Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Legal => Topic started by: Baitty on August 10, 2014, 01:22:25 AM



Title: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: Baitty on August 10, 2014, 01:22:25 AM
What's the best way to go about buying real estate with Bitcoin, of course there is no law firms accepting Bitcoin as far as I know which would be a problem if anyone wanted to solely purchase with Bitcoin.

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: libivan on August 10, 2014, 02:57:52 AM
As long as the parties agree with the terms, deal closed, I don't see great difficulties.

Since BTC is not treated as a currency by the legislation, I believe the deal will take the form of a barter agreement.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: MakeBelieve on August 10, 2014, 12:59:57 PM
Just go about it the usual way you would it might be difficult getting a lawyer to accept Bitcoin but I can see it being done if you approach the right open minded person they should know that Bitcoin is legit because they know the law.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: BitCoinNutJob on August 10, 2014, 02:05:18 PM

Considering the same thing, downsides being:

1.) Still have to pay CGT

2.) Negotiations will be hindered if sellers dont understand BTC

3.) Choice limited

Not sure anything much is gained at this point, need more services.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: professorXY on August 10, 2014, 05:59:25 PM
I would also like to know the answer to this question. Does anyone have experience buying a property using Bitcoin?


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: Mobius on August 10, 2014, 06:06:15 PM
Use Bitpay. There was a recent transaction involving a piece of land in Lake Tahoe that was purchased with bitcoin that was processed with Bitpay. I think there were a couple others as well that were processed in a similar fashion.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: keithers on August 10, 2014, 10:09:02 PM
What's the best way to go about buying real estate with Bitcoin, of course there is no law firms accepting Bitcoin as far as I know which would be a problem if anyone wanted to solely purchase with Bitcoin.

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

I can help answer some of your questions, I have been in real estate finance for over a decade.   Are you looking to purchase a home for BTC, straight up?  Or were you thinking about using BTC as a down payment and obtaining a loan for the remaining principle balance?


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: zedicus on August 15, 2014, 12:35:53 AM
There was an article in the WSJ (among other places) that highlighted a sale of property in Lake Tahoe for $1.6 million that was paid for in bitcoin. I believe that the seller had used bitpay that gave the buyer 15 minutes to pay for the invoice once all the paperwork was finalized  so the seller could receive the proceeds in fiat.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: Game Sir on August 29, 2014, 08:12:10 AM
First,you can find a boss of estate who loves bitcoins and then you can buy estate with bitcoins from him.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: wasserman99 on August 29, 2014, 08:54:24 AM
Being that bitcoin is still a very new currency You will be at a somewhat disadvantage if you try to buy a house with bitcoin. The reason for this is because it will add complexity and expense to the transaction on the seller's side.

The seller would more likely then not want to convert the bitcoin to fiat (he will have to if he needs to pay off a mortgage on the subject property). I think most real estate transactions have used bitpay to handle the BTC to USD conversion for the seller.

The easiest way to use bitcoin to buy real estate would be to simply convert your bitcoin to fiat and use that fiat to buy a house.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: barney_stinson on August 31, 2014, 01:06:21 PM
Does anyone know a website where it is represented real estate which is sold using Bitcoin?


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: BitCoinNutJob on August 31, 2014, 01:09:26 PM
Does anyone know a website where it is represented real estate which is sold using Bitcoin?

I made this thread a while ago might be some helpful tips in here but not sure on sites just yet.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=628403.0


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: SHA255 on September 01, 2014, 09:23:04 PM
Does anyone know a website where it is represented real estate which is sold using Bitcoin?
AFAIK there are none as of now. You could easily make an offer on a house being sold for fiat and make one condition that you can pay in bitcoin.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: keithers on September 01, 2014, 09:30:04 PM
This is going to primarily depend on if you are trying to purchase the home all cash (all BTC), or if you are trying to obtain a loan (using BTC as the down payment), and financing the rest of the home.

I have been in the mortgage banking business for over a decade, and as far as I know, no major investor is allowing BTC as a form of liquid assets.


The easiest way to do this, would be to sell BTC and then purchase the home all cash.   This will be a logistical nightmare with taxes, but it would be the easiest way to get it done...


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: needFREElunch on September 02, 2014, 02:25:46 AM
This is going to primarily depend on if you are trying to purchase the home all cash (all BTC), or if you are trying to obtain a loan (using BTC as the down payment), and financing the rest of the home.

I have been in the mortgage banking business for over a decade, and as far as I know, no major investor is allowing BTC as a form of liquid assets.


The easiest way to do this, would be to sell BTC and then purchase the home all cash.   This will be a logistical nightmare with taxes, but it would be the easiest way to get it done...
I would think, in theory a bank could allow the down payment to be paid for in bitcoin, if the purchase contract specified that part of the purchase price was payable in terms of bitcoin (for example 200 BTC instead of $100,000 worth of bitcoin). 


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: keithers on September 02, 2014, 07:55:47 AM
This is going to primarily depend on if you are trying to purchase the home all cash (all BTC), or if you are trying to obtain a loan (using BTC as the down payment), and financing the rest of the home.

I have been in the mortgage banking business for over a decade, and as far as I know, no major investor is allowing BTC as a form of liquid assets.


The easiest way to do this, would be to sell BTC and then purchase the home all cash.   This will be a logistical nightmare with taxes, but it would be the easiest way to get it done...
I would think, in theory a bank could allow the down payment to be paid for in bitcoin, if the purchase contract specified that part of the purchase price was payable in terms of bitcoin (for example 200 BTC instead of $100,000 worth of bitcoin). 

All down payment funds have to be sourced and verified with any deposits greater than 10% of your monthly income being documented with copies of checks. Because this cant be done with BTC, you wouldnt be able to use it as down payment funds. You would have to

1) sell the bitcoins
2) deposit the funds into the bank
3) season those funds for 2 months

After those 3 steps, you could use the funds for a down payment if you are trying to obtain a loan.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: dankkk on September 03, 2014, 01:35:00 AM
This is going to primarily depend on if you are trying to purchase the home all cash (all BTC), or if you are trying to obtain a loan (using BTC as the down payment), and financing the rest of the home.

I have been in the mortgage banking business for over a decade, and as far as I know, no major investor is allowing BTC as a form of liquid assets.


The easiest way to do this, would be to sell BTC and then purchase the home all cash.   This will be a logistical nightmare with taxes, but it would be the easiest way to get it done...
I would think, in theory a bank could allow the down payment to be paid for in bitcoin, if the purchase contract specified that part of the purchase price was payable in terms of bitcoin (for example 200 BTC instead of $100,000 worth of bitcoin). 

All down payment funds have to be sourced and verified with any deposits greater than 10% of your monthly income being documented with copies of checks. Because this cant be done with BTC, you wouldnt be able to use it as down payment funds. You would have to

1) sell the bitcoins
2) deposit the funds into the bank
3) season those funds for 2 months

After those 3 steps, you could use the funds for a down payment if you are trying to obtain a loan.
If you have enough other assets (like stocks, bonds, real estate with a lot of equity in terms of LTV and total dollar amount, fiat money in the bank) then an exception could be made to this rule.

Another option would be to go to a lender that is willing to take on more risk, you would obviously pay a lot more in interest, but would achieve your goal.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: hayabusa911 on September 10, 2014, 07:56:55 PM
Try craigslist. I have seen real estate for sale for bitcoins so the seller is expecting BTC.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: toleng on September 12, 2014, 03:54:13 AM
Try craigslist. I have seen real estate for sale for bitcoins so the seller is expecting BTC.
There are very few people who list their homes on craigslist. The people that do this are mainly people listing their home for sale by owner, which is a small minority of home listings.

IMO it is a much better idea to simply sell your bitcoin on an exchange and use the proceeds to pay cash fiat for a house.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: keithers on September 13, 2014, 03:12:26 AM
The shadiest way to do it would be to pay the person the BTC and have the seller gift of equity the home to you,  but that is a humongous red flag and highly not recommeded. You will probably make the 8oclock news for tax evasion.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: zorke on September 13, 2014, 03:47:39 PM
The shadiest way to do it would be to pay the person the BTC and have the seller gift of equity the home to you,  but that is a humongous red flag and highly not recommeded. You will probably make the 8oclock news for tax evasion.
This would be a horrible idea. You would literally be needing to trust what would be a complete stranger with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin with the hope that they will deed the house over to you. Even if they did follow through, this transaction would likely not involve any kind of title insurance so if there is an issue with the title you would not find out until someone claims to have an interest in the property


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: dankkk on September 13, 2014, 10:49:27 PM
The shadiest way to do it would be to pay the person the BTC and have the seller gift of equity the home to you,  but that is a humongous red flag and highly not recommeded. You will probably make the 8oclock news for tax evasion.
This would actually avoid very little in taxes. All this would generally avoid would be the taxes associated with the gain on the value of the property however there are many ways to avoid this tax and would only benefit the seller so the buyer would have no reason to send their bitcoin to the seller first.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: dKingston on September 14, 2014, 06:59:47 PM
Just go about buying real estate with Btc and there shouldn't
be problems, if you choose the right open minded person that
knows that Btc is legit for law.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: tspacepilot on September 14, 2014, 07:06:32 PM
You know I've seen some ads around here for luxury homes that were being sold for BTC.  I was really surprised and it kinda looked like a scam site so I didn't look into it too far.  Nevertheless, if you can turn that up, you may be able to contact those folks with some of your questions.


Title: Re: How to buy real estate with Bitcoin?
Post by: markwebster on October 22, 2014, 01:31:49 PM
I hope to solve that question. There will be a section on the company website countoncrypto.com whereby there will be luxury cars, yachts and private jets being listed there shortly .
We are looking at listing people's property and real estate on there from next year. I!have already had some other members message me about buying property with bitcoin etc.

It certainly is a really good question though.