Sometimes when I explain to someone what is and what real estate crowdfunding consists of, the answer they give me is, but, if that has been done all the life! And the argument they use is not without reason. Always have met well known people with high purchasing power or failing solvents for a financial institution to access without problems to a developer loan (without entering the pre-bubble relaxation criteria to grant them) and thus obtain financing and develop a real estate development. From doctors, notaries, officials of various kinds have done so. Now comes to mind that funny little joke that was used in good old days in the economy and that said: "What does a doctor? He steps up a consultation, and two doctors? They set up a clinic, and three doctors? They make a real estate development.
And it is true. In past times of good economic cicles in which the real estate sector, like it or not, was the locomotive of the Spanish economy reaching up to 17% of GDP, that's how it was. But, what or who was required something to be real estate developer?. Nothing and nobody, hence the problem. There was no, nor is there any barrier to entry. This is one of the reasons why real estate did not have and will cost to have, a recognition of society as a serious sector. Of course, there are honest exceptions that, being a minority, "pay fair for sinners". To change that perception in civil society, the challenge is to convert that minority into a majority.
Notwithstanding the above, without a doubt this can be called a cooperative of investors before and always, or in other words, an off-line real estate crowdfunding as opposed to on-line. Thus, the key figure in the two modalities is the manager, the one of the cooperative as an entity in the off-line and the PFP (participative financing platform) in the on-line. And to work in both cases the magic word is trust, the only thing that has no guarantee when it breaks, in the words of Mafalda, that great little philosopher of Quino's comics.
The manager is the nucleus where professionalism must orbit and trust its gravitational force.
An online real estate crowdfunding platform uses the potential of current technology to develop its business in a disruptive way. They are companies born and raised on the Internet, startups encompassed in the so-called Fintech, which in the beginning have the desire to make their business model scalable and global.
But let's not forget that they are nourished by resources from the "real" world in order to evolve like any other company. Real estate agencies, reform companies, technicians to carry out the projects of these reforms and an endless number of them that brings them together, directs and directs the managers of these platforms and whose final result is the web in which with a few mouse clicks we allows to invest in real estate.
They bring together a plurality of investors who, making a play on words, are a cooperative of online investors who entrust their money to the managers in the investment opportunities they have selected for them. Cooperatives of off-line investors or cooperatives of on-line investors or crowdfunding both mounts, mounts both. But the message is clear, professional management and trust. And if we add to these two fundamental elements these four that follow, success should be assured in both modalities:
Expectations of mutual benefit for managers and cooperative members. Without expectations and without illusion there is no business.
Guarantee: Compliance with laws. Certain fiscal and liquidity guarantees.
Mutual benefit: The manager charging for their services and the cooperative members returning their investment with capital gains.
Transparency: In a sector so opaque, the symmetry in the information is absolutely necessary.