Crypto Buying for Real Estate?

Full Video Transcript Below

[00:00:00] Well, good afternoon. Real estate fans, Alice Lema here, broker John L. Scott and beautiful Southern Oregon, bringing to you another edition of the weekly podcast. And guess what we're talking about today, you're never going to guess. I'm going to tell you cryptocurrency, we're talking about cryptocurrency and home buying. And you know why we're talking about cryptocurrency and home buying, because believe it or not it's relevant.

[00:00:26] We just had two sales in Colorado, happened recently using digital currency, who would have thought. So we're going to talk about it. Before we get to that, give you a quick second to subscribe to the channel, give us a like thumbs up, make some comments and some questions. If you need to speak to me personally, you can call or text (541) 301-7980.

[00:00:48] And we'll also have a reminder at the end, just briefly, because as somebody said, when they called me yesterday, I don't want to give you a like, until I hear the podcast, it's like, okay, fine. We'll remind you at the end. Okay. Enough of that. So cryptocurrency and home buying, are we there yet? Are we there yet?

[00:01:05] The answer is almost. So here's what happened. Two sales advertised in financial news, made headlines talking about the sales where the owners of these homes said in their ads, they preferred cryptocurrency for the purchase. Now that alone is kind of interesting and unusual. So then the next question in my mind is I'm sitting here in Oregon and going, how did they actually pull that off?

[00:01:32] What did they do? What were the steps? Who are these people? Yeah. So anyway, I was on the phone to Colorado like half a day. And here's what I found out, is that these are both luxury homes and in Colorado that's like tens of millions or multiple millions. So big, biggest states, bunches, inventors of money, just beautiful luxury properties.

[00:01:58] And in the ads, they said they wanted cryptocurrency if possible. So, and they got it. They actually got paid in cryptocurrency. Now, normally when you buy a house, the escrow company collects all the monies and takes care of all the debts. You know, maybe you have a sewer bill or you have an HOA. The real estate agents get paid.

[00:02:22] The the escrow people get paid and the money also gets distributed to the seller. So normally the title company does all that. So I'm on the phone with five title companies in Colorado going, how did you guys do this? Guess what none of them did. Here's what they do. They take the cryptocurrency and have the buyer send the cryptocurrency directly to the seller to pay off the house.

[00:02:49] They have both the parties put in money or however it's negotiated. In this case, it happened to be both the parties put in us dollars into the escrow account to pay the sewer bill, the HOA, the real estate agency, escrow fees and all that regular stuff. So I thought this was very interesting because the title companies do not want to handle the actual digital currency. And the reason is because the digital currency is volatile and it's new. And title companies are really insurance companies, very conservative, you know, they like predictability and every single one of them told me the same thing.

[00:03:27] We don't want to be first. It was by the time I hung up the fifth call, they're playing this, no, you go, no, you don't. You go, they're all sitting around waiting for some title company to put their toe in the water on this one before they're going to jump. So I think what's going to happen is that either the crypto market is going to get more stable, mainstream less volatile. Because that was the other complaint that title companies have is, is, I mean, when one manager said, can you imagine we go into a 30 day escrow and then day 30, the guy doesn't have any money anymore because the crypto market fell apart.

[00:04:07] And this is interesting coming out on a week when the crypto market had a lot of struggles the digital currencies are all, you know, going way down, it looked like they're still worth a lot of money by my book, but not, not as much as they were, I don't know, a few months ago or last, last year. But anyway, the point is the title companies are afraid of volatility and they don't want to be first because they are basically ensuring the transaction.

[00:04:31] So that, all that all made sense. And you know, I did make three more phone calls here to Medford our, local title companies. And they basically, the two that I talked to you basically said the same thing. Volatility is kind of a turn-off to them and they don't know how they would insure anything. At least the Oregon people did not say we don't want to be first.

[00:04:52] I thought maybe, you know, Southern Oregon title companies are a little more stoic, a little more brave. But This is kind of the wave of the future. And it's going to be very interesting to see how digital currency does finally get fully integrated into the real estate transaction game. Because if you think about it, the platform that these currencies are using is called blockchain. And blockchain is supposedly super secure unbreakable, very linear and it's ideal for moving money in a secure fashion and very quickly and moving documents and things like that.

[00:05:31] So theoretically in the future, we could be buying and selling houses on our phone in three days or five days or something like that. We won't need time, weeks, and weeks to do all the stuff except maybe an inspection, you know or maybe that gets done ahead of time, but I don't know, this is, this is the, the real estate prediction, you know, kind of the star Trek version of what it's going to be like in the future.

[00:05:59] When we finally do integrate cryptocurrency, blockchain and all that into real estate. In the meantime, I'm going to be following it very carefully. I don't know of any other transactions except for Colorado. I know there's some in Florida. If you guys hear of anything, if new people that are doing it, I want to hear about it.

[00:06:17] I'm absolutely fascinated. And I think it helps for all of us to be ready, because if this is happening right now, I don't know about you, but this is way sooner than I thought it was going to be. So let's get ready. Let's get educated and be ready for cryptocurrency because they're not actually doing cryptocurrency in a title company yet, but they are actually using crypto to pay off the seller.

[00:06:43] The buyer pays the seller directly. So that's already happening. That's a game changer. Okay. So that's our podcast about cryptocurrency and home buying. If you've got any questions, if you need some help with your real estate, I'm around all weekend. My number is 541-301-7980 that's 541-301-7980.

[00:07:01] Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. Bye.