Bitcoin is being used more often for a wider variety of purchases, now including real estate as a commercial New York property is being put up for sale for digital assets, Yahoo reported Monday (Nov. 15).
The property is being sold by Magnum Real Estate Group, which the report says is selling three retail condos with a fully rented-out retail bottom floor. The price is $29 million, and the company will only take bitcoin for it.
“There’s a demand for real estate and there’s nothing being offered to the holders of crypto,” Ben Shaoul, managing partner of Magnum Real Estate Group, told Yahoo Finance.
He said the idea is to offer a unique new way to buy things, allowing crypto holders and people who sell real estate to come together.
Shaoul has presided over crypto transactions before. In 2018, he did three residential deals, with one being an Upper East Side retail condo that sold for $15.3 million in bitcoin.
He said that there’s likely to be more crypto deals going forward in the future, saying that investors have done well owning bitcoin and are now looking to boost cash flow.
Shaoul added that real estate allows the ability to make a big investment with cash flow, so as value compounds, these investors can potentially make plans to sell later to another crypto user.
Real estate transactions in crypto aren’t a new thing to payment processor BitPay, who is handling the Magnum transaction. BitPay has handled several crypto real estate transactions in the last few years for international buyers, including ski homes in the Western U.S. and properties in New York.
In related news, real estate platform Pacaso announced in late October that it would accept cryptocurrency as a payment option, also using BitPay.
Read more: Pacaso Accepting Crypto for Second-Home Purchases
PYMNTS writes that Pacaso customers will be able to buy their second homes through numerous cryptos, including bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, bitcoin cash, dogecoin and more.