Property Partner, an equity crowdfunding platform for real estate investments, has now had £10m of shares traded on its secondary market. A total of £40m of shares in buy-to-let properties have been invested in and traded through the platform since its launch in January 2015.
Property Partner prides itself on the liquidity provided to investors by its resale market, which it often refers to as a “property stock exchange”.
The platform’s after-market seemed to be showing signs of post-Brexit jitters in early July. Of the 54 investment properties that were then listed on the platform, 36 could be invested in at a discount to latest valuation. There are now 61 properties trading on the platform.
A cumulative total of £7.35m had been invested through the secondary market as of July this year. £2.97 million was traded on the secondary market in 2015, climbing to £6.97 million in 2016. To date, the proceeds from 79 per cent of Property Partner trades have been reinvested through the platform.
CEO Daniel Gandesha told AltFi in July that the firm would be treating Brexit as an opportunity to hone in on the secondary market opportunity. The platform launched a bidding engine in September, allowing investors to place orders for shares. Previously, pricing was determined solely by sellers, who could list shares on the secondary market at any time.
“Interestingly, while many traditional property funds suspended trading immediately following the Brexit vote, we were still open for business,” said Gandesha.
Property Partner has doubled its registered investors over the past 12 months to over 8,600, and the platform has delivered £800k worth of dividends to its investors since inception. But the dividend (which is fuelled by rental yield) is little more than a sweetener; what investors are really looking for is capital appreciation.
“Although property should be considered a longer-term investment, we’ve now seen more than £10m of cash returned to investors’ accounts with the majority of that then reinvested on the platform," said Gandesha. "This demonstrates that our ‘property stock exchange’ is functioning exactly as intended."
Property Partner is backed by the likes of Octopus Ventures,Index Ventures and Dawn Capital. The company closed a £12.9m Series B investment round in March.
