Real Estate Crowdfunding Platforms - Rendity Review

Posted On : December 15, 2022

Rendity is changing investments into real estate by combining modern technologies and real estate development. These principles are reflected in their mission. Rendity was founded in 2015 in Austria and currently operates in Austria and Germany. Therefore platform focuses on financing projects in Austria and Germany exclusively.

Rendity is a commercial investment adviser registered in Austria and an authorized financial investment broker in Germany regulated by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK).

NOTE: This review does not include review or analysis of the projects presented in the platform, neither their performance over time. Selection of investment projects is a sole responsibility of the investor. This review is focused on the quality of the platform, functionalities, ease of use and etc.

As for other platforms in this review, we focus on analyzing customer experience, usability and functionalities available for investors.

Eligibility criteria - Rendity platform

Rendity is one of the very few platforms, which outlines eligibility criteria: “Any person with a bank account within the European Union (EU) can make investments on our platform upon reaching the age of 18. Companies with a bank account within the European Union (EU) can also invest.”.

On top of this, the following should be added: minimum amount is 100 EUR and legal persons are also eligible.

Onboarding to Rendity platform

Onboarding to Rendity platforms starts with short registration, where you key details and email is required. After filling in those, you are redirected to a second window with a few more personal details like personal address, country of birth and etc.

Source: rendity.com

You are not even required to validate your email (validation is required a bit later).

For the customer identification process, Rendity is using a third party supplier Onfido. Onfido is a well known and recognized provider an alternative to Veriff or Ondato. All of them are providing the same service, just the process steps differs a bit. Onfido is slightly more less convenient compared to Veriff or Ondato, but this does not make any significant impact towards the investment journey.

Source: rendity.com

However, I did my personal identification in the late evening and it took 11 hours to be processed. I was approved only the next morning. This is really disappointing as the full onboarding process cannot be fulfilled initially.

Deposit options in Rendity platform

For the deposit, Rendity lists 3 options. Bank transfer, direct debit and credit card. In reality bank transfer and direct debit is the same method, just one is one-off, the other is on specific frequency.

Source: rendity.com

For the bank deposit, Rendity discloses, that they use escrow account at BNP Paribas bank. They explain the reason and provide bank credentials in the next page. All transparent and make sense. The only down side for this, deposit timeline. They indicate +3 days from the day, when the payment was processed. It is quite a long time, nevertheless this should be way faster if deposited via SEPA.

Source: rendity.com

On the transfer itself, Rendity holds an account in German branch of BNP Paribas as they are operating in Austria and Germany primarily.

Source: rendity.com

On the direct debit side, on top of regular bank details, you will be asked to provide your bank statement.

Source: rendity.com

I haven’t tried this option, so do not know specifics how it works in Rendity’s case, but this could be a nice option for the ones, who are looking for a saving plan, which could be fully automated.

For the credit card option, you will be charged 1,8%, which is 2x+ more compared to Raizers 0,8%. And there will be a cap of 1 800 EUR per single transfer. Quite an expensive way to transfer the money, when looking for marginal returns in every step.

Summing up the above, Rendity offers a few ways how to deposit money, trying to accommodate all the needs from the customers. More options compared to the market standard.

Key functionalities available in Rendity platform

There are two main functionalities in Raizers – primary market and savings plans. Savings plans are basically the same as automatic investments, this is how the functionality is presented in competitive platforms. There is no secondary market option as the projects are financed via bonds instrument, therefore in case of issues in repaying back the debt, no liquidity could be expected in the secondary market.

In the case of primary market, Rendity provides top of the market project descriptions. 

Source: rendity.com

You can find all the main investment criteria on the landing page of each investment. What is missing compared to other platforms – number of investors (LTV as well, but it is not applicable for bond products). This would be nice to see, which projects, which tickets are getting.

On the rest of the project description page, you can find all the information you are looking, including capital structure, financials of the borrower, asset positioning in the area and other. On the downloadable documents section even more information is present with much wider project description. Unfortunately it is in German, so a bit hard to familiarize if you do not speak German.

What I have found a really interesting and nice feature under description – rating table This is a nice thing, which helps you to position this investment project compared to others. Rendity makes this a transparent process and visually presents to investors. Nice feature.

Source: rendity.com

For the savings plans Rendity provides three scenarios – Balanced with 6,36% return p.a., Growth-oriented with 6,2% return p.a, and conservative with 6,2% return p.a. Also you can create your own investment plan.  This is very nice for investors, who do not want to invest additional time into looking where to invest and how to distribute your portfolio.  As highlighted earlier, basically this is automatic investment feature, based on pre-defined project criteria. I haven’t identified any disclaimer saying, that returns are indicative, but they should have included that somewhere as their indications are forecast based on past performance.

Source: rendity.com

What is also important to mention, description and presentation of saving plans are very well presented. Investor can take an informative decision.

Similar approach to the whole functionalities section – all very well document and presented to the investor. You can find all the information you are looking and make an informative decision.

Dashboard functionalities of Rendity platform

Rendity provides a transparent and informative view of your investments. The platform shows not only performance of the specific investment, but also performance over time, including split of cashflow sources. Also you can find a plot of your investments on the map. This does not bring any specific value for the portfolio analysis, but is a nice feature. On top of the map statistics dashboard, Rendity always provide a summary of your investment performance on the side of the main dashboard.

Source: rendity.com

Summary - Rendity review

Rendity delivers Austrian-German approach to real estate crowdfunding platforms. Platforms is centered around the investor to serve investor’s needs. No bugs or misleading items. They can work on improving authorization process, to make it faster as well shortening the time for money deposits.

Please note, that project analysis is not covered in this review, and Rendity is raising capital via subordinated loans, which has a higher risk exposure compared to instruments with first pledge, which could be found on other platforms.

Source: rendity.com

Bottom line – 5 out of 5.

Crowdbulls .com

December 15, 2022