What is Raizers?

As for all real estate crowdfunding platforms, Raizers is a financial platform that allows investors to invest in real estate projects, along with other investors in order to finance development of new real estate projects, or renovate existing properties. Raizers is a well-established platform with a good track record, having been funded back in 2014. They are based in Paris, France, and have offices in Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg.

As I mentioned earlier, on Raizers investors are financing projects, which are either development projects of new properties or renovations on existing properties with the goal of selling them for a profit. In both case, you will get your money back with interests at the end of the term of the project, usually around 18 to 24 months.

I really like the fact that they offer real estate projects in France and neighbouring countries, which is quite rare in the real estate crowdfunding space and a nice way to diversify my portfolio.

They already financed over 180 properties, and funded 170 millions Euros worth of real estate projects.

What returns can I expect from investing on Raizers?

The returns you can expect on Raizers depends on which projects you invest in, which I will tell you more about when we'll see how to use the platform. Currently, with projects listed on the platform you can get up to 10% annual returns, and they advertise an average annual return of 9.9% for investors. This is in the top range of similar platforms for western Europe, with projects usually being more in the 8% range on average. So it is definitely nice to see such high returns on real estate crowdfunding platforms based in this part of Europe.

Is it safe to invest on Raizers?

The question of the safety of the investors funds is central when investing on a real estate crowdfunding platform, as they will be managing all the money that you deposit on the platform and invest it in the projects. When reviewing a new platform before adding it to my portfolio, I look at three things: what the platforms offers in terms of guarantees, the company itself (and their team), and finally the source of the projects present on the platform.

Risks & guarantees on Raizers

On Raizers, all projects present on the platform are backed by real estate, in the form of mortgages as well as personal guarantees of the borrowers behind the projects. 

I also like to look at the track record of projects on a platform before investing, to see if they are doing a good job with selecting projects that they offer to investors. This is definitely the case for Raizers, as they only had one year in which they had issues with one project (2019). Even with this issue, this only represented a 1.4% loss for investors on average, which is definitely smaller than what I see on many similar platform. So it's safe to say that Raizers has a very good track record when it comes to selecting projects.

The company & the team

As I mentioned earlier, the company is operating from France, and as for all platforms I add to my portfolio I checked if the company was officially registered in France, and it is indeed. They are also approved by the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF), which is definitely a good sign as it's a very difficult license to get.

They also are completely transparent about their team on their website, with a complete description of the role of each person in the team, which is also something I appreciate seeing on a platform.

As for all platforms I add to my portfolio, I always check the profiles of the top managers of the company. I checked the profiles of the co-founders of Raizers, and they all have at least 5 years of experience in the real estate & crowdfunding sectors.

Projects originators

I already mentioned earlier projects originators for Raizers are all borrowers that are cherry-picked by the Raizers team based on their experience in the field and their track record. As I mentioned earlier, in most cases a personal guarantee from the borrowers is also added to the projects, meaning an extra layer of security for investors.

Getting started with Raizers

It is actually really easy to get started with Raizers and have your money start generating income on the platform.

The first step is to open an account and get verified. This was done really quickly, and including the ID verification part it was all done in under 10 minutes.

Note that compared to other platforms, you will also have to submit a proof of address, in compliance with the French law. I simply submitted a digital copy of my mobile phone invoice and was quickly approved.

Next, you will have to deposit funds in your account to start investing in loans and generate interests. This is also really to do with Raizers, as you can do it via a bank transfer. Note that compared to other platforms, you actually get your own IBAN to transfer money to, which makes it even easier.

Once this is done, you can actually start investing in loans on the platform. For that, you can go over to the current projects page:

From there, you can immediately see what projects are currently available, and get some details about the properties like the project type, term and location. Note that the minimum investment amount is 1000 Euros, which is definitely in the higher range compared to other similar platforms.

If you want more details, you can simply click on the projects you want to get more information about it:

On those pages, you will find much more details about the project, like pictures of the property, funding goal & remaining amount to be funded, as well as the risk rating of the investment. You will also see which annual rate you will get annually for the project.

Note that for now, there is no auto-invest function on the platform, so you will have to select projects manually. I am currently talking to their team to see when this function will be available on this platform.

As for all the platforms I review, I also tried to withdraw money, and the money was back on my account in just 1 day.

My Results so far with Raizers

I only invested in one project project so far on Raizers and it should give me a return of 10% annually. It is of course too early to talk about long-term yields on the platform as I will only get my interests back after the term of the project, but I can say that so far everything went smoothly and I will definitely invest more on the platform in the future.