Proplend have just spent 2 days at ExCel, attending the London Property Investor Show. The show attracts a large audience – comprising private buyers of UK and international property, portfolio landlords plus a broad spectrum of property industry professionals (including Estate Agents & Developers) who gather to take advantage of this unique sales and business networking opportunity.
Following on from Alternative Finance Panel discussion at the previous show, this year there was strong demand from delegates to run a specific seminar on Property Crowdfunding and Peer to Peer Lending. Brian Bartaby, Founder of Proplend participated in the panel representing peer to peer lending platforms along with a strong panel of crowd funding property platforms.
Even though there has been over a £1bln of peer to peer lending conducted in the UK in 2014, there is still a lot of misunderstanding surrounding this growing market sector. The audience were keen to understand the differences between peer to peer lending and crowdfunding, whether you were a lender or an investor along with the risks and returns offered from both models.
The infographic that Proplend had produced explaining the differences between crowdfunding and peer to peer lending became a very popular take home.
Brian also gave a presentation titled, Commercial Property Investment for the Private Investor, where he explained to a full audience the differences between commercial and residential investing, how the commercial property market works, the pitfalls and the opportunities offered by commercial property and concluded with an explanation of how to invest in commercial property. Although only roughly 3% of commercial property is held by private investors, there was a keen interest from the audience.
Proplend spent a very busy two days on our stand meeting property investors who were until then, unaware of the opportunities offered through peer to peer lending to commercial income producing properties. Investors can make a similar return by lending to the owner of a commercial property as they can by owning the property themselves.
Over the two days we conducted a survery about Investor knowledge of the Peer to Peer Lending market, the results of which will be published very shortly.
