JustUs investors fund £188,000 bridging loan in 60 seconds
A £188,000 peer-to-peer bridging loan listed on the JustUs platform has been fully funded within 60 seconds of going live.
This marks a record for the P2P property lender, which was formerly eMoneyHub before being re-launched in September 2017.
Lee Birkett, founder of JustUs, said investors in large loans of over £100,000 usually like to take time looking at the loans before committing themselves.
He suggested the speed of investment into its latest offering, a bridging loan for a property in the North West, was driven by its quality.
“A lot of platforms are struggling at the moment with half-finished developments,” he said. “This property is nearly finished so it is classed as a low-risk investment. I just wish we had a lot more of them.”
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Birkett said the biggest demand on the JustUs platform is for high-yielding loans, particularly among investors not using the Innovative Finance ISA wrapper.
“There is plenty of appetite when we’re paying 10 per cent, but less so when we’re paying 6.5 per cent,” he said. “There is a disparity between ISA money and non-ISA money, so whereas ISA money is happy at 6.5 per cent, which allows us to get the better deals, non-ISA money is demanding 10 per cent. This is because of the tax breaks, and there is a lot more non-ISA money out there.”
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Birkett said that overall investor appetite is strong, but warned that the sector should be braced for a challenging year ahead as more platform failures could be on the cards.
“Our core product is quite mature,” he said. “We don’t do ground-up building, where if there isn’t enough money to finish the property everyone loses money. So I think the platforms that are under pressure are the ones where people are taking pretty heavy capital losses at the moment.”
He warned that many investors do not understand the difference between regulated and non-regulated lending platforms.
“We’re in the regulated camp so there is a higher standard of due diligence carried out,” he said.