LEONE INVESTMENT Review 2026

What it is

Leone Investments is an Italian property crowdfunding platform run by Leone Investment S.r.l. in Rome, a company set up in January 2022. It lets private investors lend money to Italian property developers for single building and renovation projects. €33.6 million had been invested through it by 13 October 2026, and the average investment was about €5,437. The website is in Italian only.

How it works

You pick projects one by one, from €1,000 each. Each project is a loan to a developer for 12 to 15 months, 14 months on average. You get your capital and all the interest back in one payment at the end, not in instalments along the way. There is no automatic investing. Before investing, ordinary investors must fill in a knowledge questionnaire and a simulation of how much loss they can bear.

Returns

The platform's statistics page shows an average return of 11.03% a year across the projects it has funded (13 October 2026; 11.05% in August 2026). Read it with care: it mixes finished and running projects, and the €3.83 million of interest behind it includes interest building up on live loans that has not yet been paid. It is before losses and before tax, and no return after losses is published. Projects advertise 10% to 12.5% a year; the home page says up to 12%.

Losses and defaults

Few loans have defaulted so far, but the figures cover very few loans. The platform's yearly report under EU crowdfunding rules gives an average default rate of 4% from April 2022 to the end of 2025. A loan counts as defaulted when it is more than 90 days late on a material amount, or the developer is unlikely to pay. The yearly figures are 0 loans out of 6 in 2023, 1 out of 6 in 2024 (about 16%) and 0 out of 9 in 2025; only loans with a payment due in the year are counted, and 2022 had none. The platform expects a default rate of 4% for 2026. It publishes no amount lost, no count of late or extended loans and no recoveries. €12.1 million of capital has been paid back to investors; this figure has not changed since at least 6 August 2026, while money invested grew from €31.7 million to €33.6 million.

What secures your money

Nothing secures the loans. No mortgage, pledge or personal guarantee is described for any project, and there is no buyback, reserve fund or insurance. The platform's terms say plainly that your money is not guaranteed by anyone in any way and that you can lose all of it. The platform checks the developer and the project before publishing it, but publishes no independent valuation and no limit on how large a loan may be against the property's value. If a developer fails, you depend on what can be recovered through the courts, and the costs of recovery can be charged to investors. No recovery figures are published.

Who runs it and its licence

Leone Investment S.r.l. (Rome, share capital €231,000, five employees) was authorised by Italy's markets regulator Consob as a crowdfunding service provider under the EU crowdfunding regulation on 6 December 2023 (resolution no. 22919), for arranging loans. In August 2026 its home page described it as supervised by the Bank of Italy; its regulator is Consob. Your money is not covered by any deposit guarantee or investor compensation scheme.

Fees

Investing is free: the terms set no costs for investors who join a project, and the platform is paid by the developers. Two costs can still reach you: charges under your payment-account contract with Lemonway, and expenses the platform incurs to recover money from a developer, both without a published amount. You pay your own taxes.

Getting your money out

You cannot get out early. There is no market or noticeboard to sell your loans to other investors, and your money is tied up until the developer repays at the end of the term. The only exit is the four-day cooling-off period after you invest, open to ordinary (non-sophisticated) investors, with the refund paid within 15 days.

Our view

Return: High — an average of 11.03% a year (October 2026), though it counts interest not yet paid. Risk: Medium (higher means more risk) — the published default rate of 4% is low on its own, but it rests on 6 to 9 loans a year, the loans are unsecured, nothing is published on losses, late loans or recoveries, and the repaid-capital figure looks out of date. Risk-return: High — a high return for a medium level of risk, as long as developers keep repaying on time.