Developers seeking funding will be able to apply for a minimum of £200,000, while crowdfunding investors can provide as little as £100 at a time.
The London-based platform is expected to raise at least £50m over the next two years.
Crowdfunding may well be out of its infancy but has not yet graduated from its short trousers. The platforms by which small businesses can raise funds from hundreds (possibly thousands) of investors has revolutionised the way in which new products come to market. The new age method of funding allows flexibility and the man on the street to make a small investment to a project from which he would otherwise have been excluded.The FCA have introduced some regulation for the loan and investment based crowdfunding models under which property investment will likely fall. However, the gap between a property development and the production of, say, a new video game is huge.The benefits of crowdfunding are obvious – funding without the notoriously inflexible banks and an opportunity for average Joe to cut himself a small slice of the property development cake. However, the lack of security for the investors and the patchy regulation make me sceptical as to how successful this type of funding will actually be.
