Turning Spreadsheet-Based Deals Into a Live Commercial Real Estate Lending Marketplace
Overview
The state of the real estate market in the UK has witnessed significant shifts in recent years. Factors such as the economic impact of Brexit, changes in remote working trends due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and evolving consumer preferences have all played a role in reshaping the landscape.
The commercial real estate financing market is private, resulting in limited visibility for sponsors and lenders. With recent EU legislation constraining banks, numerous new alternative lenders have started filling the gap. Recognizing this shift and deciding to address the evolving needs of the UK market, FundRe embarked on an end-to-end app development journey to create an origination commercial real estate application for European assets. This application is designed to match sponsors and debt advisors with lenders, granting them much-needed visibility.
FundRe’s platform replaced
a manual, spreadsheet-driven process
From idea to a fully operating platform, built end-to-end from scratch
User roles — sponsors, debt advisors, and lenders — unified in one matching workflow
Direct analogs in the European market at the time of launch
A private market with no shared visibility
A fragmented, invisible market
Sponsors and lenders had no shared way to discover each other. Deals were tracked across spreadsheets, Excel files, and scattered documents stored in different places.
New regulation, new lenders
EU legislation constraining banks opened the door to alternative lenders — but there was no infrastructure connecting them to sponsors and debt advisors at scale.
Complex matching logic
Matching sponsors and debt advisors against each lender’s specific lending criteria automatically — not manually — was the core unsolved technical problem.
No existing playbook
The real estate finance platform FundRe envisioned had no direct analog in the European market — it had to be designed and built from a blank page.
One matching engine,
three connected user roles
Commercial real estate platform for three user roles
The Euristiq team built a financing origination platform with complex business logic that matches real estate sponsors with debt advisors and lenders and simplifies finding deals and conducting transactions. Cloud-based web application automates the financing origination process for European commercial real estate assets.
The online real estate platform has three user roles: sponsors (investors), debt advisors, and lenders. Sponsors and debt advisors create deals by adding real estate property descriptions, locations, photos, notes, and agreements. Lenders add their lending criteria and this is when the matching algorithm comes in. Lenders get notifications of deals that correspond to their criteria and can start a legal process of making a transaction. Other functionalities include tracking the status of a deal, negotiating and providing indicative terms, and searching previous deals on the platform.
End-to-end development of complex functionality
The main technical challenge was to develop a deal-searching functionality and implement a matching algorithm. The Euristiq team developed the system’s architecture, back-end, front-end, and QA.
Automation of commercial real estate financial processes
The system brings a significant level of automation to the client’s business flow, as previously everything was being done using spreadsheets and Excel and these documents and files were stored in different places. The app features different flows, such as creating a deal, matching a lender and inviting to a deal, working as a lender with deal, and closing a deal as a sponsor. We managed to simplify the process of finding deals and conducting transactions, matching sponsors and debt advisors with lenders, and providing them with visibility at all stages of their processes.
A financing market that finally has a front door
Fully operating platform, built from scratch
The Euristiq team delivered a fully operating commercial real estate app developed from scratch in less than a year. The platform has complex functionality that helps sponsors reach a wider lending audience.
An easy way to make, search, and close deals
The online web application matches investors with lenders according to their lending criteria and provides an easy way to create new transactions, search past deals, and access standardized information.
Financing streamlined across Europe
The platform streamlines the commercial real estate financing process across Europe for all the parties involved.
Untangling real estate deals from spreadsheets and email threads?
FAQ
What is real estate sponsor software?
Real estate sponsor software is a platform that lets real estate sponsors, the parties who source, structure, and manage a property deal, connect with debt advisors and lenders in one system instead of over email and spreadsheets. It typically handles deal listings, lending-criteria matching, negotiation, and transaction tracking, plus a searchable record of past deals. Euristiq built this kind of platform for FundRe: sponsors and debt advisors post real estate deals, lenders add their lending criteria, and a matching algorithm surfaces the right deals to the right lenders automatically.
How does a commercial real estate lending platform match sponsors with lenders?
A commercial real estate lending platform matches sponsors with lenders by comparing deal data, such as property type, location, size, and terms, against each lender’s stated lending criteria. On the platform Euristiq built for FundRe, sponsors and debt advisors add deals with property details, notes, and agreements, while lenders separately register their criteria. The matching engine cross-references the two automatically and notifies lenders the moment a compatible deal appears, replacing manual introductions with ongoing automated matching, then lets both sides negotiate, track status, and close the transaction on the platform.
What does it cost to build a custom commercial real estate finance platform?
Cost depends heavily on scope: the number of user roles, the complexity of the matching or underwriting logic, integrations such as mapping and document handling, and whether the build is a fixed-scope MVP or an ongoing partnership. FundRe’s platform, for example, needed three distinct user roles (sponsors, debt advisors, lenders), a custom matching algorithm, and full architecture, front-end, and back-end development, delivered end-to-end in under a year. The most reliable way to size a project like this is a discovery phase that scopes the matching logic and user roles before development starts.
Who built FundRe’s real estate lending platform?
Euristiq, an AI-native custom software development company, built FundRe’s commercial real estate lending platform end-to-end, covering architecture, back-end, front-end, and QA. The platform automates the financing origination process for European commercial real estate assets, matching sponsors and debt advisors with lenders based on lending criteria. It was built from scratch in under a year and had no direct analog in the European market at launch.
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