Marco Schwartz
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Property Partner 2024: a Great Real Estate Crowdfunding Platform to Invest in the UK

Last Update: Tue, Jan 16 2024

In order to diversify my real estate portfolio, I regularly invest on new platforms that I then review so you too can invest on them & feel confident in doing so. 

In this article, I will review the real estate crowdfunding platform Property Partner, which is based in the UK. It is actually one of the first real estate crowdfunding platform that I invested in back in 2015. As usual, I will show you how to open an account on the platform, how to browse deals & how to invest in property using the platform, and finally, I will show you the results I got with the platform since I first invested.

In order to diversify my real estate portfolio, I regularly invest on new platforms that I then review so you too can invest on them & feel confident in doing so. 

The Property Partner Platform

Property Partner is a real estate crowdfunding platform based in London in the United Kingdom, and proposes deals all around the UK, mainly in or in close proximity of large cities like Manchester. What I really like about the platform is that they focus on really high-quality deals, with sometimes lower yields than other platforms (usually around 5%) but with great perspectives of capital gains.

What I also really like is that they focus on large residential complexes (usually composed of between 10 and 50 apartments), meaning that you get instant diversification whenever you purchase shares in one of those properties. This is exactly the kind of platform that I like because that's where real estate crowdfunding is great: you could never actually buy this kind of property yourself (they are usually over a million Pounds), but thanks to real estate crowdfunding you can actually take part in such deals.

Opening an Account

The first step is to open an account on the platform. The process is really easy, and it only takes minutes to open an account on the platform:

To deposit money, Property Partner will provide either a local UK account or an IBAN account if you want to send money from outside of the UK. As the platform works with British Pounds, what I am doing (as Euros are my main currency) is to use TransferWise to deposit money using the local UK account that they provide. This way, I don't lose any money in currency conversion fees that could occur if you deposit money on their platform.

As for all platforms, I tried to withdraw money to make sure that there are no issues on this side. I withdrew money on my TransferWise UK account, and the money was there in 2 days.

Browsing Property Deals & Investing

Once you have an account and some money to invest, it's time to browse the available deals and invest on them. By default, Property Partner will first show you the current deals that are being funded:

They usually go quite fast as there are a lot of investors on the platform. However, as we'll see later, there is a great secondary market on Property Partner so that has never been an issue. As you can see, there are great yields on most of the properties available on the platform, usually around 5%.

When you click on a particular deal, you can see all the details about the property:

For this particular deal, for example, you can see that the yield is at nearly 6%. You can also see the pictures of the property, showing that it's made high-quality, recently refurbished apartments (13 in total) in two buildings. That's a very typical deal you will find on the platform, and definitely one I would invest in. On this page, you will also find a lot of details of the property location and all the financial details of the deal. You'll even usually get a video of someone of their team or an expert about the area to tell you more about the property deal.

To actually invest, it's really easy as well: you just need to actually click on the buy button, select the number of shares, and pay with the money you have deposited on the platform.

Using the Secondary Market & Auto-Invest Functions

Property Partner also has an awesome secondary market, with all the deals available that have not been exited yet. I actually bought most of my current portfolio via the secondary market. It is actually available on the same interface where you will find current deals: 

 

As you can see, there is either a premium or a discount on each of those properties, meaning it's other investors that are selling their shares. I've bought most of my current investments at either a small discount or a small premium, meaning I got properties with yields that are very similar to the initial yields of the properties.

Another very nice feature of the platform is the auto-invest function, which allows you to automatically invest in properties by selecting one of the three available strategies:

That's something I didn't try yet, but once I do I will for sure update this review.

My Results with Property Partner

Let's now move to my current results with Property Partner at the time I wrote this review. Note that I've been investing on the platform since 2016. I now have 17 properties in my portfolio, mostly properties with high-dividend yields (4.5% or more), located in close proximity to big cities.

So far, I got an overall yield of 5.58%, which is great for a country like the UK.

Should you Invest?

I can definitely say that I am really pleased with Property Partner after all those years of investing on the platform. I had no issues whatsoever with the properties I invested in, I think mainly due to the fact that as it's multi-tenant properties, even if one or two tenants don't pay you don't even see it on the final income of the property. I also love the fact that they only propose high-quality deals on the platform and close to big cities meaning they will never run out of tenants for the properties. Therefore, I really recommend investing on Property Partner as it's a great platform to invest in real estate without all the hassle that comes with 'classical' real estate investing.