If you’re in the realty business or in the market to buy and sell a house, chances are you’ve been too busy to keep up with all of the latest financial news of the day. If that’s the case, you might have missed all of the information concerning Bitcoin, a form of digital currency that has undergone a significant rise in value to the surprise of much of Wall Street. You might not think that has any connection to a house up for sale, but it’s conceivable that, in the very near future, it might.
The lure of Bitcoin for many people is that it allows them to make payments to and receive payments from individuals and business who also deal in the digital coins. When they do this, they can bypass the institutions like banks and credit card companies that usually get involved. Bitcoin is decentralized, which scares a lot of people, but the benefit for bypassing the bureaucracy is a lack of fees, less time for payments to process, and transparency at every level of the transaction. All of those factors would seem to fit nicely for those looking to streamline the somewhat labyrinthine process of buying and selling a home.
If you are looking to buy a home the old-fashioned way, monitoring your credit score is a fine way to prepare you to do it. But, if you’re interested in what realty could look like in the near future, learning about Bitcoin and what it can and can’t do isn’t the worst idea.
Peer to Peer
The so-called peer-to-peer system that Bitcoin uses could come in handy for those wishing to avoid dealing with mortgage companies. Conceivably, a buyer could find a seller and, if they both have a digital wallet with Bitcoin capabilities, the buyer could simply transfer the requested amount of coins over and that would be that. No mortgage company, no checking credit scores, a simple transaction that takes place in a snap.
Mortgage Future
Of course, most people, even those who have access to Bitcoin, don’t have the cash to buy a house outright and need to find a way to do so via a payment schedule. Conceivably, the two parties involved could set up their own mortgage agreement and then, via the same blockchain technology that fuels Bitcoin, enact a smart contract that would automatically deduct funds from the buyer and send it to the seller at the predetermined intervals. Again, no overarching company would be needed.
Still A Ways Off
Right now, a person could conceivably sell a house expecting Bitcoin as payment, but it would severely narrow the list of potential buyers since a very small percentage of the population has any amount of Bitcoin. And the smart contract mortgage idea is still just that, an idea.
Bitcoin represents the interesting potential for the realty industry, one that could spend much of what we know about it. Whether or not that potential is realized is the lingering question.
