Update (May 11th, 2021): You should know that I’m not happy with my investment here, as the majority of my loans have been late for a long time. I’m withdrawing all loan repayments on a monthly basis.
You can find more details in my monthly portfolio updates.
As a result, I can’t recommend this platform based on my poor experience. There are much better alternatives in the P2P lending space, you can find the ones I use here.
To remain transparent, I decided to leave my original review from 2019 down below unchanged – except the conclusion, which I updated. That way you can see why I decided to invest on the platform originally.
About Crowdestor
Crowdestor is a relatively new crowdlending platform, launched in February 2018 by Janis Timma and Gunars Udris. The company was founded in Estonia, but the central office and working team is based in Riga, Latvia.
It’s main focus are business and real-estate loans, with interest rates typically between 14-21% per year.
As of right now, thousands of investors from all over the world have funded around 9,34 million Euros worth of business loans on Crowdestor.
The minimum investment per project on Crowdestor is currently 50 Euros.
The founders: Video interview with Lars
In my opinion it’s always important to know the people behind a platform, after all we’re trusting them with our hard-earned money.
I think this video (thank you Lars Wrobbel!) gives you a good impression of the two founders of Crowdestor, Janis Time and Gunars Udris. Just start watching after minute 18:21 to skip the German parts:
Buyback guarantee vs. Buyback fund
Crowdestor is the only P2P lending platform I’m invested in that doesn’t come with a typical buyback guarantee.
Instead, Crowdestor introduced a buyback fund a couple of months ago, which is supposed to serve a similar purpose as a buyback guarantee you may know from other platforms.
Since the 1st of March 2019, 1-2% of the amount that is financed via Crowdestor is directly added to the buyback guarantee fund.
At the same time, the company is transparent about the amount that is in the fund at all times. It already surpassed their target amount of 100.000€ which they wanted to reach by the end of the year, probably due to Crowdestor’s increase in popularity.
Skin in the game
In addition, Crowdestor takes part in every project that is offered on the platform, as co-financiers and/or co-developers, to ensure accountability from their development partners on behalf of the investors.
My Crowdestor experience after 4 months
I started my investment journey on Crowdestor about 4 months ago, on April 3rd, 2019.
So far, Crowdestor has been a great way for me to diversify my P2P lending portfolio by investing into more business and real-estate loans. I certainly can’t complain about the interest rates of up to 21% per year.
Plus, they offer some interesting loan opportunities that I haven’t seen anywhere else, like renewable energy and forestry, concerts, restaurants, hotel resorts in South-East Asia and real-estate renovations in Latvia.
My deposits on Crowdestor
- April 3rd: 500€ deposit
- May 20th: 500€ deposit
- June 14th: 125€ deposit
- June 17th: 125€ deposit
- July 8th: 250€ deposit
My Crowdestor account value
I haven’t made any withdrawals yet, as I’ve been very happy with the returns. Interest payments have always arrived on time so far, I hope it stays that way.
My investments on Crowdestor so far
| Loan | Type | Interest | Amount |
| Industrial Business Center Tvaikonis | Real Estate | 21% | 261,58€ |
| Renovation of Dwelling House in Riga | Cash Flow | 20,7% | 266,43€ |
| Hostel Renovation | Business | 15% | 100€ |
| INCH2 | Business | 18% | 500€ |
| Grocery Store | Business | 17% | 201,99€ |
| Refinancing of existing loan 2nd stage | Business | 17% | 200€ |
| 18,12% | 1.530€ |
Before investing, you get more detailed information about each project: A summary, the loan details, the frequency of the interest payments (monthly, or if they start after 6 months, …), financial information and projections, as well as additional details about the borrower and the market the company is operating in.
You can also check out the detailed loan agreement for every one of your investments.
My monthly Income and Returns from Crowdestor
Most loans on Crowdestor pay interest every month. However, some high-interest real estate loans start paying interest after six months or more, so I decided to track both paid interest as well as accrued interest, as I think that will be more interesting to follow long-term.
Paid interest shows the interest payments I received on a monthly basis, while accrued interest also includes outstanding interest that I should receive at a later date.
My monthly income from Crowdestor has been steadily increasing month after month and reached a new high of 20,21€ in July.
As of July 30th, my internal rate of return on Crowdestor is 14,78%. Since the average interest rate of my account is 18,12% per year, I also expect my IRR to reach 18% or more as soon as I start receiving interest payments from the real-estate projects.
I’ve been very impressed that Crowdestor has been able to keep up with its increase in popularity and is doing a great job publishing several interesting business loans every week with interest rates up to 21% per year. Personally, I’m looking forward to investing more in the future.
Conclusion (2021-2022 Update)
Update (May 11th, 2021): You should know that I’m not happy with my investment here, as the majority of my loans have been late for a long time. You can find more details in my monthly portfolio updates.
As a result, I can’t recommend this platform based on my poor experience. There are much better alternatives in the P2P lending space, you can find the ones I use here.
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Valuable Resources
- My Investment Tools
A list containing all my investments in P2P Lending, the brokerage accounts I use to buy ETFs, my speculative investments in Bitcoin and my free bank accounts. It even includes the tools I use for blogging and YouTube. - P2P Bonus Offers
A collection of all the best, currently available bonus and cashback offers in the P2P lending space. Regularly updated.
Disclaimer: Investing involves risks of losses. You should always do your own research before investing into anything. Also, some of the links are affiliate links, which help support me, the website & YouTube channel. I only link to services I use myself, none of them are sponsored.
I think, that we can start to think about this fund as some kind of protection thing ONLY when it’ll reach about 800k. euros at minimum…
I agree that a bigger buyback fund would be better, but I still think it’s a step in the right direction, especially while being transparent about its size and how it works. With other platforms we can only speculate. Hopefully the fund won’t need to be accessed anytime soon 🙂
Thank You Angelo, today i withdrew 1000 eur from Envestio because there were no projects in which invest and i will increase my investment in Crowdestor. I’ve seen that there will be several projects in the next few days even though rates are a little lower
My pleasure, Marco! I think you made the right call, until Envestio starts publishing new loans on a regular basis again. It’s never fun to have money sitting around uninvested. I’m willing to take some 15% loans for now on Crowdestor, but I’m sure they’ll publish some 18-20% ones again soon.
Hi Angelo, Have you managed to invest in the project at 15%?I didn’t make it in time, I hope to succeed with the other investments at 14%
yes, today I managed to invest 250€ each into Hostel Renovation (Round 2) and Construction company working capital, but the second one was pretty close 🙂 I think Hostel Renovation #2 is still open in case you’re interested.
Somehow I feel buyback guarantee from the credit company itself on small personal loans is far more safer than large business loans, think about it, it works similar to a saving account in a bank. You deposit money in the bank- your money is safe despite it actually being invested elsewhere. We all know how pay-day loans are popular and profitable.
One of the worst platforms in Europe…
Can’t disagree with you there, that’s how I’m currently feeling as well. The vast majority of my loans have been late for a long time, with recoveries proceeding extremely slowly.
I’m receiving some payments (which I withdraw on a monthly basis), but at a very slow pace.