"Economically, nothing is viable anymore," said Erwann Le Guilcher, founder of the crowdfunding platform CrowdyBee, as the real estate crowdfunding sector has been shaken by a market reversal. "There is a structural problem," he continued. "Everything relies on transaction volume, but there are fewer quality projects. The players are heavily regulated, while the public is poorly educated about crowdfunding. We need a clean-up at every level!"
Up until then, this type of investment, which aims to fund tangible projects (such as housing construction, investments in renewable energy or support for start-ups), had attracted a growing number of private investors. At its peak in 2022, crowdfunding financed €2.4 billion in operations, €1.6 billion of which went to real estate. But the rise in interest rates hit their growth hard, resulting in a surge in repayment delays of over six months. In 2024, 9.5% of real estate projects funded via bonds encountered repayment difficulties; by 2025, that share had climbed to 30%. Collective insolvency proceedings naturally followed. To date, a quarter of all real estate operations funded in this way are said to be affected.
This sharp downturn has exposed the fragility of platforms funding real estate projects. The first players in this sector, launched in the mid-2010s, operated on a model with no fees for investors. Most of them drew their income solely from the project sponsors they financed, charging them an interest rate well above the 11% returned to investors and pocketing the difference to cover their operations.
