Thebridgecrowd Reviews 28

The BridgeCrowd are a top tier P2P lending platform. Excellent experiences with them all round. They've been A1 in every way with me as a lender on their platform.

I would highly recommend this very professional outfit!

POSITIVES:
1) I am so far pleased with Bridge Crowd's vetting of borrowers and earnest attempts to recover the few defaults they have had.

2) I am pleased that most of the loans are not huge multi-million pound loans to commercial developers building things like a shopping centres or student housing blocks. Nor are they lending on empty plots of land as security.

3) I like the fact that a good portion of loans are 25-35% loan-to-value. I have many years of experience lending through most of the P2P websites, and I have seen that in the event of a default, the lenders hardly ever recover more than 35% of what was lent. So lending at 60% LTV is guaranteed to lose the investors' money. E.g. the valuer says the property is worth £100k, so it's probably really worth £50k in a real world selling situation. You can't sue the valuer for negligence because they will claim their valuation was valid at the date of valuation, and now 6 months have passed values have dropped. Then you deduct 10% for receivers fees, 10% for legal & selling fees - only 30% is left. If the borrower challenges the possession order then you may not even get back 30%.

4) Bridge Crowd have a nice regular pipeline of loans coming out most weeks.

5) Interest rates paid are more generous than some P2P lenders such as Assetz Capital that will often pay 5.5% on a 60% LTV loan (not worth looking at such a loan).

6)The website is quite smooth, clear and easy to use and understand.

7)Customer service is good - I can usually find someone to speak to quickly if I phone up.

8)Unlike some P2P sites, I believe this company is genuine and not running a Ponzi scheme. I've had a few repayments.

Negatives:
1) Why do the new loans come out on Friday? Bridge Crowd should learn from Assetz Capital who list the potential loans on their site sometimes months before they go live, and investors have the chance to place an order so that in the event the borrower is approved, the money will be taken. I find Friday an especially difficult time to be checking for new loans.
2) Some loans are filled within a few minutes. Why can we not have each investor rationed to no more than £5k per 24 hours per loan (moneything and funding secure do this).
3) £5k minimum is actually quite high and means a person has to be HNW to invest. It makes the ISA unattractive as there could be a repayment and then a lot of money is sitting in the account with no available loans to put that money to. The 20k in that ISA is not diversified if only split between 4 loans.
5) It would be good if there was an automatic monthly payout of interest accrued in the account.
6) Despite this company being private, it would instill more investor confidence in its solvency if they released their annual accounts to their investors. I believe all P2P companies should do this.

They pay on time every month and all though they could be better at answering the phone they always get back in touch.

No defaults as of yet...

I have been investing with them since March 2017 and, on a total investment of £125,000, paid in small tranches over this period, I have earned nearly £5000.
I particularly like the fact that they provide copies of independent valuations, and other documentation, as well as full details of the security property being offered.
I would recommend them to any savvy investor.

We contacted thebridgecrowd.com (amongst others) investigating a bridging loan of £100,000 for 4 months, to be secured on a property that's on the market, has received an offer at market value and has positive equity of over £130,000. The funds were potentially needed to cash purchase a smaller property at £85,000. This, astoundingly, is what they came up with, excluding valuation and legal fees .....

Lock in fee £350
Arrangement fee £2160
Admin fee £650
Loan Management £1750
4 months Interest (at 0.75% = £810 per month) £3240

All of the above taken in advance and, with the exception of the 'Lock in fee', added to the loan amount increasing the actual loan (and therefore interest payable) to a total of £108,000 !!

I can only assume that they think that we are either mental incompetents or so desperate that we'd have accepted anything. We are neither. Suffice to say we've gone elsewhere and saved (comparatively) a very significant amount of money.

Im a new customer of theirs and theyve so far ignored my emails. They are either too busy or too dismissive. Eitherway, its no way to treat customers (especially a new one!). Makes me think what would happen should a default occur on a loan! I shall be looking to close my account today. I recommend avoiding these people and go with the more established P2P website.