How Urbanitae protects your investment: the role of due diligence
At Urbanitae, due diligence is not just a formality or a vague concept—it is the core of our project selection process. Every opportunity that reaches our platform has undergone a rigorous and methodical screening designed to detect risks, validate data, and ensure the technical, legal, and commercial viability of the project. This is the only way we can offer investment opportunities with the level of transparency and security our users expect.
What exactly is due diligence?
Due diligence is a comprehensive audit that allows an investor to thoroughly understand the actual state of an asset or company before making a decision. This process is commonly used in investment transactions, mergers, or acquisitions, with the goal of identifying hidden risks, inconsistencies, liabilities, or contingencies that could impact the deal.
It is a thorough review that may cover multiple areas:
- Legal: legal status of the asset, licenses, contracts, regulatory compliance, ongoing litigation.
- Financial and tax: financial statements, debt structure, taxes, pending receivables and payables.
- Technical: condition of the asset, construction quality, timelines, urban planning permits.
- Labor and organizational (when applicable): team structure, labor conditions, existing employment contracts.
- Technological or business: operational model, tools in use, long-term viability.
This analysis is usually carried out by external consulting firms or specialized law offices and can be requested by either the buyer or the seller. When the owner commissions the report to facilitate the sale, it is referred to as a vendor’s due diligence.
How is due diligence applied at Urbanitae?
At Urbanitae, every real estate financing proposal goes through a two-stage review process: an initial approval by the Investment Committee, and, if it passes that filter, a triple external due diligence before final approval.
This process is one of the main reasons why only a small fraction of the projects we assess make it onto our platform. In 2024, for instance, we reviewed projects worth more than €1 billion, but ended up financing only €180 million—around 16% of the total.
The three pillars of our due diligence process are:
- Legal due diligence: Conducted by leading law firms like Garrigues, it reviews property titles, contracts, licenses, and potential litigation.
- Technical due diligence: Performed by specialists such as Nurbex, it examines urban planning, construction factors, and execution timelines.
- Commercial due diligence: Carried out by firms like Básico Real Estate, Savills, or local sales agents, it evaluates market feasibility and pricing.
This system ensures that the opportunities published are not only attractive on paper but also sound from a legal, technical, and commercial standpoint.
An experienced investment committee
The responsibility of evaluating and filtering investment opportunities lies with our Investment Committee, which combines internal Urbanitae professionals with independent experts from the real estate sector. All decisions are made unanimously, and no project is published for funding without the full approval of the Committee after passing every stage of analysis.
Moreover, in the world of real estate investment—especially in models like crowdfunding, where hundreds of small investors join forces in a single project—risk control is essential. And that’s where due diligence comes in.
Thanks to this system, Urbanitae is able to: Identify hidden risks before they impact investors, ensure transparency from the very start, validate that the developer’s business plan makes technical and commercial sense, and protect the interests of platform users. It’s a process that requires significant time and resources, but it’s absolutely necessary to ensure the quality of our offering. Especially in an environment where trust is critical, we believe that this level of rigor is what sets us apart.
