A clear focus on its specialist offering has helped CrowdProperty to hit a landmark of 3,000 homes funded – worth a combined £680 million – in its first decade.
The Birmingham business, co-founded by now-CEO Mike Bristow in 2014, is a finance lender focused on supporting developers to pursue projects with a high likelihood of success – drawing on significant in-house property expertise and a strong network of sector partnerships to find, assess and fund projects.
Key to this approach is providing quick decisions which enable developers to secure projects with speed or quickly cut projects which do not stack up financially, it says.
Bristow says CrowdProperty has grown new facilities agreed by 55% in the last 12 months despite economic conditions hitting developers hard, with interest rates increasing and demand for house-building weakening.
“A relentless focus on world-class specialism in a niche has been the key ingredient to our success,” Bristow tells TechBlast. “And of course making sure that niche is big!”
He advises fellow founders: “Don’t go broad too early and make sure to focus on building market power in your specialism.”
A year ago the company launched a new finance product line, CP Capital, focused on providing second-charge mezzanine finance for property developers – allowing them to access project funding that has not been not met by the senior debt finance market.
“Over time, you can build non-distracting test propositions – like our international proof point launching our business in Australia, and product line extension proof point with CPCapital.com – but your business success, and platform for wider growth, will come from being world class in your focused specialism,” he cautions.
“We set up the business to solve the pains of small- and medium-sized property developers raising finance for their projects by building a specialist property development lender – and still have that exact same focus today.
“That strategic and organisational laser focus has reaped massive rewards.”
A profitable business, CrowdProperty has raised millions through several crowdfunding rounds on Seedrs and today employs 55 staff.
Bristow would not be drawn on its expansion plans. “We have many… but I don’t like to reveal these until we’ve delivered them.
“A major focus will be on continuing to significantly grow market share in the property development finance market, which is a) big, b) fragmented and c) lacking true scalability like we’re building and proving.”