P2P News
I had a nice email from Anuj Agarwal (the founder of Feedspot) recently to say that P2PBlog.co.uk had been included in their list of the top 100 Peer to Peer Lending blogs. At first I thought… how did they find 100 Peer to Peer Lending blogs? Read more “P2PBlog Mentioned Among Top Blogs”
Analysis
UOWN is a Property Crowdfunding platform which allows the public to buy individual shares in UK properties. You can invest in a property via the UOWN platform and receive dividends from ongoing rental income and share in potential capital growth. If you join the site, one of the things you’ll notice is that all of the properties listed so far are student rentals. As the student rental market is quite a hot topic at the moment, I asked Sam Davies of UOWN to share some of his understanding of the market:
In the property crowdfunding market, investors have a huge range of property types to choose from. One property type that has always divided opinion is student property. Historically, some people have chosen to steer clear citing the propensity for students to damage fixtures and fittings, and the intense management needed, as not worth the headache. But with the recent staggered removal of income tax relief on mortgage interest, and higher transaction costs from a stamp duty surcharge on buy to let, the government has firmly put the brakes on the market.
Now more people are turning to student property to get the returns that they desire. With that in mind, what are the underlying fundamentals of the student market and what is in store with Brexit on the horizon? Read more “The Student Rental Market”
Analysis
I’ve been preparing my UK personal self assessment returns to include P2P and Property Crowdfunding income. This posts looks at what I’ve found to be technically necessary and follows up with my interaction with the platforms I invest in: exporting tax reports and specific tax questions. I’ve already written about how the UK government calculates tax on P2P income here, but have pasted in the relevant parts: Read more “UK P2P Self Assessment Taxes”
P2P Reviews
RateSetter is a British peer-to-peer lending platform that provides loans to households and businesses. Since launching in Autumn 2010 they’ve lent around £2bn, making them one of the ‘big 3’ platforms (RateSetter, Zopa, Funding Circle).
RateSetter are a ‘hands-off’ platform with no individual loan-part management/selection: you just choose an investment product and rate. For this reason it’s an easier platform to start off with for P2P lending beginners. You choose an investment product and rate of return that you would be happy to lend at, then wait for the lending market to match your offer. Choose a rate that is too high and your money will be sat there without earning interest. Choose a rate that is too low and miss out on higher returns! Read more “RateSetter Review”
Income Reports
I try to publish a round up of my peer to peer investments each month and their annualised rates of return, which involves going into each platform one by one and copying the data into my spreadsheet. This month I’m trying to combine it with doing the self assessment tax return which is taking a lot longer than I expected. Different platforms appear to treat certain cashback as taxable and others not. For example, most consider the cashback you receive as an incitement to join as a new customer as non-taxable. However, at least one treats it as taxable (e.g. Zopa, after multiple mails to customer service to clarify). Landbay is in no-mans-land, considering it non-taxable but including it by mistake as taxable on their tax statement export. Some consider the cashback interest you receive while a loan is funding as non-taxable and others as taxable (e.g. Landbay). Read more “May 2017 Income Report”
P2P Reviews
Huddle Capital first popped onto my radar at the end of March with this post by Cooling_Dude on the P2P Independent Forum. They were offering a special promotional deal for the first 100 investors, which on first glance appeared too good to be true: 20% cashback on investments for the first 100 investors. However, when you think about it, say an average of £1,500 invested for the first 100 people comes out to £30,000 total spend in cashback, not that bad for a marketing spend to launch your new platform and iron out the problems. Read more “A First Look at Huddle Capital”
P2P Reviews
ArchOver is a peer to peer business lender that specialises in business loans secured against Accounts Receivables (‘Secured & Insured’) or contracted recurring revenue (‘Secured & Assigned’). Since ArchOver launched in 2014 they’ve funded nearly £50 million in loans. They state an enviable track record of no Borrower missed payments or reporting defaults, whilst offering interest rates of 6% to 9% p.a. to their Lenders. Read more “ArchOver Review”
P2P Reviews
Flender is a new UK/Irish peer to peer lending platform with a social slant. For a business or consumer to borrow on Flender they first have to successfully raise funds from their friends or customers before opening up the opportunity to the wider public. Flender hopes this will help to reduce defaults, and do it in addition to standard checks run by other P2P lending sites. Current lending opportunities offer interest between 8% and 11%, though borrowers can set their rate as they like. Flender makes its money from a 2.5-4% margin on consumer borrowers or a 3.5% fee to businesses after a successful funding raise; there are no fees for lenders. Read more “Flender Review”
Analysis
CurrencyFair is a low-cost way to do international money transfers. I first wrote about it when researching how to transfer money to European P2P lending sites. CurrencyFair charge a fee of €3/£2.50 to transfer out money, is generally free to transfer in money, and a 0.25% or 0.3% fee on the currency exchange itself.
CurrencyFair claim that around 10% of their transfers actually beat the interbank rate. This is because the matching is done internally on a peer to peer basis. Here are a couple of tips to help you get the best possible exchange rate when using CurrencyFair with an example I did earlier today. Read more “How to Get a Better Exchange Rate on CurrencyFair”
P2P Reviews
Property Crowd is an ISA-friendly real estate crowdfunding platform that offers investors a chance to invest in “institutional grade” property deals from £5,000. They’ve been around since 2014, but relaunched with ambitious plans as part of Global Alternatives at the start of 2017. Those ambitious plans (a ‘cross-border property trading exchange’) were what first piqued my interest in Property Crowd, and I set up a call with one of their co-founders Charles Tan to understand more. Read more “Property Crowd Review”