News > Blog Article > How Technology has Opened the Doors …
As an investment choice, real estate provides one of the most lucrative options for those looking for long-term, more stable capital gains. Unlike stocks or bonds, the real estate market isn’t as prone to wild minute-to-minute fluctuations and property trends are far easier to track and predict than those of the stock market.
While this is true, it is also true that up until fairly recently the real estate market seemed like something of a closed book; inaccessible to non-professionals. This was down to high costs, admin issues, and geography-based constraints. Location was a particularly tricky problem – your property options were restricted to what was available to you nearby, meaning that the really high-end properties may have been out of reach.
But with advancing technology and the development of the internet, remote real estate investing has opened up new opportunities for those looking to invest in property further afield.
Property investment was previously a local endeavour, requiring relative proximity to the property in order to manage all aspects of the admin involved. This is no longer the case: online platforms now mean that investors can put their money into a property almost anywhere on the planet, thus providing investors with a multitude of new, more exciting options and new opportunities for capital gains.
Real Estate Crowdfunding has played a major part in this. Currently estimated as a 2.6 billion dollar market worldwide, the Real Estate Crowdfunding market has not only opened up the global property market to those who were previously restricted to local real estate, but it has also unlocked the gates for non-accredited and non-professional investors to get involved as well, without the need for large amounts of capital to get started. Investors can now invest relatively small amounts (from $1.000 with Bricksave) in properties located in any continent, any city.
In terms of administration and management, the system of online platforms means that the location of the property is no longer an administrative headache – investors need only consider the location in terms of maximum profitability, while the upkeep of the property and admin of the transactions are handled entirely by the online platform. It’s all hassle-free, and industry savvy/insider knowledge is no longer required.
According to the Financial Times, the global real estate market reached a record high of 13.6 trillion dollars worldwide. It is exciting to think, then, that real estate crowdfunding has now made this enormous market open to everyone, with admin and security managed by platforms such as Bricksave. A report by CBRE points out that interest rates across the globe are low, while certain rental property types are expected to grow; this will help encourage overall growth, making real estate an attractive investment option, particularly in the case of buy-to-let.
All of this means that the real estate market is poised for a new wave of global investors, investors who are no longer bound by issues of geography.
by Bricksave CEO, Tom de Lucy
Investing carries risks, including loss of capital and illiquidity. Please read our Risk Warning before investing.
