Crypto history was made in the United Kingdom as a home in Essex became the first UK home to be sold for Bitcoin.
2017 has been an exciting and historic year for cryptocurrency. We watched at Bitcoin went from roughly $1000 at the start of the year to breaking the $18,000 barrier earlier this month. Altcoins have been surging in value as well, and we’ve seen the launch of Bitcoin futures trading. Now another bit of crypto history has been made as a house in Essex has become the first home sold for Bitcoin in the UK.
Home Sweet Home
The home is part of a new development outside of Colchester and was originally priced at £375,000 or 82.55 bitcoins. Of course, the value of Bitcoin has moved up quite a bit since then.
The buyer and seller have negotiated a price that was locked in due to the volatility of the virtual currency. There’s no word on what the final price in Bitcoin is to be paid, but we do know that the buyer is a Bitcoin miner who made a great deal of money on the cryptocurrency by getting in on it early and is now looking to convert the digital cash into brick-and-mortar reality.
A New Reality for Bitcoin Real Estate?
The developer of the home, Go Homes, has come out and stated that it is selling a second home for Bitcoin in the newly developed Elmstead Green in Colchester. The second home is valued at £595,000.
The sale of the Essex home is a direct peer-to-peer payment with no deposit. The Land Registry has agreed to have the sale price for the home recorded in a cryptocurrency. The group sales director of Go Homes, Ed Casson, had the following to say:
This re-writes the rule book…And shows there is another way to sell property.
Globally this is the first time a domestic property has been sold for Bitcoin. It’s a bit of history in the making.
Selling homes for Bitcoin will become common in the next five years…And we are taking an opportunity to embrace this technology.
The house in Essex isn’t the first real estate property in the UK to be listed for Bitcoin. The sellers of a mansion in Notting Hill are looking for the Bitcoin equivalent of £17 million pounds.
As Bitcoin and other virtual currencies gain in popularity, the demand for being able to use them for real estate grows. One Realtor recently suggested that Miami would be the ideal situation for crypto real estate. For those looking to rent, a New York-based company called Managego has announced that it will add Bitcoin payment options to their online renting platform.
Do you think that buying real estate with cryptocurrency will become more common in the future? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Bitcoinist archives, and The Sun.