users. It is true that the initial configuration takes time, the fact of creating an investor profile requires sending documentation that has to be validated, but in addition to being a requirement of the CNMV, it is for everyone's safety. Once the profile is configured and with capital in the Wallet, our software is like Amazon, without friction, once the project where to invest has been decided, with 5 clicks you become a partner of the project ”, says Pedro Arroyo.
- Multiple investor profile. “The investor is not unique and individual: with my user number I can create a particular investor profile and I can also create multiple investors with my Companies. If I want to invest as a legal entity, I can register multiple companies that I represent to invest. All this with a single user and the same password ”.
- Centralized information. "The icrowd softwarehouse allows the investor (and the promoter) to have all the information and digital documentation in a single platform. In an investment process, documents with digital signature are generated that are stored in the corresponding repository of the platform, easy to search and easy to find. Everything is digitally stored in the user's profile, ready to be searched or ready to be audited. We have the same documentary structure that online banking has, but in this case of real estate investment ”.
With all of the above, we can get to the last step: What are the benefits offered icrowdhouse to optimize the investment portfolio? We define them in five points.
- Product. The most important thing to optimize it is to have an investment product. “I am not referring to a product, I am referring to a variety of products. Icrowdhouse has long-term agreements with promoters that repeatedly upload their projects, the fact of having a portfolio of promoters that continually upload projects allows having a wide variety of real estate projects, according to the type of destination of use (residential, commercial, etc. ), in different locations (Madrid, BCN, Mediterranean coast, etc.), different areas (urban, interurban, rural), and a long etc ”. But it is not enough to have a variety of product, but there must be a qualitative analysis of it.
- Qualitative analysis of the Originator. icrowdhouse Not only does it expose 100% of the information necessary for making the decision to invest, it qualifies its promoters and projects, and all together allows making the correct decision for the investment destination. The evaluation of the originator (promoter) is carried out in three ways: the first the complete information on the promoter platform, business photograph of the person in charge of the project, the second the qualification according to our originator rating (public on our website), according to their experience , risk holding, financial profile, etc., and the third is the qualification of the investors themselves, with the "TripAdvisor bubbles" method, users can rate the originator according to the experience of the project, this allows offering feedback from investor over the promoter for the rest of the investors.
- Project rating. In relation to the previous point, and speaking of the qualification of the project, there are no two identical real estate projects, even if they are in contiguous plots of the same urbanization. Pedro Arroyo explains that “each project has its risks and therefore has to be valued with a rating indicator. In Icrowdhouse we have a rating system published on our website, which allows us to have a rating indicator for the project and thus inform the investor with a rating code ”. This rating, together with 100% of the project information, allows the investor to optimize their investment. If you are interested in investing a small amount in more risky projects but with higher profitability and in parallel investing in long-term projects for rent with medium profitability, you can do so, you have the freedom without obligation to invest where it suits you best.
- Diversification. As has been advanced in the previous point, icrowdhouse It offers as a solution the possibility of diversifying the investment and also promotes it, since the best of the optimizations is the diversification itself. We must avoid the concentration of risk and have flexible investments so that the total set offers the desired profitability objective. Our software offers the investor a photo of their diversification, where, depending on the investments that are being made, the investor can see the level of diversification that they are achieving, and thus be able to have an overall photo ”, adds the general director of icrowdhouse.
- Investment dashboard. Finally, if in the previous point we talk about a set photo, in icrowdhouse The investor has a macro photo dashboard of all his investment history, not only the current photo, but the last one, in order to make the best decision for the future. This map of indicators faithfully collects your total profitability, by completed project, by originator, by type of investment, by term ... In other words, aggregated information and by project that allows you to have the statistical decision-making capacity of the next investments and thus optimize your investment portfolio.
