The hype around Bitcoin is growing every day, as the chatter about cryptocurrency is everywhere. With more businesses accepting crypto as a method of payment, it is hard for people not to talk about Bitcoin.

Despite the large swings and growing speculation of Bitcoin, the digital currency has continued to fascinate new industries, businesses, and investors. And now the real estate market is slowly beginning its journey into this wonderland.

Today, you can actually buy your dream house with Bitcoin, and the process is not as complicated as you may think. In fact, all you need to do is agree with the seller on exchanging the coin for the property, and that’s it, you got your crib! Visit https://www.abitgreedy.com/bitcoin/  to learn more about Bitcoin.

But Volatility Is Becoming A Primary Concern

A major worry about using Bitcoin for huge transactions such as buying a house is that the trading price or valuation of Bitcoin keeps on changing. We have seen massive value fluctuation of up to 100 % in a month, which has left many investors wondering whether buying with Bitcoin is really an option.

For instance, if you were to buy a house using Bitcoin in December 2017 when the value of the coin was slightly above $10,000, in March 2017, the seller would have lost over 30% of the value considering that Bitcoin has dropped to a value below $7,000. And even though the currency is slowly picking itself up, many people are still reluctant to use Bitcoin on big-ticket items.

You know that saying that goes, “Better safe than sorry?” It is quite applicable today, especially when deciding on what to purchase with crypto. Nobody wants to feel sorry for themselves after losing. That’s why most people would rather avoid using Bitcoin for something like an expensive condo or car.

Doing The Deal

Volatility aside, how does buying a house with Bitcoin really work?

If you have some Bitcoins lying around and want to purchase a home, there are two major factors you might need to consider.

For starters, the seller must be willing to accept Bitcoin as a payment option for the property. You can search the net for property owners who have listed the currency as a payment method to find potential matches.

Secondly, you must be willing to sell your coins to a third party for a fiat currency just in case the seller does not accept Bitcoin outright. Here, your transaction will be treated like the traditional house purchase.

How About Selling Property?

Once the seller accepts your offer, the rest of the transaction works like the normal cash purchase. The only difference is that instead of using a bank account, you will be transferring Bitcoins to the property owner’s digital wallet. The whole process takes 15 minutes to 24 hours depending on how busy the network is.

Even though doing the transaction sounds pretty easy, the process still needs to involve traditional institutions like lawyers and insurance companies to facilitate the transfer of ownership from the seller to the buyer and to overwrite the sale.

But Can Lenders Finance A Home With Bitcoin?

Now, this is a bit tricky.

Lenders have a strong dislike of risks and Bitcoin being a speculative investment comes with loads of risks. With the value of this digital currency seesawing almost on a daily basis, there hasn’t been any major adoption of crypto in lending.

There have been exceptions though.

In January 2017, Seattle Times highlighted a story of a 23-year-old investor who used Bitcoin to purchase a three-bedroom house worth $415,000 outside of Seattle. The young property buyer used cryptocurrency to pay for the house’s 10% down payment and to obtain a mortgage from his lender.

To meet lender requirements and pay the property seller, the funds were converted to US Dollars. There were some challenges though – the Bitcoin investor had to provide documentation of his crypto assets, which was not an easy process. Additionally, all the parties that were involved in the transaction were skeptical about the process because they had not dealt with cryptocurrency in the past. However, the deal went through and was treated just like any other real estate transaction.

What Are The Risks?

So the Seattle deal went down successfully. There are other many real estate transactions that have been done in the past and have gone through just fine. However, we can’t ignore the fact that all cryptocurrency transactions are immutable.

This means that if there were something wrong with the transaction, maybe from a contractual perspective; the entire transaction cannot be reversed. Any coin that had been sent to the seller cannot be returned to the buyer’s wallet unless the seller willingly does so.

That’s not all. A criminal organization can pose as a property-selling agent, look for a ruined house, fix it up, and then sell it for Bitcoin. Once the coins have been transferred to the organization’s account, they could actually provide fake ownership documents, but in the real sense, the buyer is getting nothing.

Since this was a crypto transaction, even getting the authorities involved would not be helpful. But again, so far we haven’t heard this style of fraud in any crypto transactions. However, we cannot just sit back and assume that frauds will not figure out a way to get to it in the future.

We Know The Risks, So What’s The Catch?

Now that we have literally scared you with the cons of using Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a whole, would you still purchase that house with the COIN?

Of course, you should!

First and foremost, Bitcoin transactions are super fast. There is no bank to hold them for days. Sure, the process takes longer nowadays because it needs to get verification from Bitcoin miners, but it is still faster and quicker than the lengthy bank transfers.

Also, Bitcoin transactions are cheaper than banks as there are no extra fees charged. In fact, when the coin value grows, you can make huge profits with it.

What’s more, Bitcoin transactions are private, as accounts are not linked to any personal identification information. However, the anonymity is lost when converting the coin into a regular currency.

The Take-Away?

Yes, you can buy a home today with Bitcoin. The process may not be as straightforward as when using the normal fiat currency, but this doesn’t mean it is impossible. Thousands of people are doing it all over the globe. Why not you? As many people continue to adapt to crypto, purchasing a house with Bitcoin will get even easier. But just like any other online transaction, both buyers and sellers should familiarize themselves with the risks involved with Bitcoin.