One of the most lucrative things you can do when dipping your toes into real estate, is to study the next up and coming trend.
There are all sorts of trends that pop in real estate, but the trick is getting in at the beginning—NOT waiting until the trend has been squeezed for all it’s got.
I’ve spoken here before about the trends of tiny homes, town homes, etc. But today I’ve got a futuristic trend that’s about to take off.
Are you ready?
Real estate investing has long been a common tool for serious investors, at least those with the necessary capital to get into such a costly (yet profitable) arena.
But lately, we’ve seen a whole new kind of buyer entering the real estate investment scene with a whole new kind of payment: Bitcoin.
Before you get scared off by that word alone from reading more, allow me to put your fears at ease—there’s no need to have any pre-existing knowledge of Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general to get in on this.
However, it is important for us as informed investors to acknowledge the power of Bitcoin and the technology behind it, and the effect on real estate.
Buying any kind of property has long been accompanied by several stresses, be it problems with your real estate agent or the seller’s agent, or missing parts of the contract, or even one side not upholding the agreed-upon contract.
Whether it’s an informal oral agreement that doesn’t get carried through, or some fine print you missed in the contract, or even missing commissions for your agent, the whole real estate investing process would be far less painful without those concerns.
Which leads us to the solution to those problems, and the technology behind Bitcoin: blockchain.
Now you may have heard of blockchain before, and perhaps skimmed over it assuming it was just another article about cryptocurrency or something you’re equally disinterested in, but blockchain is a separate technology that’s being used far beyond the bounds of cryptocurrency.
Blockchain is now being used by NASA, the media industry, and even the U.S. government, to name a few.
While it originally entered the spotlight because of its cryptocurrency capabilities, people quickly discovered that the same contracts being used to move cryptocurrency could be applied to many other (even unlimited) industries.
Blockchain works by creating a digital contract that can’t be broken. In the context of cryptocurrency, you have a contract on the blockchain to exchange cash for Bitcoin, or Ethereum, or any other cryptocurrency.
You’re on one side of the contract with your cash and some anonymous person is on the other side with their cryptocurrency—your cash isn’t released to them until the cryptocurrency is safely in your account, and vice versa.
This means that no one can skip out on payment from either side, which as you can imagine, can be applied to many other situations.
We can even imagine that at some point in the future, traditional contracts and the lawyers who go along with them will be unnecessary.
In the world of real estate investing, contracts formed using blockchain technology would be far more efficient and completely ironclad—no surprises down the line, no one missing any payments, and no one getting ripped off (at least as far as the contract goes).
Blockchain allows for the cutting out of these unnecessary middlemen, of which real estate has many.
So, you save money on contract lawyers, have fewer headaches and “surprises,” and get things done much quicker. What’s not to like?
Although it’s still likely a matter of years before blockchain starts being used widely throughout the real estate industry, we’re already seeing more and more people buying properties using cryptocurrency, which will hopefully speed things along.
Miami, FL is leading the U.S. in Bitcoin-to-Bitcoin real estate deals, and one Miami-based real estate agent has predicted that in the next five years 25-30% of real estate sales will be done using cryptocurrency.
As always, I advise you to seriously consider adding real estate to your portfolio, and with new technologies emerging every day, who knows the kinds of profits you’ll be raking in!
