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P2P / Crowdfunding

P2P / Crowdfunding platforms let investors lend relatively small amounts to consumers, businesses or real estate projects. The investor does not buy a share of anything: they hold a loan, which typically pays fixed or variable interest and has a defined maturity date.

LibreFolio models these instruments as the Crowdfunding family of asset types: the generic CROWDFUND and its real-estate specialization, CROWDFUND_REAL_ESTATE.


๐Ÿ”‘ Key Characteristics

Property Detail
Codes in LibreFolio CROWDFUND โ€” P2P and business lending, and the family's generic member ยท CROWDFUND_REAL_ESTATE โ€” loans backed by property projects
Pricing Not exchange-traded โ€” value is typically the invested principal
Currency Denominated in the platform's operating currency
Income Periodic interest payments (monthly, quarterly, or at maturity)
Liquidity Very low โ€” funds are locked until maturity or buyback
Typical providers Scheduled Investment, or prices entered by hand in the Data Editor

๐Ÿท๏ธ Which Code to Choose

Code Choose it when the loanโ€ฆ
CROWDFUND_REAL_ESTATE finances a property project
CROWDFUND goes to consumers or businesses โ€” or its purpose is not stated

The rule is about what the loan finances, not about the platform. When in doubt, CROWDFUND โ€” the family's residual โ€” is the safe choice; the price is that, in the content view, the loan no longer counts as real estate.


๐Ÿ“Š How It Works

๐Ÿ—๏ธ Real Estate Crowdfunding โ€” CROWDFUND_REAL_ESTATE

  1. A platform lists a real estate project needing funding
  2. Multiple investors contribute small amounts (โ‚ฌ500โ€“โ‚ฌ10,000 typical)
  3. The project pays interest on the invested capital
  4. At maturity, the principal is returned (if the project succeeds)

๐Ÿ’ธ P2P Lending โ€” CROWDFUND

  1. Borrowers โ€” consumers or businesses โ€” request loans through a platform
  2. Investors fund portions of loans
  3. Borrowers repay principal + interest over the loan term
  4. The platform distributes payments to investors

โš ๏ธ Risk Factors

Risk Description
Default risk The borrower/project may fail to repay
Liquidity risk Cannot sell before maturity (unlike stocks)
Platform risk The platform itself may go bankrupt
Concentration risk Each investment is a single project/borrower

๐Ÿ  Three Ways to Hold Property

"Real estate" names three different instruments in LibreFolio, and what separates them is the difference between owning and lending:

Code What you hold Nature of the claim
REAL_ESTATE A share of a REIT or of another listed real-estate vehicle Equity: you own part of the property's income and value
ETF_REAL_ESTATE A share of an ETF holding such vehicles Equity, through a basket
CROWDFUND_REAL_ESTATE A loan to a property project, through a platform Debt: you are owed interest and principal, repaid by the project

All three contain real estate, so the content view puts them in the same class, and their badge is teal. The claims, however, behave very differently when markets fall โ€” and that is where the stress scenarios part ways.


๐ŸŒช๏ธ In Stress Scenarios

A stress scenario that shocks the portfolio by asset class gives every code its own bucket. In the defaults of the two built-in asset-class scenarios:

Code Equity crash Global risk-off
REAL_ESTATE โˆ’20 % โˆ’15 %
ETF_REAL_ESTATE โˆ’20 % โˆ’15 %
CROWDFUND_REAL_ESTATE โˆ’10 % โˆ’10 %
CROWDFUND โˆ’10 % โˆ’10 %

CROWDFUND_REAL_ESTATE is shocked as the loan it is, not as the property behind it. Listed property is repriced every trading day, so a sell-off reaches it at once. A crowdfunding loan is illiquid and not marked to market โ€” nothing reprices it the next morning โ€” and its risk is a default that arrives late; in an instantaneous shock it therefore moves like the rest of CROWDFUND.

Known limit: a prolonged property crisis

A hypothetical shock is a single-period statement: it has no time in it. The credit risk of property-backed loans is precisely the kind that builds up over time, as a property crisis drags on โ€” so the โˆ’10 % understates that risk in a prolonged crisis. Every bucket shock is editable: if that is the scenario you want to test, raise the CROWDFUND_REAL_ESTATE bucket yourself.

How buckets are applied, and what happens to the ones you do not configure, is explained in Hypothetical Shock.


๐Ÿ”ง Modeling in LibreFolio

The Scheduled Investment provider is designed for these instruments. From the schedule you configure, it generates:

Price Adjustment events that you record yourself โ€” a write-down when a project underperforms โ€” are applied to the value it computes.