Would you buy a house?

[caveden]

In Brazil, student houses are called "republics".

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[Anonymous]

I dont think it would work because you still need to pay rates to some local government. It would be better if bitcoin community bought a barren rock in international waters somewhere.

Wasnt the pirate bay wanting to launch its own satellite to host its website on? Bitcoin could do the same thing eventually and then mine in space...the first currency produced in orbit.

 

[bober182]

That would cause quite the media stir.

[nelisky]

So this topic was dropped a long time ago, but I still have the house for sale and what were 500k coins are now ~40k. So the question once again applies; would you buy a house for bitcoins?

[Anonymous]

My bid still stands

[nelisky]

My bid still stands

And it looks more interesting every day!

[toffoo]

So I have a house on the market... it's in southern Brazil, near Joinville, about 500 Km south of São Paulo. <...snip>

I'm glad you asked this, because I just got a similar idea the other day and started wondering if it was a crazy idea or not.

I have a condo in Argentina I just recently put up for sale.  The idea also occurred to me to accept Bitcoins.  It seemed like an interesting idea on multiple levels.  I'm pretty bullish about the prospects of Bitcoins for the foreseeable future and this would be quick, liquid, and easy way for me to allocate a meaningful percentage of my net worth to the currency of the future.  It would certainly be faster/easier than buying a few 1000's at a time on Mt.Gox every day.

Given the recent run-up in $/BTC prices, I figured that there must be some ol' skool Bitcoin programmers or miners who are sitting on a digital goldmine right now and may be interested in turning their Bitcoin riches into something more concrete without denting the market.

Of course the other benefit of selling a condo for Bitcoins is that in South America in general, and Argentina in particular, you need to pull all sorts of shenanigans to transfer a condo's worth of cash out of the country, and pay exorbitant fees at every step along the way.  If my buyer paid with Bitcoin we could exchange hundreds of thousands of BTC's across national borders at the touch of a button, just as easily as sending 1 BTC.

I inquired a few days ago in the #bitcoin-otc IRC channel if anybody had heard of a particularly large/valuable concrete object being bought or sold for Bitcoins.  The biggest we came up with was probably a used car.

Anyway, it's a bit of a long shot, especially since Bitcoin hasn't really caught on in Brazil or Argentina in any meaningful way yet, but at the very least I figured it would be some good publicity for Bitcoin and generate some free advertising for my "FOR SALE" listing.

That part of southern Brazil is pretty nice and your house sounds pretty snappy, but if a luxury condo in downtown Buenos Aires is more your style (and you're sitting on a mountain of Bitcoins), inquire within!   

[nelisky]

We are the bitcoin realestate pioneers! Though I must tell you, even though we're only two, it seems the demand is still several orders of magnitude lower than the offer.

[ctoon6]

I just want to add a piece of information to this thread, although not about buy THIS house. Until we get more people to start selling smaller goods like computers, food, furniture and stuff, BTC will only ever be like gold, useless and hard to convert. We need to live in the BTC like we do USD or Euro. This is because even though a large mass of coins are being moved, you need smaller transactions for them to be useful in everyday life for normal people.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Actually no. Gold has utility in large transactions involving land, property and loan backings.

BTC should be good for real estate and may well get a start there. Would be interesting to see the legal contract drawn up for the sale agreement though.

[ctoon6]

Actually no. Gold has utility in large transactions involving land, property and loan backings.

BTC should be good for real estate and may well get a start there. Would be interesting to see the legal contract drawn up for the sale agreement though.

Im not saying that houses should not be bought with BTC, im just saying, its more of a chore to force the use of USD to BTC, until jobs pay in BTC it won't replace USD or other currency, if that's what your going for, and I hope.

[bearbones]

In the meanwhile, the market will build up to meet the goals we set.  The fact that everyone here is so interested make the economy that much more competitive.  If all of these motivated parties keep supporting the price, it will reach economies of scale where we can leave our day jobs.  It seems that these two pioneers have found a potential use to for bitcoins.  I wish I had the coin to purchase a house in Brazil.

[cuddlefish]

Does satoshi,knightmb or artforz need a house? 

Considering how private an individual Satoshi seems to be, I wonder what the odds are that he is another 12 year old hacker genius like DVD Jon; and his father won't let him interact too deeply with the crazy American crypto-geeks without parental oversight.

Of course, by now he would probably be 14.

Hey, don't get down on 14-year-olds.

[mintymark]

Its an intresting idea, but it must be clear to anyone that the number of people who have this number of bitcoins in their wallet right now is tiny, and that it would cause major market fluctuations if somebody tried to buy this number of bitcoins even over a 6 month period.

So I do not think this will fly as it is.

But there are other possibilities.

Have you considered a combined purchase lease scheme?

This is what you would do. You agree a time period and a montly rental in bitcoins for the property. You meet the buyer or otherwise satisfy yourselves that you trust each other. Always to some extent useful with these transactions. The "rent" is 2 or 3 times the market rent but it depends on many factors and may be fixed or variable. You sign a deed of sale for a low price dated in the future, it could be for 1/10 the value of the house or for a completely trivial amount. Its a legally binding promise to sell the house in the future provided certain conditions have been met. One of the conditions is that the rent has been paid. There is also a clause where f the rent is withheld, for a significant period of time, the house reverts back to you. If this happens you have rented the house out for a period at 2 or 3 times the going rent, and the deed is invalid.

You get a regular bitcoin income, a proper value (in bitcoins) for your house, and it is attractive bacuse the purchaser does not have to get a mortgage, you are offering them that as part of the service. If they default you should be able to get the hose back since you have documents already signed for that eventuality. There will be little to do in terms of looking after the house while they rent it from you because the people who are buying/renting do know that if they trash the place it is their own investment that they trash, so they will not do that.

I should say that I am not a lawyer, and mileage in your jurisdiction can in any case vary, but this strikes me as a very good way to purchase a house and if set up sensibly can protect both parties, which is vital in a transaction like this.

Lastly I would say that in any contract in most countries there needs to be what is known as a consideration for the contract to be valid. In other words, you cannot just give the house away, or at least if you do the other party can claim that the contract is not valid. Not your intention I know, but if there was a court case, the court might say that a bit coin transaction was not a valid consideration. So always include a bit of cash somewhere along the line I would say. Does not have to be much, but it could offer you some extra protection if it went wrong.

I think this would be an interesting experiment and you should consider widely other models of which there are many. But bear in mind that its never going to be the case that somebody comes and hands you any substantial part of the value of a house, as if they were purchasing a pound of coffee, most people do not even have that money in there pockets!! You want to interest as many people as possible in your purchase, so you will need to consider other models.

You might also consider more complex things. The above was pretty grounded, but now I am letting my imagination run wild, so here goes. Supposing you did this, and then you said well actually what I want is a lump sum, not an income. You sell shares in the whole venture (after the sale) splitting it up into smaller chunks. Like a mining contract, the deal is that Mr X can buy from you say for 500 bitcoins paid now, an income over the next 10 years of whatever your lease-rental scheme brings in proportion.  Mr X takes the risk that the thing may fail in some absurd way, but it shoulnot as you set the thing up quite carefully didnt you? Certainly you cannot take this risk as you could not continue to pay if the purchaser stopped paying although you might promise Mr X some of his money back. Now their are many many people could afford this share, so you could still get your purchase price for the house! I cannot buy a house right now, alas I have already spent all my money on houses in parts of the world where the property market is not too good right now, but I would truly love to be involved in such a scheme, and if you wanted I will help calculate what fair payments should be. You might prefer to have a professional do that for you, but on the other hand this is so very far away from what most of them do that I think they could not help much.

Let us know your thoughts.

[bitdragon]

Any pics of the house and surroundings?

[nelisky]

Any pics of the house and surroundings?

which of them? I never posted pics of the one in Brazl because I'm a paranoid person, but I can select a few photos to put up *if* there is real interest.

[nelisky]

@mintymark

I would certainly be open to any kind of deal, and the "lease to buy" thing seems pretty cool.

[lathomas64]

I hope some people end up actually selling real estate for bitcoin. Once housing and food are available for bitcoin it can be pretty well entrenched.

[Indamuck]

I don't have 500 kbc, but I'm in for 1,500 bc.  However, you don't seem very serious about selling this house.

Well, for 1.5K no, I'm not serious at all It's not an auction because I will not sell for less than what I paid for, which is what I advertised. I am dead serious about selling it, though, as it is on the market already.

I do not know if I will sell it for bitcoins, because right now it is very hard to convert them to cash even for small amounts, and I will need the cash. I could be persuaded to do part bitcoins though, and even all bitcoins if the market trend continues in the upward direction, but you are right, this is just a discussion starter, not (yet) an actual proposal.

You may be in a rude awakening when you have to sell for a price cheaper than you bought it for.  Many boomers in USA bought huge houses and the younger generation doesn't have the money to purchase them at their request prices.  Market forces dictate they have to lower the price if they want to sell their house.  IF your house is sitting on the market for too long it means your price is too high.

[jvdp]

I don't have 500 kbc, but I'm in for 1,500 bc.  However, you don't seem very serious about selling this house.

Well, for 1.5K no, I'm not serious at all It's not an auction because I will not sell for less than what I paid for, which is what I advertised. I am dead serious about selling it, though, as it is on the market already.

I do not know if I will sell it for bitcoins, because right now it is very hard to convert them to cash even for small amounts, and I will need the cash. I could be persuaded to do part bitcoins though, and even all bitcoins if the market trend continues in the upward direction, but you are right, this is just a discussion starter, not (yet) an actual proposal.

You may be in a rude awakening when you have to sell for a price cheaper than you bought it for.  Many boomers in USA bought huge houses and the younger generation doesn't have the money to purchase them at their request prices.  Market forces dictate they have to lower the price if they want to sell their house.  IF your house is sitting on the market for too long it means your price is too high.

I am not sure whether you are out of mind you digging all the threads everyday! I didn't notice what is the opening date of the spread it is around 2010 it is almost from starting a day of Bitcoin to now.
hope you can understand what is the difference from that day to now and how Bitcoin emerged in the society as a payment mode.