Crypto Creating Opportunities in Real Estate

Millennials have been making waves in the pandemic-driven housing market, largely due to their willingness to participate in bidding wars in the pursuit of their dream homes.

It should not be any leap of the imagination to understand that cryptocurrency does (and will) have a hand in real estate transactions of the present and the future. According to an article in Seeking Alpha, “A Redfin survey in Q4 indicated that one in nine first-time homebuyers (11.6%) surveyed said selling cryptocurrency had helped them save for a down payment.”

As noted in that article, surging home prices are forcing larger down payments. As a result, some homebuyers are using non-traditional means to cover those additional costs and be competitive with other bidders.

This means that crypto is having a big impact in financing first-time real estate transactions and making home ownership less onerous for millenials.

In fact, according to Yahoo! Finance, “Cryptocurrency is making its way into real estate, the latest sign of digital coins’ incremental use in everyday transactions outside of market trading.”

Yahoo! cited the owner of real estate brokerage SERHANT, who said he believes people have developed such wealth in crypto that they can put down between 50%to 70% of the purchasing price of a home.

Ryan Serhant – CEO and founder of the real estate brokerage told Yahoo! that while it is still early in the crypto space, he predicts that within the next five years, around 50% of real estate transactions in the U.S. will be done in some capacity with cryptocurrency.

He notes that there are current barriers to crypto’s more widespread adoption, like the volatility and the inability for financial institutions to “hold it on their books.” Currently, a barrier to more adoption is crypto’s volatility, and the inability of financial institutions to “hold it on their books.” Yet Serhant hypothesizes that there will eventually be direct wallet-to-wallet transactions, or the instantaneous transfer of crypto from buyer to seller.

A latest CNBC Millionaire Survey in December indicates that 83% of millennial millionaires own cryptocurrencies and plan to buy more during the next year; >50% of that investor base has half of their holdings in crypto while nearly a third have at least 75% of their total investments in blockchain-based assets.

It is also worth noting information discovered in the most recent  CNBC Millionaire Survey conducted in December. Respondents indicate that 83% of millennial millionaires own cryptocurrencies and plan to purchase more in 2022. More than 50% of those investors have half of their holdings in crypto. And nearly one-third have at least 75% of their total investments in blockchain-based assets.

Real estate is yet another area where cryptocurrency is gaining a foothold and facilitating transactions.