EstateGuru teams up with Raisin Bank in order to launch in Germany

The lender anticipates funding €215m worth of loans in its first year alone.

Estonian property lending platform EstateGuru is gearing up for a huge expansion into the German market, today laying the groundwork through a partnership with Raisin DS.

By tapping into the German fintech’s banking-as-a-service offering, Raisin Bank, EstateGuru believes it will be able to finance €215m worth of loans in Germany this year alone.

“Germany is the key market for the Estateguru Group in our long-term expansion strategy,” said EstateGuru’s co-founder and chair Marek Pärtel.

“Now that we have a fronting service partner in place, we are confident that Germany will be our biggest market, even after expanding to the UK, the Netherlands, Italy and France during this and next year.”

The reason for Pärtel’s optimism is based on the huge success of EstateGuru’s earlier crowdfunding campaigns in Germany, which saw the biggest number of equity investors coming from the country.

“As Germany has the biggest real estate market in Europe, we see plenty of room there for providing flexible alternative financing opportunities to SMEs.”

EstateGuru has appointed Björn Kombächer—formerly responsible for the alternative asset team at German bank Donner & Reuschel—as its country head for Germany, and has opened an office in Berlin to handle the loans its planning to finance.

“I really believe that my long-term experience with institutional clients is a perfect match for EstateGuru’s ambitions and roadmap here in Germany,” said Kombächer. 

“As the biggest funding volumes in the long-term strategy of Estateguru will come from different types of institutional investors (banks, investment funds and family offices), I see that my know-how and network in this field will help to facilitate the growth.”

As Pärtel mentions, Germany isn’t the only expansion on EstateGuru’s roadmap this year, the CEO told AltFi earlier this year that the UK would be a “foundation market” for the business going forward.

“The UK, in particular, has the most influential financial industry sector. Institutional investors are firmly in our focus to deliver on our ambitious roadmap which targets financing €5 billion by 2025,” he said in January.