Frequently Asked Questions

SmartOwner is an online marketplace that enables you to participate in highly curated real estate investment opportunities in the fastest-growing areas of the world.

Real Estate is the largest asset class in the world. It has significant advantages over other asset classes when it comes to providing high-returns in a predictable manner and it is also good at making your portfolio inflation-proof. It combines the security of a physical asset, the advantages of leverage, and the high returns of both yield and asset appreciation, making it an attractive asset class.

We have a team of experts who specialize in various types of real estate investments and they carefully evaluate each opportunity that comes to us. Only about 1% of projects that we evaluate make it through this curation and reach you.

The specific opportunity that you will be able to participate in will depend on the location of the real estate opportunity and the regulations with respect to your country and investing abroad. Please visit our opportunities page to understand the eligibility criteria for the opportunity of interest to you.

Each opportunity has its own duration characteristics. In general, you can think of opportunities as either self-liquidating, such as a new development in which properties will be sold to buyers, or as long-term, in which long-term rental income is the goal. With self-liquidating opportunities, we provide the expected duration during which you can expect an exit. For the long-term opportunities that generate rental income, you will be able to list your stake for sale through our site if you choose to liquidate your interest. You will have access to an online control panel so you always know what is happening with your purchase and are empowered to take decisions about your portfolio.

Our opportunities are in real estate assets that either generate income or provide a growth-based upside at the end. The returns will depend on the type of opportunity that you invest in and its performance over the succeeding years. While future returns are impossible to predict, over the last few years, SmartOwner's clients who have invested in emerging markets have enjoyed an annualized return of between 8%-24% significantly beating the inflation rate.

As with any asset, there is inherent risk in any investment. At SmartOwner, we subscribe to the famous quote by Warren Buffett - “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing”, and actively seek to mitigate these risks. Our deep domain expertise, backed by our cutting-edge analytics, minimize market risk by careful selection of the markets and opportunities that we bring to you. We have a stringent due diligence process before the property is even selected, as well as a structured, data driven approach to property management once operational, thus minimizing the property risk through professional revenue optimization methods.

We help our clients diversify their portfolios in two ways. First, adding real estate to an asset portfolio is not easy. It requires a lot of expertise and access to information that is typically difficult to obtain and a lot of hands-on management. You get all of this at the click of a button. Second, within real estate, we offer a range of diverse offerings across asset classes, like a coworking office space in the heart of India’s corporate hub, an ultra-premium residential high-rise in the fastest growing housing market in Asia, and a luxury short term rental portfolio focused on the hottest tourist destinations.

In a REIT or private equity fund, the investor invests in a fund that has fund managers who decide how the capital is deployed. SmartOwner, on the other hand, is a marketplace that connects you with specific investment opportunities in real estate, along with providing a marketplace for you to exit your investment should you choose to do so.

SmartOwner’s fees depend on the specific opportunity. Please visit the opportunities page for the opportunity of interest to you to get the relevant details. Our service agreement for each project also provides particular fee details.

Transparency is one of the key pillars of our service and value proposition. When you become a client, you will receive a private account through which you can access a control panel where details about your holdings and projects are updated.

Our opportunities are in real estate, an asset class that is not susceptible to digital risks. All transactions on our website are secured through SSL encryption. We also take our clients’ privacy very seriously and do not share client data with external parties who may wish to market to our clients. Please see our privacy policy for more details about how we handle your data.

Our opportunities have specific minimum investment amounts and, at this time, there is no direct way to invest rental income or profits from one investment into another.

Early stage opportunities are typically self-liquidating. These opportunities are meant to fund the development of a new real estate project which, when completed, will be exited through sales of inventory to end users

This is specific to each opportunity and tends to vary based on the type of project and the size of the development. In general, residential projects offer exit opportunities through resale of inventory once the project is launched, and the larger the project, the longer this can take. For commercial projects where rent receipts are the primary source of revenue, the holding period depends on your decision to hold on to the asset or resell it. Our opportunities page will give you more information about the expected duration of the specific project you are interested in.

Our remarketing efforts are optimized to market properties within the project and are not designed for an immediate liquidation. To make the most of your purchase, it would be prudent to plan your commitments considering the entire project period.

SmartOwner is extremely selective in ensuring that the right projects from the right developers at the right price are chosen. The core values of our company are to ensure safety and transparency and to avoid risky or speculative deals. Therefore, we cannot assure our clients of any specific or high returns in advance as the returns will completely depend on the performance of the underlying asset.