It was the first real estate crowdfunding project in Asturias. Collective financing through an internet platform reached the region’s brick sector with the promotion of a 17-unit building in the La Florida neighborhood of Oviedo, one of the city’s main expansion areas. Investors were offered a fixed interest of 10% for contributing money for a loan to the promoter of 900,000 euros. The project was published on the Housers real estate investment internet portal on December 18, 2017 and in just 18 days the financing was closed with 884 investors. The loan was for 12 months, with which the expected date of repayment of the capital was January 4, 2019. Almost three and a half years after that date, on the site of Bermudo I El Diácono street where it was going to be built Not a single brick has been laid in the building (a sign still announces that work will start in April 2019) and the investors have not recovered their money.
“The promoters give long, the internet platform washes its hands and the National Securities Market Commission does not respond. The defenselessness is total”, affirms one of the “trapped” investors, who shows all the documents of the operation, but asks for anonymity. A native of a region bordering Asturias, he invested 6,000 euros in the “crowdfunding” of the building in the La Florida neighborhood. “I had money saved and seeing that the banks did not give interest, I looked for a way to make it profitable. Previously he had only invested in funds. Real estate financing, although I didn’t know how it worked, seemed like a good deal to me”, he points out. Through the Housers platform, he invested in a promoter loan for the construction of a building in Valencia and began to receive the expected monthly interest. “Then the Oviedo project came out and I also invested in it. I was collecting the interest, but they stopped paying and the capital invested has not been returned”, explains the affected person, who is also “trapped” in other projects presented through the same platform.
The promoter of the construction in Florida is the Oviedo company Diqam Desarrollos Inmobiliarios, founded in 2011. On its website it is advertised as a company with “extensive experience” and as examples it highlights the participation in real estate works that were built even before it was built. created the company, like the Calatrava palace in Oviedo. In conversation with this newspaper, one of the founding partners of Diqam recognized that this “experience” corresponded to companies that the same partners had had before, such as Esdehor, a company that went bankrupt with the bursting of the real estate bubble.
- El “crowdfunding”. In January 2018, the Oviedo promoter Diqam obtained a collective loan of 900,000 euros through the digital real estate investment portal Housers to build a 17-unit building in the La Florida neighborhood of Oviedo. The real estate crowdfunding formula was new in Asturias
- The investors. The investment opportunity launched from the Housers platform for the Oviedo project was joined by 884 people and companies with average contributions of just over 1,000 euros. 67% of investors are Spanish and 33% from outside the country.
- The loan. It was for 12 months and with a fixed annual interest rate of 10%, payable monthly and with a return of the capital at maturity.
- The breaches. The developer was due to repay the loan on January 4, 2019. After three and a half years, the investors have still not recovered their money. Not a single brick has been laid on the plot of land on Calle Bermudo I El Deácono where the housing building was planned to be built.
On January 29, 2019, 21 days after the loan expired, Diqam informed the investors that he had bought the land in La Florida (203 square meters) and that he had the license to build, but that he had problems obtaining the loan. promoter –in this case with the bank– and that for this reason he had been late in payments. He stated that he intended to repay the borrowed capital with interest pending payment and late payment. Two months later Diqam announced that it had reached an agreement with a fund and proposed a restructuring of the loan to investors. The investors, in an online meeting organized by the Housers platform, approved the promoter’s proposal by majority. In June 2019, Diqam reported that the fund had not gone well and was asking for two more months. New online investor meeting and new majority approval. After four months, the promoter proposed a new restructuring of the loan that was signed. He acknowledged that he already owed 1,028,626 euros with default interest and proposed to pay investors 982,500 euros (a haircut of 46,126 euros) within another year. The promoter paid 7,500 euros until March 2020 and again stopped paying the money to the lenders. In May 2021, Housers brought investors together again online and proposed either to claim a new binding payment schedule from Diqam or to order the recovery of the debt from the specialized company Multigestion Ibérica, with which it always worked. By majority, this second option was decided and the recovery company, which has now been renamed Zolva, is carrying out the extrajudicial claim without, for the time being, the 884 investors having recovered the capital.
“The responsibility of the return is 100% of the promoter. Participatory financing platforms, under the protection of the Law for the Promotion of Business Financing, have a role of contact between promoters and investors but they never take the money from the investors, which goes directly to the promoter who is the one who has it to repay together with the committed interest. Investment in any type of project always carries the risk of partial or total loss and this has always been made known to investors”, he highlights. Peter Javaloyes, director of communication at Housers, who points out that in the Oviedo project the investor was informed by means of a graph that the risk was, within five possible levels, the fourth highest and that this justified the return of 10%. “Investors cannot say that we have deceived them,” says Javaloyes, who assures that the platform studies the feasibility of projects before advertising them.
The engineer Antonio Alvarez, one of Diqam’s partners, says he learned about Housers when he was introduced to one of its founders. “He told me that they were looking for projects in the north of Spain, that they had never worked in Asturias, and years later, when an old client offered us a plot of land in Florida ready to build because he was going to retire due to illness, we decided to use that new tool to obtain the money to buy the land”, affirms Antonio Álvarez, who points out that the previous promoter already had a pre-agreement with a bank for the promoter credit. “At Housers they charged us a good amount for all the reports and they made us understand that the participative loan would be compatible with the promoter credit. However, once the loan was obtained through Housers and the land was purchased, the bank’s risk department rejected the request for the mortgage loan for the promotion due to reputational responsibility, because we did not have direct contact with the investors of the participatory loan”, Alvarez says. “We went to other banks and they all closed their doors to us because of the loan we had with Housers and we looked for other financing alternatives, but they did not work out,” says the founding partner of Diqam, who affirms that they are still negotiating with a Mexican investor to build apartments on the site and that they are also evaluating the possibility of promoting a housing cooperative. “I have a clear conscience, because the money they lent us is there, on the lot,” says Álvarez.
Where it is not is the pocket of the 884 investors. “The average investment was about 1,000 euros, small to get into lawsuits to claim. I think they play with that, ”says the affected person who has not yet recovered the 6,000 euros from him.