Hundreds left fighting for their money as Spanish property investment platform traps them and changes name

A fifty-euro click was all it took to become a property investor with Housers, a real estate crowdfunding platform. Hundreds say that click has now cost them years of waiting, with one 86-year-old still owed roughly €10,000 and no clear answer on whether, or when, it is coming back.

An 86-year-old still hasn’t seen her €10,000 again

Virginia Guisasola put around €10,000 into Housers projects about five years ago, hoping for the returns of 10 to 13 per cent the platform advertised. She is now 86, and the money hasn’t come back. Her son, Ignacio, says he feels responsible for encouraging her to invest, and no longer knows what to tell his mother about when, or whether, it will return. “I feel responsible for getting her into this,” he told El Diario.

How a €50 investment became a €150 million platform

Housers launched in 2015 as Spain’s first real estate crowdfunding platform, letting ordinary savers buy into property projects for as little as €50, a minimum that was later raised to €300. It also ran an English-language version of its website, extending its reach beyond Spain’s borders.

Investors could put money into individual buy-to-let or renovation projects, or into loans to property developers, with advertised returns of 10 to 13 per cent or more. At its height, the platform said it had channelled around €150 million into more than 450 projects. 

However, not every investor got the return they were promised. Rubén Berastegui, 44, put money into 42 separate Housers projects. He has recovered his investment, plus a small profit, from 24 of them, but the other 18 have left him with €28,000 he considers trapped, with little information from the platform on what happened to it. “It’s very serious that they don’t inform us about anything,” he said.

‘The same dog, but with a different collar’ 

In February 2026, Housers relaunched under a new name, Crowpire, with new management led by general director Juan Guruceta. The company says its shareholders have changed completely, and that the founders and managers who ran Housers in its early years had already left before the rebrand.

Not every investor is convinced the change means much though. Juan Antonio Fernández, who still has €25,000 outstanding, put it quite bluntly: “It’s the same dog, but with a different collar.”

Housers’ history includes a criminal case linked to one of its own founders. It is reported that Antoni Brussola, a co-founder who left the company in 2021, was convicted of misappropriating €55,000 from Housers-linked accounts, a ruling upheld by Madrid’s High Court of Justice and now under appeal to Spain’s Supreme Court. 

Spain’s regulator has fined Housers twice, though only one penalty survived

Spain’s markets regulator, the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV), fined Housers a total of €215,000 in 2019 over three separate breaches: failing to give clients clear information about returns, fees and risks; running services beyond what it was authorised to offer; and publishing a project that didn’t meet legal requirements.

A second fine, of €130,000 and imposed in 2021 over undisclosed conflicts of interest, did not survive. Spain’s National Court overturned it in 2024, after a change in the law redrew the rules the fine had been based on.

Crowpire remains registered and authorised by the CNMV as a plataforma de financiación participativa (participatory financing platform), the licence needed to legally offer this kind of investment in Spain. 

Every investor was warned they could lose everything

Crowdfunding platforms authorised under Spain’s rules do carry a standard warning, but it’s still easy enough to scroll past. It states that individual projects are not vetted, approved or guaranteed by the CNMV or the Bank of Spain, and investors can lose some or all of the money they put in. So it actually pays to read the small print. 

For investors including Asier Fernández, who have painstakingly waited more than five years for an update on a project whose building was eventually sealed off, that warning has become the only true thing Housers (or Crowpire) actually told them.