CrowdProperty - Risk and return review
CrowdProperty - Returns and loss rates
Investment maturity
CrowdProperty – Platform statistics 2026
CrowdProperty – Pros & Cons
About CrowdProperty
CrowdProperty is a British peer-to-peer lending platform, founded in Birmingham in 2013 and authorised by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (firm reference 723959), through which private lenders fund small housebuilders.
Loans run six to twenty-four months at contracted rates of 7.0 to 9.5 percent a year, and every one is secured by a first legal charge - the platform, acting as security agent for lenders, can repossess and sell the site if the developer fails. Interest on most development loans rolls up and is paid when the loan repays rather than monthly.
The scale is substantial: 458 million pounds lent across 449 first-charge loans, funding 3,902 homes, with 304.9 million pounds of capital and interest returned and 137 million pounds still out. The minimum is 500 pounds (from 50 pounds per loan with AutoInvest), UK or EU tax residents with a UK bank account can join, and an Innovative Finance ISA is available through the administrator Goji.
Client money is held segregated from the platform's own; the loans themselves carry no compensation-scheme cover.
There is no secondary market at all - money stays in each loan until it repays, which on troubled loans has taken years. Lenders pay no platform fees, though enforcement costs and a recovery fee can be deducted when a loan goes wrong.
To its credit, CrowdProperty publishes an annual regulatory statement of results - and that statement shows performance deteriorating: money lent since 2018 has actually returned 6.03 percent a year after losses against 8.26 percent contracted, written-off losses tripled in the year to April 2026, and new lending has slowed sharply while the company courts institutional funders instead of retail.
Regulation
License / Regulation: FCA authorised, art. 36H P2P; IFISA via Goji | Licence 723959
Functionality
For Investors
CrowdProperty - Articles
Useful Information
Founded in 2013; property educator Simon Zutshi remains listed as co-founder. Co-founder Mike Bristow stepped down as chief executive in January 2025, replaced by Steve Deutsch, with John Mould as non-executive chairman - nineteen team members are named with photos, including the full credit and loan-management staff. Backers include Canada's Flow Capital (3 million pounds, February 2024), a British Business Investments facility (2023) and a Seedrs crowd round. The company files small-company accounts without an audit, so no independently checked financials exist.
The criticism is substantial and comes as much from CrowdProperty's own filings as from outsiders. Its 2026 outcome statement shows written-off losses tripling to 9.9 million pounds, defaulted loans rising to 105, and the realised return falling to 6.03 percent - against a 2023 marketing claim of zero losses since 2015. The analyst 4thWay withdrew its rating in late 2025, estimated a further 25 million pounds at risk, recorded that CrowdProperty refused recovery data, and warned openly about a possible quiet wind-down of retail lending. The P2P Independent Forum's CrowdProperty board holds over 4,100 posts, dominated by late loans (one thread has 754 replies), multi-year recoveries - one loan four years in default, another returning 3.83 percent of capital - and lenders running accounts down. On the clean side: no FCA enforcement, no insolvency and no misconduct allegations were found anywhere.
CrowdProperty holds the first legal charge as security agent and releases development money in stages as building progresses. When a loan fails, it chooses the recovery route: agreed extensions first, then appointing receivers or administrators and selling the property. Of 105 defaulted loans, 36 have been resolved and 16 have ended in capital losses totalling 9.9 million pounds; the platform notes that at the level of whole loan years, interest received has so far slightly more than covered the written-off losses. Be aware that enforcement costs and a recovery fee are deducted before lenders are paid, recoveries have run to four years, and the platform declined to share recovery-prospects data with the leading independent analyst.
New lending has collapsed - from 113 million pounds in 2022 to 14.8 million in 2025, with zero live projects and a single 100,000 pound deal in the pipeline in August 2026 - and all recent company content addresses developers and brokers, not investors, consistent with a pivot away from retail money. And the Australian CrowdProperty is a separate wholesale-only entity UK investors cannot use. Anyone weighing the platform should read its next annual outcome statement before committing new money.
CrowdProperty is genuinely selective: it reports over 13,000 projects evaluated and 13 billion pounds of applications against about 3.5 percent converted into facilities. An in-house credit team - a named chief credit officer, head of credit, head of lending and head of risk - underwrites each deal, and every listing shows its loan-to-value and loan-to-end-value figures (the live example: 55.6 and 61.8 percent). Average starting leverage has tightened to about half the property's value. Internal risk grades exist but are not shown to lenders, and no written credit policy is published. Recent process changes - instant decisions in principle, a fast product for developers - aim at speed of lending rather than depth of checking.
There are no platform, investment or withdrawal fees for lenders - CrowdProperty is paid by the borrowing developers, whose fee schedule is not published. Two real costs remain. First, when a loan goes wrong, professional and enforcement costs plus a lender or recovery fee of undisclosed size come out of the money recovered before distribution. Second, the cost that dwarfs any fee: credit losses, which have taken the realised return 2.2 points below the contracted rate. Interest is paid without tax deducted - your responsibility - unless held in the ISA, which is tax-free but offers no extra safety.