Real estate and cash rarely go hand in hand. When you decide to sell a property, you often have to wait a few weeks or even a few months before the money appears in your bank account. And stone-paper is not necessarily an exception to the rule. Explanations.
When you invest in a civil real estate investment company (SCPI), it is very often with a view to building up capital, preparing for your retirement, or passing on your assets. More than the immediate liquidity, you are therefore looking above all for the right balance between performance and safety. However, life is full of surprises. And sometimes you need mobilize your savings emergency.
The good news is that SCPIs are not a blocked investment. There is no minimum investment period in stone-paper, even if it is often advisable to keep your units for at least 5 to 8 years to amortize your entry costs. In practice, you can therefore resell all or part of your SCPI shares whenever you see fit. However, the procedure is not instantaneous. And depending on the type of SCPI in which you have invested, the terms of sale of your shares will not be the same.
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15 days were enough
There are two types of real estate investment companies. The most common are the SCPI variable capital. To sell the units of a variable capital SCPI, you can at any time send the management company a withdrawal order by registered mail with acknowledgment of receipt. If necessary, the manager registers your request, and sets the withdrawal price, ie the price at which the shares will be sold. This price is known in advance, and you cannot modify it.
However, the sale of your shares will only be effective if your departure is compensated by the arrival of a new partner. The amount of the subscription must be at least equal to that of the transfer. The management company then takes care of canceling the seller’s shares and creating new shares for the buyer.
If market conditions are favorable and the SCPI enjoys a good reputation, the sale poses no difficulty. On the MoneyVox forum, Romain (1) indicates for example having waited only three weeks before receiving the funds. For Louis, another contributor, 15 days were enough.
But things don’t always go so well. Withdrawal requests are processed by chronological order. And if the SCPI struggles to attract new partners, it can sometimes take several months before the sale of your shares is valid, admits Jonathan Dhiver, founder of MeilleurSCPI.com.
That said, the management company can create a reimbursement fund to avoid extended delays. This fund allows the managers to reimburse the partners’ shares and helps to relieve the liquidity problem. If necessary, it can be fed by the sale of part of the assets held by the SCPI, specifies Jonathan Dhiver. The only downside: the creation of this fund may lead to a slight discount on your shares.
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Secondary market
The SCPI fixed capital have a completely different function. This investment is aimed at more experienced investors, because the units of these SCPIs are exchanged gr gror on a secondary market organized by the manager.
In detail, you can send sell or buy orders to the management company. But unlike variable capital SCPIs, it is the seller who freely sets the floor price to which he wishes to sell his shares. The manager then records the orders received in a order book, then confronts them with each other at regular odds. For some SCPIs, the confrontation takes place every day. For others, once every three months.
Following the comparison of buy and sell orders, a execution price is determined and retained as the sale price, indicates Jonathan Dhiver. To increase your chances of selling your units quickly, you can consult the order book available on the website of each fixed capital SCPI, and align your sale price with the last execution prices observed.
But even so, the delays can vary from simple to triple. A few weeks are often enough to sell your shares. On the other hand if the performances of your SCPI are not with go, it will be difficult to attract buyers, except by offering your shares for sale at a steep discount. Not to mention that each time you change your selling price, it results in the loss of your listing rank.
To verify that an SCPI is “liquid”, make sure that the amount of units awaiting sale represents less than 3% of the total number of shares, advises Jonathan Dhiver. And if the liquidity of your investments is an important criterion, you can also buy SCPI shares through a life insurance contract. After a redemption requestthe insurers are indeed required to pay you the requested funds within a period of two months.
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(1) The first names have been changed.