The autumn season is quickly approaching its final days, bringing us towards the end of the year. Before making a more extensive report about 2022, let’s scan through the latest news about the Bulkestate platform and some updates for the recent months.
Some necessary platform updates and delays of the objects
The end of Summer brought some changes in the platform features as well as our staff. Bulkestate is always about progress and moving forward, and that is what August delivered – a chance to make changes on the platform. Bulkestate restructured the platform’s forum due to it becoming a place for unproductive opinion exchange which did not serve its initial goal – to be a place for discussion around investment objects or any other related topics. While most of the questions or statements were expressed accordingly, more and more opinions fell out of line. Frankly, it became a challenge for the team to track the whole discussion as there were no filters or limits to messages to determine if involvement is needed.
Through all times, Bulkestate continues to be a platform that brings personal attention to its investors and retains its closed-loop community, yet it became impossible to provide a service of quality. Now, the forum section is split into two parts - Platform News (latest news about our platform technical updates) and Object News (information about objects and refunds). This removes the possibility to comment on your investment object and interact with other investors, but Bulkestate Support remains always available through e-mail.
To be fair, the discussions, although becoming inarticulate, were reasonable as many platform investment objects remained delayed and some were added to the line. The local and global economic situation goes through massive changes daily and the deals are affected directly, which understandably frustrates investors. The Bulkestate team is working on all cases of delayed loans, eliminating the option to settle for a scenario that would not benefit the investors. Due to the process, some extensions of loan terms had to be done as the current market situation is not beneficial for selling defaulted properties and would result in a loss of funds.
On a happier note, some loans were repaid earlier or partially before the loan term, for example, all “Sebru Veisi” loan stages and “Sunīši”, also “Brīvības Alley”, while some of the delayed cases are expected to have a breakthrough in a fund recovering process and might be repaid till the end of the year.
The Bulkestate team is closely following the late loans and the actions of borrowers, in some cases taking over the monitoring of the development process, if applicable, or requesting regular updates on the company’s endeavours to work out a scenario for repayment.
Group buying deals make their way onto the platform
Our current group buying deal “Bishop’s Quarter” is looking forward to being completed as the apartments attracted high interest from buyers and real estate enthusiasts. And no wonder, as the building is unique and surely one of a kind in the local scene. While the deal structure is more layered than the regular deals for some of the buildings offering a chance to purchase a whole floor or the whole building, the property is highly-valuated among the interested parties. However, a larger property takes larger funding and the buyers require more time to settle their financial assets, holding up the property in the platform.
While the active selling of Bishop Quarter is still ongoing, our team is preparing another property in another part of Riga. To tease the audience, we can reveal that this part of the city is trendy on our platform and is one of the most favoured among Rigans too. Stay tuned for updates and there might be an opportunity before the year ends to become an owner of a property for a very attractive price.
Updates of the outstanding loans
The last months saw some significant progress in the development process of platform-funded properties.
We are looking forward to bringing to completion the Amālijas Street project, which holds up a few loan stages. The renovation is almost finished and, as soon as the building is done and apartment units are registered in the Land Register of Latvia, the sales process can be carried out. While reservations are already in place, the sales can only be done after registering the property units.
27 of 32 apartments at Amālijas Street are reserved, yet the sales process cannot be carried out due to the incomplete third floor on the second part of the building. The largest chunk is done and the construction team has done a beautiful job turning an old and distressed wooden building into a modern and contemporary residential space while preserving its authentic look. The building itself has become a living space that meets all requirements for comfortable and secure living. The latest update of the property is the spacious courtyard that has become a statement piece of the property by providing a closed, green area for the property residents.
After the finish of all renovation works, we look forward to much quicker progress in loan repayments. All loan stages will be repaid in chronological order and we are impatiently waiting to update our investors with more exact repayment dates.
We are very glad to announce the completion of the facade renovation and inner construction works for the Ģertrūdes Street property. The loan was funded at the end of 2021 and has resulted in another beautifully preserved historical building in Riga.
While the facade is the most visible part of the finished renovation, the main entrance doors are changed as well. External lighting elements are installed on the building and the inner works have resulted in refreshed staircases and a fully changed heating system. The property has turned out to be another successful renovation project and another property is now in order in the historic architecture scene of the area.
The recent months have seen fewer investment objects than usual. While our team is still hunting down profitable investment opportunities to offer for our online platform users, we are carefully monitoring the real estate market situation to make the best possible decisions that would be also profitable in future. The real estate market this year is affected by the global energy market and that is no secret that the future holds some inevitable changes for the market too. Our team along with the whole world is looking forward to the global environment to stabilize and return to more frequent project flow on the platform.
Expo Real 2022 in Germany and Riga COMM
The live events are still our favourite place to meet our investors and engage in discussions with other industry players. At the very beginning of October, our team headed to Munich to participate in the International Trade Fair for Property and Investment - Expo Real 2022 with almost 40 000 attendees and 1 887 exhibitors. For three days we were engaging in a lot of productive and fun discussions with our investors, and experts in finance and investments, as well as participated in some opinion exchange with our foreign colleagues. It’s safe to say that we were taken away by all your attention and many pleasant conversations. It was a great opportunity to provide clarity on some pressing matters and also to receive very necessary feedback from our platform users that we took home with us and which will serve as a great push for the next platform improvements.
While event visitors took the main part of our attention, we did not forget to gain some valuable knowledge too. Meetings with other business owners, discussions on cooperation plans and some valuable ideas for future development gave us much-needed inspiration and drive for taking the next steps in improving our platform.
On Thursday morning, our CEO Igors Puntuss was stepping onto the Tech Talk stage to introduce the audience to the Bulkestate innovative product - group buying and talked about one of many successful deal stories. Attendees were introduced to the benefits for the seller, buyer and the market. 
But let’s attend to some more serious matters. While part of the team represented Bulkestate in Munich enjoying a chance to meet some of you off the Internet, our legal team attended the Riga COMM event to gain knowledge on the latest about the fin-tech industry licensing process in Europe. Riga COMM is an annual IT and business event representing multiple fields of operation, where all interested parties can learn about the latest topics in respective industries, consult with knowledgeable specialists and find solutions that are most suitable for one’s business or organization, all in the same place.
Every year, part of the event is dedicated to the fintech industry with news and insights directly from industry leaders and experts. Our goal was to look into the process of crowdfunding regulations that are implemented in the European Union, as well as platform security requirements and transparency of the deals to be sure that we are ready for the changes that are mandatory for all of the industry players. We are glad to say that we have done almost all of our homework to make the necessary changes and receive the crowdfunding licence. 
To sum everything up
For Bulkestate, the recent months have been more silent as we have worked on some changes in our platform as well as adjusted to some of our own. We are no different from others, who are now closely monitoring the global environment and its effect on our projects and deals.
With that in mind, our main priority for this period is getting things in order by completing the licencing process as well as handling the delayed investment objects. Our main priority remains honest and transparent management of our investor funds and we are looking forward to continuing to bring satisfaction and revenue with our projects to our platform customers.