Roche Group has begun construction on 30 homes at Pallaskenry, Co Limerick, funded through peer-to-peer platform Property Bridges rather than a bank loan, an alternative finance route that is helping smaller homebuilders keep schemes moving without waiting on traditional lending approval.

Roche Group, headquartered in Newcastle West, Co Limerick, is a family-run Irish construction and property group founded in 1988, active in homebuilding, retail, hospitality and motorsport, with a track record of delivering 80-home schemes across the county including Cois Teampaill and Cois Srutháin.

Property Bridges, founded in 2018 and regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland, is Ireland's only dedicated crowdfunding platform for homebuilding finance, backed by a community of more than 2,600 individual investors funding loans of €500,000 to €10m.

Cois Currán will comprise 30 three-bedroom family homes priced from €400,000 to €425,000, aimed at housing demand along the N69 corridor west of Limerick city, with construction due to complete in mid-2027.

Individual investors can commit €500 to €500,000 through the platform, with a targeted annual return of 7.5%; the total loan size for the project was not disclosed.

Crowdfunded development finance is now competing directly with bank lending for a segment of the market that state-backed lenders were originally set up to serve.

Home Building Finance Ireland's loan approvals grew 14% to €3.78bn in the first half of 2026, with 80% of approvals targeted at SME homebuilders borrowing €20m or less and 87% covering more than 65% of project costs, underlining how heavily even state-backed lending now skews toward equity-constrained smaller developers.

Property Bridges occupies the same underserved segment from the private side, and has funded more than 1,000 new homes nationally since launch, positioning peer-to-peer platforms as a genuine third channel alongside banks and HBFI rather than a niche alternative.

For the sector, speed to drawdown is increasingly the deciding factor smaller developers weigh alongside cost of capital, and platforms able to move a scheme like Cois Currán from finance to site quickly are likely to keep winning share from developers unwilling to wait on traditional bank approval timelines.

Source: Limerick Leader / Home Building Finance Ireland