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.
๐ 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 |
๐ท๏ธ Which Code to Choose
| Code | Choose it when the loanโฆ | |
|---|---|---|
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.
๐ How It Works
๐๏ธ Real Estate Crowdfunding โ CROWDFUND_REAL_ESTATE
- A platform lists a real estate project needing funding
- Multiple investors contribute small amounts (โฌ500โโฌ10,000 typical)
- The project pays interest on the invested capital
- At maturity, the principal is returned (if the project succeeds)
๐ธ P2P Lending โ CROWDFUND
- Borrowers โ consumers or businesses โ request loans through a platform
- Investors fund portions of loans
- Borrowers repay principal + interest over the loan term
- The platform distributes payments to investors
โ ๏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 |
๐ 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.
๐ช๏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 |
โ20 % | โ15 % |
ETF_REAL_ESTATE |
โ20 % | โ15 % |
CROWDFUND_REAL_ESTATE |
โ10 % | โ10 % |
CROWDFUND |
โ10 % | โ10 % |
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 โ10 % 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.
๐ง Modeling in LibreFolio
The Scheduled Investment provider is designed for these instruments. From the schedule you configure, it generates:
- Interest events โ periodic coupon payments, when the schedule is set to generate them
- Maturity Settlement events โ the final capital return at the end of the term
Price Adjustment events that you record yourself โ a write-down when a project underperforms โ are applied to the value it computes.
๐ Related
- ๐ Asset Types โ The two-level taxonomy and how subtypes roll up
- ๐ Interest Events โ How interest accrual works
- ๐ Maturity Settlement โ End-of-life capital return
- ๐ Day Count Conventions โ How interest periods are calculated
- โก Hypothetical Shock โ How stress scenarios shock asset-class buckets