The House Crowd administration costs reach £283k
The House Crowd’s administration costs have already reached £283,525, just two months after the company announced its closure.
According to the Joint Administrators’ Statement of Proposals, £18,544 has been spent on solicitors’ fees, and £64,126 has been billed in expenses. By 31 March 2021, the joint administrators’ time costs had reached £200,855.
The administrators were unable to estimate the total cost of the administration process, saying that it was too early to tell. They were also unable to advise on the likelihood that creditors will be repaid in full.
“Given the relatively early stage of the administration, the joint administrators are not in a position to provide an estimated outcome statement for creditors as the prospects for the sufficient availability of realisable assets, for any class of creditor, are as yet unknown,” said the administrators.
They added that these realisations are dependent on the outcome of the administration processes of The House Crowd’s subsidiaries: House Crowd Finance; House Crowd Finance Limited; House Crowd Finance (Security Agent); and House Crowd Property Management Limited.
The peer-to-peer property lending platform went into administration on February 26 2021. Frank Ofonagoro, Jeremy Woodside and Frank Wessely at business advisory firm Quantuma were appointed as joint administrators with consent from the Financial Conduct Authority.
At the time, the administrators said that they did not expect the administration process to have a material impact on investors.
In comparison, Lendy’s administrator time costs passed £1.7m within the first six months of its administration process, with final costs expected to reach into the millions. Meanwhile, by December 2020, FundingSecure’s administrator fees totalled £390,206.52 plus VAT. FundingSecure went into administration in October 2019.