A retail condo in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York has recently been sold for $15.3 million in Bitcoin. The 11,400-square-foot living space was previously owned by the landlord’s firm Magnum Real Estate Group. The property is being sold to the Taiwanese entity Affluent Silver International LLC.
The transaction occurred through the use of Bitpay and Starr. Real Estate broker Eric Hedvat, representative for Magnum, characterized the transaction as a “seamless process”.
In August last year, a luxury condominium complex in Orlando, Florida, partnered with BitPay to provide bitcoin payment processing for real estate transactions, including offering bitcoin as payment for the sale of 878 resort-style condo residences. It's not known how many residences were sold for Bitcoin.
Sonny Singh, BitPay’s chief commercial officer, stated that in the first half of 2019:
Bitpay has already processed over $5 million in real estate transactions, and is in in line to double its real estate business year after year.
In 2018, the company processed $2.7 million in direct real estate transactions with “around twice as much via escrow companies and law firms acting as escrows.”
Agents for luxury properties such as the 10 East 76th Street on the Upper East Side, and a mansion marketed by Sotheby at $40 million, have advised buyers that they will accept Bitcoin, Ripple or Ethereum as payment. Given the international market for buyers of such premium properties, the advantages of near instant settlement and very low fees are certainly attractive. Whether this remains popular as FATF's AML Tranche II requirements come into effect, bringing Real Estate agents into the AML reporting frameworks, will be seen.