Exporo describes a four-stage funnel. Projects are sourced by an in-house team, screened against an internal credit policy - building rights, location fit, cost calculations against market prices, a realistic exit, adequate developer equity - then put through detailed analysis using external credit agencies, market data providers, professional valuers and outside lawyers. Final approval sits with a credit committee of senior staff not involved in the deal. Fewer than one in ten applications makes it onto the platform, and loan-to-value is capped at 60 to 75 percent for senior loans and 70 to 85 percent for mezzanine. Not published: minimum equity ratios, pre-sale requirements, or any track-record threshold for developers - and the 90 percent rejection claim cannot be independently verified.

Investing is free: no fees for registration, deposits, investing or withdrawals, custody costs on tokenised securities are borne by the platform, and 100 percent of your money goes into the project - Exporo is paid by the developers. Three costs still bite. German capital gains tax of up to 25 percent plus surcharges is withheld at source, no tax-free allowance can be applied, and foreign investors must reclaim from the German tax office. Exiting early is either impossible or expensive - legacy holdings have traded at roughly 25 percent discounts. And in June 2024 Exporo tried to introduce custody fees on holdings sold as fee-free, backing down after investor protests citing federal court case law.

The product changed fundamentally in December 2023. Before then, Exporo sold subordinated loans - the weakest position in the capital stack and the source of nearly all its losses and litigation. Since the EU licence, new offerings are proper loans, often with first-ranking mortgages, and the old 25,000-euro German investment cap no longer applies. The improvement is genuine but unproven - almost nothing from the new book has matured yet. Also note the naming: your counterparty is EPH Investment GmbH, the licensed subsidiary; the parent Exporo AG, the defendant in the court cases, holds no financial licence.

Exporo was founded in Hamburg in November 2014 by Simon Brunke, Bjoern Maronde, Tim Buetecke and Julian Oertzen; of the four, only Brunke remains, as chief executive of the parent Exporo AG. Patrick Hartmann, with a decade in trade finance at an Otto Group subsidiary, runs the licensed subsidiary EPH Investment GmbH, alongside Dutch co-director Herman Tange. Thomas Lange, a trained banker with over 25 years in property finance, heads credit risk. Venture investors including Partech, HV Capital, Heartcore and Headline have backed the company with over 43 million euros; headcount peaked above 190 and is no longer disclosed.

After funding, Exporo monitors each project quarterly, reports to investors, and intensifies contact with developers when problems surface - refinancing talks are described as standard practice. Delays are treated separately from defaults, and delayed projects pay statutory penalty interest to investors; by Exporo's own account, 30 of 39 delayed projects had eventually repaid in full with interest as of late 2020. When things fail, the security is enforced by a trustee acting for investors - but Exporo publishes no recovery statistics, and the documented worst case returned 2.6 percent of capital. The ranking of the security decides everything: senior whole loans stand first in line, mezzanine second, and the older subordinated loans effectively last.

Yes - extensive, sustained, and reaching the courts. The Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg opened a capital-markets model case on 30 July 2025 against Exporo AG and a subsidiary over the 2.5-million-euro Am Hamburger Stadtpark funding from 2019, with investors alleging misleading, defective and incomplete sales documents; a July 2022 judgment had already ordered Exporo to pay damages over another 2019 investment. Project insolvencies are documented from Marburg (about 4 million euros, 800-plus investors, 2019) through to Limespark in March 2025, and business press counted 16 to 18 delayed projects around 2020-22. The harshest recent finding is the June 2025 independent analysis of the Bestand rental product: 38 offerings, none on plan, the worst at minus 11 percent a year with roughly half the capital lost - investor groups are challenging the property valuations. Trustpilot itself could not be verified directly; an Austrian aggregator citing about 120 Trustpilot reviews scores satisfaction 8.6 out of 10, suggesting day-to-day service rates far better than investment outcomes.