Property investment platforms unite to form international trade association

Twelve property investment marketplaces, including Shojin and British Pearl in the UK, have come together to form a new international trade association.

The so-called Association of Real Estate Investment Platforms, or AREIP, is launching with seven founding members and five additional members who are joining today.

All the member companies are working to open up property investing in different markets via fractional share ownership, which reduces the cost of investing to as little as £5,000.

“Real estate, the world’s largest asset class previously reserved for institutions and wealthy individuals, is being made more accessible by hundreds of investment platforms from across the globe,” said the AREIP on its launch.

“We are on the cusp of enormous growth in this nascent market, and it is the responsibility of all participants to adopt high standards and transparency, which will in turn engender trust and lead to mass market adoption.”

The association has set its main objective as establishing common market standards between platforms in order to build investor trust and liquidity.

“Standardisation offers benefits to all market participants including issuers, property developers, investment platforms and investors. Standardisation also helps the development of primary issuance markets and the secondary trading market.”

The founding members of the AREIP are BrikkApp and Occollo (Czech Republic), Max Crowdfund (Netherlands), Reinvest24 (Estonia), and Shojin Property Partners, Simple Crowdfunding and British Pearl (UK).