InRento’s Alternative Real Estate Financing Strengthens European Footprint With Romanian Market Launch

• Lithuanian real estate investment platform InRento scales its operations expanding into Romania
• The company reports strong growth, profitability, and over EUR 100M assets funded across Europe
• The platform differentiates through asset-backed lending, strict underwriting, and zero-default track record
• The Romanian expansion reflects rising demand for faster and more flexible real estate financing solutions

This April, InRento, the well-known Vilnius-based pan-European digital investment platform for real estate projects, officially launched in Romania. The company set up its Bucharest HQ with a team led by its new Country Manager Romania Andrei Chelariu.

Five Years of Rapid Growth and Platform Milestones

Since ITKeyMedia covered InRento’s Seed round in 2021, the company has evolved from a buy-to-let platform into a profitable, international digital investment platform. The team has expanded the platform’s operations across eight European markets and diversified its portfolio to include large-scale conversion and hospitality projects.

InRento’s founder and CEO Gustas Germanavičius lists his company’s major milestones over the past five years:

• Financed projects across Europe have brought together more than 4,700 investors;
• InRento achieved sustained profitability starting in 2023, proving the long-term viability of its business model;
• The company reported EUR 2,999,222 in revenue in 2025, representing a significant increase from EUR 758,456 in 2023 – a fourfold growth over two years, as per 2025 audit;
• Over EUR 100M worth of assets were funded, with investors receiving more than EUR 9.74M in earnings;
• In 2025, InRento provided EUR 3.65M in financing for Alvernia Planet, a project by Cavatina Holding S.A., a Warsaw Stock Exchange-listed company;
• InRento was awarded LendTech of the Year 2025 at the European FinTech Awards in London, following previous wins as Investment Tech of the Year in 2022 and 2024;
• The platform expanded strategically into Spain in 2021, Poland in 2023, Ireland in 2024, followed by launches in Italy and Latvia in 2025, and finally in Finland and Romania in 2026.

‘Following the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, we faced significant market uncertainty. We made the difficult decision to abandon the traditional grow-at-all-costs venture capital model to focus exclusively on deals that were profitable for our investors and the platform itself,’ Mr Germanavičius shares.

He recollects other significant challenges that the InRento team had to overcome:

• Educating the market. Early on, it was difficult to convince the market that a lower-risk, medium-return model could indeed work in a sector typically dominated by high-risk speculative developments.
• Cross-border complexities. Operating in multiple jurisdictions required overcoming highly localised real estate and mortgage laws that remain specific to each country despite a unified EU crowdfunding framework.

Regulated EU Platform Connecting Investors to Real Estate Loans

Today, InRento is a European-wide regulated crowdfunding platform that connects individual investors with asset-backed real estate loans, allowing people to invest in vetted property projects starting from EUR 500. It provides financing to real estate developers—typically for near-completion or income-generating projects—through fixed-interest loans ranging 9–12% annually. The platform focuses on simplifying and speeding up access to real estate financing while aiming to reduce risk through collateral-backed structures and strict project selection across multiple EU markets.

‘Specifically, the biggest regulatory and compliance challenges to anticipate when operating across multiple EU markets with different real estate dynamics are local mortgage laws. The methods for establishing security on property vary by country, necessitating the development of strong local legal teams.Adding to that is the issue of investor protection. Operating across multiple markets requires a consistent and disciplined due diligence framework, while still allowing for local adaptations depending on each jurisdiction’s legal, tax and market specifics,’ the CEO tells ITKeyMedia.

Risk Discipline and Real Assets

InRento differentiates itself from traditional bank financing and other crowdfunding platforms Beyond speed and accessibility. According to Mr Germanavičius, InRento’s standout features are:

• Existing value. While many crowdfunding platforms finance speculative projects, such as buying empty land or starting new construction from scratch (high-risk, relying on future plans), InRento chooses to finance existing buildings that already have value or are being renovated to generate rent. This is the approach that allowed InRento to maintain a 0% default rate. 
• Filling the gap. Large banks are known to prefer massive projects and often ignore developers who need between EUR 1M and up to EUR 5M (“no man’s land”, as the team calls it). InRento supports bankable developers: people who are reliable enough for a bank but are working on projects that don’t fit a bank’s slow corporate rules. By filling this gap, the platform offers investors access to professional-grade deals that were previously unreachable. 
• More sustainable approach. Instead of just building more, InRento focuses on making better use of what cities have, i.e. specialises in conversion projects, where underused buildings are turned into modern homes, hotels, or other facilities. The team believes that reusing existing structures is roughly 20-30% more sustainable than new construction and helps make housing more affordable for everyone.

Risk Controls Behind a 0% Default Track Record

Despite rapid expansion and lending to larger entities, InRento managed to maintain a 0% default rate as it exceeded 100M EUR in financed amount. Mr Germanavičius reiterates the critical safeguards for achieving such an impressive rate:

• Existing assets only. InRento avoids speculative land acquisitions or projects without an existing structure.  
• First-rank mortgages. Every investment is secured by a first-rank mortgage on the property.  
• Strict borrower requirements. Corporate or personal guarantees from major shareholders are required; SPVs as sole borrowers are not accepted.  
• Cash flow focus. Projects must demonstrate clear rental income potential or strong cash flow to service the debt. 
• Bankable developers. InRento partners exclusively with developers who can demonstrate a proven professional track record (and would normally qualify for bank credit if banks were faster).

The Romanian Opportunity: Banking Gaps and High Yields 

In Romania, InRento sees a significant disparity between growing economic activity and the supply of modern commercial space, particularly in regional cities. European banks largely stepped back from lending to mid-market developers after 2008 — a gap that InRento intends to fill.

The company is capitalising on three primary market inefficiencies:

• Slow banking processes. Developers in Romania often wait months for credit decisions, whereas InRento can close deals in under four weeks.
• Structural supply shortage. The retail park and mixed-use segments remain underserved, allowing InRento to finance projects with robust international tenants, such as Supeco of the Carrefour Group.
• Attractive yields. With national average rental yields at 6-7%, Romania offers some of the highest returns in the EU alongside relatively low entry costs.

‘Developers across Eastern Europe face a common constraint: limited access to competitive bank financing during early development and fit-out stages. Romania has been part of InRento’s strategic roadmap since 2021. Over the past year, we’ve been building a local team and establishing partnerships on the ground. The opening of the Bucharest office formalizes this commitment and ensures that every investment opportunity is sourced, evaluated, and managed with local expertise – while maintaining InRento’s underwriting standards,’ Mr Germanavičius states.

‘Romania is a perfect market for this loan-based real estate financing model, especially now. As the country’s economy has slowed down and inflation has grown, real estate project owners need alternative financing streams that will allow them to move faster. On the other hand, individual investors not only have access to a low-risk investment platform, but they can also contribute to shaping the future of their cities,’ Mr Chelariu adds.

One year from now, the success metrics pointing at InRento’s successful expansion to Romania will include:

• Volume of financed projects;
• Portfolio diversification and financing projects across various regional cities, not just in Bucharest;
• Local presence and an expanded network of partnerships with developers;
• Investor satisfaction: the number of active investors choosing Romanian projects to achieve geographic diversification within their portfolios;
• Continuing with 0 defaults, regardless of the geography.

Beyond Lending: New Investment Features and Liquidity Tools

Overall, seeing how InRento has transitioned from its initial ‘buy-to-let’ roots into an international financial institution operating across Europe, the platform has strategically integrated features that move it far beyond a traditional lending marketplace:

• Profit-sharing and equity-like upside. InRento already offers selected investments with a profit-share variable interest component where investors, in addition to fixed interest, earn variable capital gains linked to the project’s success and market conditions. This provides the benefits of equity participation while maintaining the security of a first-rank mortgage on the asset.
• Secondary Market and liquidity. Prioritizing liquidity, InRento has developed an innovative secondary market where investors can exit deals before maturity. The Grand Sale feature specifically serves larger investors (with holdings over EUR 50K), allowing them to liquidate portions of their portfolio to other users.
• Strategic niches. InRento operates in deals too large for private individuals and too small for major institutions. The plan is to double down on hospitality, short-term accommodation, and adaptive reuse projects where existing buildings get transformed into modern urban spaces.

‘Our mission is to ensure that every investment opportunity is sourced, evaluated, and managed with local expertise – while maintaining InRento’s underwriting standards,’ Mr Germanavičius concludes.

InRento’s expansion into Romania highlights the growing importance of alternative financing channels in bridging the gap left by traditional bank lending, particularly for mid-sized asset-backed real estate projects. By combining strict underwriting standards with faster execution and access to cross-border capital, the platform is helping unlock developments that might otherwise stall due to funding constraints. Its entry into Romania signals both a validation of the local market opportunity and a broader shift toward more flexible tech-driven real estate finance across Europe.