Investors using the Property Partner platform receive a monthly rental income — and benefit from any capital growth — in direct proportion to their ownership.
In addition the platform also enables investors to offer their property holdings for sale via a designated secondary market.
Daniel Gandesha, CEO, Property Partner, said: “We set out to make investing in residential property as easy as buying shares.
“We’ve overcome significant financial, regulatory and technical challenges to make this a reality and the strong demand for our first property reinforces my belief that we have built something investors really want.”
That first property was a three-bed Victorian house in Croydon, South London, which was funded as part of Property Partner’s ‘beta’ launch to a closed group.
The funds to purchase the property were raised in 21 days from 148 investors. ‘Resale’ shares in the Croydon property are now available on Property Partner’s site.
The launch follows a £1.25m seed funding round involving Octopus Investments (backers of Zoopla), Jon Moulton (founder of Alchemy Partners and Better Capital) and Ed Wray (co-founder of Betfair and director of Funding Circle).
Gandesha said: “We have the backing of heavyweight angel investors and the VC firm that backed Zoopla.
“We’ve just recruited Jalin Somaiya from Google, as our COO, and Robert Weaver from RBS. Rob is one of the UK’s leading residential property professionals.
“He’s managed a fund that held half a billion pounds of residential property and gave the keynote at the RICS conference last year.
“This is a great team and we believe we’re offering something truly unique to investors.”
Properties currently available to investors on Property Partner are a two-bed house in Hounslow, West London, and a two-bed flat within a warehouse conversion in Whitechapel.
Investors are charged a one-off transaction fee of 2% charged on purchase and an industry standard rate of 12.5% (+VAT) of rental income for the three services of advertising, letting and managing the property.
