It is a pleasure to speak to you, Sebastian! Can you tell us how long you have been part of the investment world?
I started investing in the stock market when I was around 16 years old, but those were not huge sums and most of my money was still held in bank accounts. Real investing started when I turned 30.
Wow, that is impressive. Can you share more about your experience and how you started?
My first stock market experience was much like everyone else’s. I was randomly choosing single stocks and selling them. Losses and wins were about equal and after some time I had the feeling that I should stop gambling, as this was exactly what I felt I was doing. Fixed-term bank lending appeared more reasonable and once interest rates got low, I bought my first apartment, which I subsequently rented out.
What is in your current portfolio?
My current investment portfolio looks like this: 50% real estate, 30% stock market, 10% P2P platform investments, and 10% crypto, precious metals and others.
How long have you been part of the Estateguru investor community?
I joined 4 years ago and gradually increased my investment since then.
What do you like about our product and company?
Estateguru is my favourite P2P platform. The website provides a good overview as well as detailed information on every project. I was reviewing every single project before investing and all my investments were manual at the beginning, but soon I realised that all projects published on Estateguru are reasonable. I therefore nearly always use the auto-invest function in order to diversify in more than 500 projects, which is almost impossible to track by manual means.
For some time, I was selling all projects in default status, but now I rather sit back and trust the real-estate-backed security to prevent major losses. So, my revenue is growing constantly every month without having to spend time on active management.
Estateguru offers slightly smaller interest rates, in comparison to other P2P platforms that I use, but it turns out for me that it is much safer to invest on Estateguru than on other platforms. In addition, morally I somehow feel troubled to invest in short-term loans provided by loan companies that charge huge interest rates to their customers with the risk of causing the debt spiral insolvency of poorer fellow citizens.
You visited our HQ office in Tallinn recently, what is your impression of our, let us say, kitchen?
I was very pleased to find a modern but somehow normal office. No marketing officer with a shiny sales brochure awaited me but instead, there were Estateguru employees who did not expect somebody to visit. So I concluded that Estateguru is a real and reliable company.
If you could share a little bit of your wisdom with other investors, what guidance would you give them?
I am not Warren Buffett or an investment blogger and I am sure others have more wisdom to share. What I have learned is that money is a resource that one should use and develop.
Risk-free bank accounts are not a clever long-term investment since the inflation rate has become much higher than the interest rates provided by the banks. I am a big fan of diversification, trying not to invest too much in a single company or market as I cannot completely trust my judgement to identify what asset will develop well or badly. Finally, I just recently saw how fast crypto money was gained and lost which emphasizes for me once more that it is better to invest in a solid business. I conclude that Estateguru is for me a valuable stack for a balanced portfolio, although I would not recommend overbalancing P2P compared to the traditional forms of investment!
