Hard Money Lending—PeerStreet Update


I take a look at how my investments through PeerStreet have grown in the last year and whether it’s still beneficial for me to keep doing.

I made my first investment in a hard-money loan on the PeerStreet platform about a year ago, so I’m starting to gather enough data to see how it’s performing as an investment. I thought the platform had a lot of promise in tapping a specific market without much additional risk, so didn’t hesitate to open up an account once I saw the deals available on the platform (you can read the original review). Plus, living in NYC, I wanted a little exposure to the real estate market since I’m permanently renting.

If you’re not familiar with hard money lenders, these are short-term loans made to real-estate investors interested in (usually) fixing-and-flipping a property. The investors are typically looking for short-term loans (6–24 months) and often need the money quickly as soon as they’ve identified a project. Banks are not interested in these short-term and quick-turnaround loans, which means that real estate investors pay slightly higher interest rates to access the lending market.

Before PeerStreet and similar fintech companies created this space, the real estate investors typically turned to wealthy investors or small original loan companies. In both cases, these investors would lend the entirety of the purchase price money, thus taking on the risk of substantial capital loss should something happen with the property.

In the new market, the lender (that’s you) takes part in a loan syndication and provides the capital to the real estate investor. Assuming all goes well, the lender can expect to make somewhere between 6%–12% on the invested money. PeerStreet uses technology to bring thousands of hard-money loans to retail investors, usually taking a 1% fee along the way (in other words, the borrower may be paying a 9% interest rate, of which 1% goes to PeerStreet, and 8% goes to the investors).

I invested $10,000 on the platform across ten separate loans in May 2017. Today, my account is worth $10,480.35 for an annualized return of 6.75%. That’s a pretty good return for an investment that is backed by the equity in the real estate (more on that later). Of course, the $480.35 is ordinary income subject to my marginal tax rate, which means that my after-tax return is more like $283.40 (or a 4% annualized return). Still, it’s substantially more than the 1% I could get in a high-yield savings account.

I own $1,000 in this property.

The downside is that the money isn’t nearly as liquid. The ten loans that make up my portfolio have various maturity dates stretching from May 2018 to January 2019. If I needed this money in a hurry, I wouldn’t be able to access it. Initially, I made the investment using $10,000 I had in a savings account for a car fund. I was tired of seeing the cash eroded by inflation, plus I thought this experiment would be fun! Given the illiquidity, it probably wasn’t the best place to park short-term savings, but I have no intention of buying a car before January 2019 anyway.

The other risk is default. I’ve had a couple of my loans change status from “Current” to “Late 30”. That makes you a little nervous, as it’s possible to lose the entire amount of your principal, which would certainly wipe out any gains. In each case, the loans eventually returned to “Current” status. What’s impressive is that this entire process is taking place without my involvement. Other than initially funding the loans, I rarely think about the money invested on PeerStreet. It’s encouraging to think that people are buying, rehabbing and selling houses behind the scenes with no involvement from me while I’m earning a decent return.

What happens if peerstreet goes bankrupt?

In my original post, someone pointed out something that I understood about the PeerStreet platform but which alarmed the reader. Here’s the condensed comment below:

“Before anyone invests a dime in these platforms, you need to understand exactly what you’re buying. These loans are UNSECURED. Even though Peerstreet’s Note to the borrower is asset-backed, the loans that PeerStreet sells to investors on its platform ARE NOT asset-backed.

So the loan underlying the Note is secured. But the Note itself isn’t secured. You, as an investor, have no security in the property.

So if you’re lending through this platform, understand that you’re simply making a regular commercial loan to PeerStreet. You’re not buying a secured Note.”

The commenter is about 90% correct in this analysis. It’s practically impossible (and probably not economical) for PeerStreet to set up an LLC for each property and allow you to own a piece of the LLC that in turn holds a secured note against the property. It just wouldn’t work at scale. So, what solution did these platforms develop? Or, more specifically, what did their law firm develop?

Peer Street Funding LLC is a special purpose vehicle separate from Peer Street, the corporate entity with the website. When you invest in a loan, you purchase a note from Peer Street Funding LLC, which in turn uses that money to acquire the hard-money loan from the loan originator (i.e., the original entity that funded the underlying investment). The relationship is explained in the Private Placement Memorandum.

The note you own is unsecured. The investment Peer Street Funding LLC holds is secured by the property. Your note is tied to the underlying investment. If the underlying investment fails, you don’t get to seek money from Peer Street Funding LLC on account of the other investments it owns. Specifically, the mortgage dependent promissory note (the one sold to you) says “Should Company not receive any payments relating to the Corresponding Mortgage Loan, Company will not owe anything to Holder.”

Essentially, what they’ve set up is a back-to-back loan where your money is used to fund the purchase of a loan, which itself is back by the real estate. Since Peer Street Funding LLC is a special purpose vehicle, its bankruptcy should be remote and separate from PeerStreet the fintech company. Additionally, because the notes are tied to the underlying investments, if the investments fail to perform your investment should be isolated from those bad investments.

One can imagine a scenario where the housing market crashes and the fix-and-flippers go bankrupt. Let’s say 15% of all investments owned by Peer Street Funding LLC fail and are somehow worth zero (highly unlikely, since the investments are secured by the actual property).

Is it possible that the holders of the notes that relate to the 15% of failed loans decide to sue Peer Street Funding LLC for losses? Yes, I suppose it is. Is it possible that Peer Street Funding LLC might have to defend itself and potentially settle with those investors? Yes, that’s possible too. Since Peer Street Funding LLC has no other assets besides the investments, any money paid to holders of the 15% of notes that failed would come from the investments related to the 85% of notes that didn’t fail.

If such a scenario occurred—and the investors in the 85% of investments that were not related to the 15% of failed investments lost money—it’s pretty safe to assume PeerStreet itself would collapse, since the reputational damage would be immense. It’s still highly unlikely that you’d lose all of your principal though (and I still think it’s doubtful that the holders of the 15% of failed note would have any recourse to the other assets in Peer Street Funding LLC).

Either way, this isn’t a clear-cut scenario where you are lending the money, and your loan is 100% secured by the property. It also isn’t (as the comment suggested) a scenario where you’re an unsecured lender against a fintech company that could go belly up at any moment. Your note is tied to the corresponding mortgage and your repayment will be linked directly to the performance of that note. PeerStreet has set up a practical way to handle investments at scale, and I can’t think of a better way to do it.

Going forward—more investments in peerstreet?

Over the past year, I’ve enjoyed investing on the PeerStreet platform. They keep it simple. I like the team behind the platform, and I love the returns. So, will I be investing more money on the platform? Possibly, but for now, we have our hands full filling out retirement accounts with low-cost index funds. We could open up a self-directed IRA (which would make sense for PeerStreet since you could shield the gains from ordinary income taxes) but haven’t taken that step yet. Plus, I think my next real estate investment will be with a real estate crowdfunding platform on the equity side. Check back with me in late 2018 to see if we have any additional funds to put on the PeerStreet platform. If we do, I’d gladly do it! I will be rolling all my PeerStreet investments forward as they expire.

Joshua Holt is a former private equity M&A lawyer and the creator of Biglaw Investor. Josh couldn’t find a place where lawyers were talking about money, so he created it himself. He spends 10 minutes a month on Empower keeping track of his money. He’s also maxing out tax-advantaged accounts like 529 Plans to minimize his taxable income.

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    Thirty-two thoughts on Hard Money Lending—PeerStreet Update


    1. Thanks for explaining that hard-money loans are short term loans that are typically used for fixing up flipping properties. My father has actually been thinking of flipping homes, so I think he’d be interested in reading this article. Do you have any tips for choosing a good hard-money lender in our area?

    2. Many thanks for sharing your experience on this topic, It helps many people to get correct knowledge from this article.

    3. My PeerStreet experience has also been simple, but it feels like the availability of decent-rate loan investment opportunities there has been declining and, at the same time, more lower-quality investments are appearing at lower rates and taking longer to be funded as investors catch on. With so much liquidity “out there” looking for productive uses, perhaps this must be expected. It might also be that, as PeerStreet develops an institutional side, more of the more attractive investments are going there and are thus less available to the retail side.

      1. I would assume that they report loans that have been discharged as losses but a loan in default wouldn’t be reported until it had been written off. I have a loan that has been in default for over a year and a half, so I’m still waiting to see how that plays out.

    4. Peerstreet are Bad business Stay away from Them PLEASE!!!
      I invested over $100K are my fund is still on hold since 2021…..
      PLEASE BEWARE OF PEERSTREET?? THEIR SCAMMERS

    5. As of Jan 31, 2023 PeerStreet has frozen everyone’s money in PeerStreet Pocket, which was advertised as a high liquidity option. They’ve said that Pocket is not a good business strategy for them anymore (totally fine, it’s their business) but they now refuse to tell us when we will ever get our money back (or whether they will even return all of it). Highly recommend you inquire with PeerStreet about their practices and update you review to account for recent events.

      1. I am in the same boat. They say 70% of the pocket funds is held in a segregated bank account but refuse to release it. Any more insights would be welcome.

        1. Is there a way to get in touch with you? Good to connect between people in the same situation. I’m just hoping that the pocket funds they promise is in an interest bearing account wasn’t at Silicon Valley Bank…

    6. Highly recommend you withdraw whatever funds you can. I have heard from multiple trusted sources that the company will be going belly up sometime in the next couple of months. It may be best to get out now.

      1. Any idea HOW to do that? They are not releasing Pocket money and we can’t get out of any loans on the platform. So how would you withdraw funds?

    7. You don’t actually own $1000 of the property pictured. Your investment isn’t secured by the property.

    8. NOTICE OF (I) FILING OF BANKRUPTCY PETITIONS AND RELATED
      DOCUMENTS AND (II) AGENDA FOR HEARING ON FIRST DAY PLEADINGS
      SCHEDULED FOR JUNE 28, 2023 AT 2:00 P.M. (ET), BEFORE
      THE HONORABLE LAURIE SELBER SILVERSTEIN IN THE UNITED STATES
      BANKRUPTCY COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF DELAWARE2

      This hearing will be conducted in-person. Any exceptions must be approved by

      chambers.

      Parties may observe the hearing remotely by registering with the Zoom link below no

      later than June 28, 2023 at 11:00 a.m.

      https://protect-
      us.mimecast.com/s/LbTtCBBnAoFRRlzGizRpkG?domain=debuscourts.zoomgov.com

      After registering your appearance by Zoom, you will receive a confirmation email

      containing information about joining the hearing.

      1. Thanks, I signed up as well after I heard the news. I have no idea what to do but we need to be informed

        1. Peer Street/ PS Funding Inc. took me for over 30+ million in Real Estate. I have been suing them since 2020. They intentionally did not give my payoffs on properties so which in turn screwed the investors. My email is [email protected]

          1. See the article attached. Colchis Capital Management LP started pulling its funds from Peer Street in 2020, which is when the wheels started falling off. I bet Peer Street paid them millions and should be clawed back by the US Trustee.
            This part of the article stuck out to me.
            Reuters recently reported that the SEC had increased its scrutiny of private credit funds here given potential manipulation of loan pricing, especially in a negative economic environment.

            https://www.reuters.com/articl

    9. I am interested too and anyone know what happens with the Pocket money?

      What about uninvested funds sitting in account? The site says those are FDIC insured.

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