BrickX Avis 134

While the idea is brilliant and a good idea, there are a few issues. The fees for buying and selling are quite high (1.75% buying/selling). I feel like those fees could be liveable but the worst fees are the ones taken from the actual "rent" income. At 25% debt you would expect a property's net rental income to be higher than 1.55%p.a. especially for a interest only loan. And that is ONLY IF the property is rented for the whole time! Is BrickX actually deprieciating the building/appliances properly?

Great step into the property market with minimal cost.

I have been investing for over a year now. I have just started referring the service to friends and family. I am happy to say every dealing, including phone calls I have had with the staff have been excellent. I am hoping as they move away from Theta and they get bigger this remains to be the case. My only issue is I can’t Polypay from my ING account.

I was pleased seeing the instant gain on my investment. It was a matter of selecting the right property to buy bricks in.

hi> Just something ive noticed. I do like the platform however when i look at my % of return overall and on each property it goes by the brick valuation NOT by the lowest brick price. Very deceiving. Lowest brick price is obviousoly what you can sell the brick at. If i bought a brick for $100 and the brick valuation is $107 i most likely cant sell it for $107 as the lowest brick price might be $102 for example. The $2 profit minus fees is the REAL roi not the brick valuation. Something i think you need to fix. Thanks

A hassle free tool that I like based on incremental investing and for dollar cost averaging.

Team support is first rate. 🧱 Go Brickx.

They put on a professional front, and make it sound like a stable, safe investment. Unless you want them to have your money for 50+ years, you won’t be seeing much of a return. I can earn 8 times as much on the same amount I ‘invested’ if I put it in the lowest of low interest bearing transaction account - and I would have immediate access to my money and not be slammed with exorbitant ‘transaction fees’. Absolutely ridiculous. Be smarter with your money and invest elsewhere. I’m disappointed I didn’t do enough research on BrickX so I could save myself the time, and money I’ve lost. Avoid at all costs.

I am happy at the moment. User interface at the website is nice and very easy to understand!

It shows me the wrong price in the advanced portfolio view. It compares with the initial evaluation, but there is no way to sell the bricks for that price as the current price is much lower.

The Product itself is very nice and easy to use.
However after one year using Brickx the model proves to be flawed. Besides the fact that the fees of 3.5% are high and that the property market in Australia seems to be much less likely now to bring the same level of returns as in the recent years (I'll convene that this is debatable and fundamentally no-one knows how the market will evolve), the buying-selling model itself is flawed. It is structurally not built to follow the evolution of the market value of the Bricks. The bricks prices are defined by the seller-buyer dynamics on the platform and not by the property market valuation.
Concretely this means that a brick you buy at $100 at market value, that 6 months later may be valued at $102 based on the new property valuation, cannot necessarily be sold on the platform at $102 as it is effectively sold at the lowest brick price proposed by other sellers.
After more than 12 months on the platform and investing in 8 properties, 7 of them have now a "lowest brick price" lower than when I bought them, even though the property market has gone up in most cases. You can see a lot of properties where the lowest brick price is way lower than the property valuation. This is because sellers tend to drive the bricks price lower and lower to be able to sell. And the price naturally goes down because you just need one seller to bring the "lowest brick price" one dollar down, when you need a lot of buyers buying all bricks at a particular dollar amount to make the lowest brick price go up one dollar.
I have no hope to sell my bricks with profit until Brickx decides to force the brick price to be exchanged at property market valuation. That's the only solution (assuming the Australian property market effectively goes up) that I see in the long term to make this platform worth investing in, especially as the rental yield alone doesn't give a better investment return than a basic savings account. If this solution is implemented I would definitely consider investing more.
With the current model, when you invest on Brickx, you don't effectively invest in the property market, you invest in a platform that creates an artificial marketplace to trade bricks at a price that is mostly decorrelated from the underlying property valuation.
I'd be very keen to understand why VCs have recently chipped in Brickx with this structural flaw in the model, which is effectively not bringing investment returns to users.

I have purchased two bricks from this company in recent months and have received no monthly distributions. The earliest that I will be paid a distribution is November and that will only be from one protmentperty. One property has been awaiting a tenant and this is the one that I hope will be paying a monthly distribution. The other property is damaged and it is not known when I will receive a return on my investment. I am attempting to sell the brick but have not been successful.

A very good concept and an option for young investors to enter the property market at an early age. This is one of the ways to diversify your investment portfolio over a long term horizon. A great start, however, Brickx team has a long way to go, especially to lower the fees, which is very high and also to come up with an app having easy accessibility and multi level security. Would be good if they can offer integrated security options like 2 factor authorization in their app. Keep up the good work and all the best.

Good to learn the ropes of the property market but fees are a bit of a scam.
all transactions, buying AND selling attracts a 1.75% fee which is not shown in the price payed for the brick nor is it factored into the capital gains calculations in your portfolio. Essentially your gains need to show 3.5% Profit before you start making ANY money. I have owned bricks for almost a year now and despite showing gains of 3.4% i will not even break even after fees, a year after investment. basically means my first year of "gains" was just to break even meaning buying into BrickX is a 3 year plan minimum to make any real money from it. kind of detracts from the easy come easy go marketing pitch. A good term deposit on the other hand may make slightly less interest but will have a lot less fees so you will see returns straight away and these returns compound, unlike monthly returns from BrickX that sit in your wallet and don't get any interest until you have enough to buy another brick or withdrawal it into a bank account.

A simply and easy approach to property investing.

Very easy to do business with, great concept!

I found the initial communication easy to understand and hope as I build my portfolio that it will as positive as they say.
Paul

Easy Interface.
Transaction fees seem a little high compared to other investment programs.
Need Mobile app please.

An excellent and low cost way of getting into housing investment.

Found this option for investing to be easy and accessible.

Interesting concept and may well work in time. I think the jury is still out on longer term results. But a good easy to use web portal so far