Loans backed by real assets: EstateGuru, LANDE and Digilo
Instead of a buyback promise, these three licensed platforms secure every loan on property, farmland or machinery. How that works and why many investors like it.
Di Neven ScagnoliAuthor & EditorOn most consumer-loan platforms your protection is a buyback promise from a lending company. Secured lending platforms take a different approach: every loan is backed by an asset — a building, a plot of land, a tractor — held for investors by a collateral agent. If the borrower stops paying, the asset can be sold. Here are three licensed platforms built on that idea.
EstateGuru — property loans since 2014
EstateGuru, run by Estateguru OÜ in Tallinn, has lent €966.7 million across nearly 8,000 loans and counts more than 160,000 active investors. It holds a crowdfunding service provider authorisation from Estonia's Finantsinspektsioon (granted 8 May 2023). Every loan is secured by a mortgage held by a separate collateral agent, and the average loan-to-value across all loans is 63.36% — for Baltic loans issued in 2023–2025, 57.8%.
What stands out is the disclosure: EstateGuru publishes default rates by year, amounts recovered and recovery times on its statistics page, and has recovered €70 million of principal from defaulted loans by mid-2026. Since 2023 it lends only in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where it says 97% of the €275 million lent is repaid or performing. EstateGuru review
LANDE — lending to farms
LANDE, run by SIA LANDE Platform in Riga, lets you lend directly to farmers, mostly against farmland and agricultural machinery. It holds an ECSP licence from Latvijas Banka (No. 27-10/2024/23, 7 February 2024), is profitable with audited accounts and a clean 2025 audit opinion, and charges investors no fees — including on secondary-market sales. The average loan-to-value is just 41%, and in its July 2026 report LANDE said loans backed by land, property or machinery made up 95% of the book in Latvia and 100% in Lithuania, Romania and Poland. Minimum €50. LANDE review
Digilo — the newcomer with a clear structure
Digilo launched in April 2026 and holds an ECSP licence from Latvijas Banka (No. 27-10/2025/222, 16 September 2025). Every loan is secured on real estate, the platform may commission independent appraisals, investors pay no fees and client money is held at the payment institution Lemonway. It comes out of an established Latvian group of property lenders. It is still very small — five funded projects by September 2026 — so its score is provisional. Digilo review
What secured lending does well
- A real asset, not a promise. Your protection doesn't depend on a lending company staying solvent.
- You lend to the borrower directly. On LANDE and Digilo each investor is a lender under a loan agreement with the borrower.
- Visible numbers. Loan pages show the collateral, the LTV and the term, so you can choose your own buffer.
Worth knowing
Collateral changes how a loss happens and how long recovery takes — it does not prevent defaults. EstateGuru's own figures show default rates of 27.45% in 2023 and 20.14% in 2025, and on LANDE about 27% of loans not yet repaid were late or defaulted. Recovery through courts and auctions can take years, loans run longer (LANDE averages 21 months), and there is no buyback. These are not bank deposits. Compare them side by side in our comparison tool.
