Make theaffordable real estate investment to all, this is the goal of Bricks. This Montpellier company created in April 2021. It allows all budgets to buy the “bricks” of a building, or a share. From 10 euros invested, a person becomes a co-owner and receives a fraction of the rent each month. The contract binds the company and the customer for several years. At the end of which the property is sold. This is when the customer gets his money back and a capital gain.
Interview with Bricks founder Cédric O’Neill.
With Bricks you can invest in real estate with only € 10?
This is exactly the idea: allow anyone to invest in properties starting from 10 euros. The discovery was to realize that many people could not have access to the mortgage, so they could not invest in real estate.
So we said to ourselves that we would reverse the problem, buy properties that we divide into 10 euro shares and allow anyone to invest very easily. And above all, to recover a fraction of the rents every month in proportion to the amount invested.
What is the return on investment for the investor?
There will be two returns, a first return which will be the rents. She goes recover part of the rent each month. Secondly, on the sale because properties tend to increase in value over time. After seven years, we will resell the apartment or the building we bought. Certainly more expensive than what we bought at the beginning. In that moment the person will recover part of the added value that has been generated over time. And therefore in terms of yield, we are on a profitability of between 8% and 10% for the whole year.
Specifically, if I invest 10 euros, how much did I earn at the end of the year?
On 10 euros you will not necessarily earn a lot because by investing 10 euros you will earn 1 euro. That’s 10%. On the other hand, as soon as we are on larger amountsit can become meaningful.
To the extent that, if we take the Livret A as a comparison, we are currently at 2% profitability over the Livret A, so that’s five times the profitability associated with a Livret A.
Once a person has invested in a building. Who is in charge of finding the tenants of the rental, of all the administrative part that is due when you are the owner?
In fact, investing in real estate can quickly become a nightmare because there is management behind it that can be quite cumbersome. And that’s what’s interesting about our platform, that’s what all management is fully taken care of by the Bricks teams. When you invest money, you are not asked for anything. We take care of all management in the same way as if it were a real estate agency that did it for you.
If you’ve ever invested and you no longer want to co-own one of the buildings, what happens? Can we withdraw our money?
There is already a withdrawal period of fourteen days. Then you commit yourself a contract of 7 to 10 years. We are committed to reselling the building within 7-10 years and it is therefore at this time that you will get your money back.
But since this is a period that may seem quite long, we have established what is called a secondary market on which you can say that you own the bricks of such buildings with an 8% profitability over the year. Another person will be able to do this redeem shares of this building.
Your Bricks company was launched in April 2021. Are you taking a step forward?
In fact, we are going a step further because we accelerated well. We have some more than 50,000 people who have already invested in our website. This represents 40 buildings that have already been purchased. We were only in France and there, today, we are developing in Portugal. We already have three buildings that have been purchased in Portugal. We allow anyone in France to be able to invest in real estate in Portugal as well. Then in Porto, Lisbon, where the yields are higher than what can be found in France.
