Crowdfunding continues evolving

Although crowdsourcing has great potential in different fields (i.e.: generating ideas, citizen participation, marketing, etc.), the fact is that its funding version, crowdfunding, is the crowdsourcing type that is acquiring most popularity since a few years ago.

There are several factors that stimulate this success.

On the one hand is the relationship with banks. Obtain financing from a bank for a project that, to put it in some way, it can be difficult to imagine running is quite complicated. When using crowdfunding, what matters is to find enough people to participate in your project, whatever it is. This is one of the most important points: on the Internet, in many cases, you can find people for almost everything. But that is also the problem: to find them.

On the other hand, the risk is lower (which does not mean it does not exist). If a loan from a bank is achieved, it doesn’t matter if you have success in your project or not or if you find customers or not: a debt to the bank is also achieved. In the case of crowdfunding, the project does not go out if you do not have people willing to participate in it, so that the resulting project, if it’s well planned and managed, comes to cater to specific customers who have advanced the money.

A very important factor, apart from banks and other factors such as product improvement thanks to the relationship with prospective clients, etc. It is that crowdfunding is applicable in virtually any field: scientifc, audiovisual, music, business, etc. For this reason, the generalization of crowdfunding is being so big: anyone at any level can use the Internet crowd to get funding.

A new sector for crowdfunding (at least here in Spain): real estate

A sector that is now beginning to take off here in Spain, although in USA is well known, is the real estate: in this case the crowd’s objetive is finance the buying of a property to subsequently obtain benefits derived from same.

In USA platforms like CrowdStreet or FundRise can be found. In Spain, the platform “Housers” is gaining a lot of popularity: according to its website, it has attracted more than 12 million euros from more than 26,000 people. On this platform, anyone can, from 50 €, invest in a property. The benefits derived from this investment can be either through the rental of the property and / or through the sale thereof.

In this regard, in order to respect the Spanish legislation about crowdfunding, a user may be an “unaccredited” investor (may invest a maximum of 3000 € per project and 10,000 € per year in total) or an “accredited” investor, situation where there is no limit, although there are a lot more demanding requirements (which come in obtaining such accreditation).

It is important to note that, as in any investment, there are always risks. In this case, the risks are related to changes in the real estate market and the revaluation of property. And never forget that, on the profits, the government takes its share.

Thus, the crowdfunding continues to evolve reaching areas that were unimaginable a few years ago.