In Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, it is already common for real estate companies to accept payments for the purchase or rental of homes in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Haus, a proptech company with operations in Mexico and Colombia, like many others in Latin America, announced Wednesday that it will accept BTC (quotation Bitcoin) for the purchase of homes or real estate development and investment projects.
The company said this is the first fully integrated digital process for buying a home in Latin America. For transactions, users will be able to use the Lightning Network and the OpenNode cryptocurrency payment processor.
While buying / selling real estate with BTC in Latin America is nothing new, as it has been happening since 2014, what is remarkable is the rapid growth that the cryptocurrency-driven real estate sector is experiencing this year.
More recently, real estate companies are starting to accept investments in BTC to finance housing projects.
An option for buyers without a bank
As La Haus explained, the first fully integrated digital process in Latin America with cryptocurrency will soon be inaugurated in Mexico. This will be a luxury condominium located in Playa del Carmen called Kahaal.
The company, originally created in Colombia, has expanded to Mexico where it is working on various real estate projects.
"Bitcoin has had a special adoption in Latin America for its convenience and safety in making transactions and investments, and allows for clear problems to be attacked in the region: inflation and the high percentage of people neglected by banks or non-banks" , La Haus president and co-founder Rodrigo Sánchez-Ríos said in a statement.
"As we expand, alternatives like Bitcoin help us overcome some of the obstacles to buying new homes with local currencies," hadded.
The company plans to allow this payment option for all of its properties exceeding 80.000 units soon. The goal is to further increase the annual sales volume, which amounts to $ 1 billion in transactions this year.
Another company betting on the sale of real estate in BTC is the Argentine e-commerce MercadoLibre, present throughout the region. The company opened a real estate section on its digital platform for buying and selling homes and other properties with Bitcoin last April.
Real estate companies are already one step ahead
In Argentina, BTC helped mitigate the dollar shortage generated by the government's exchange controls applied this year to try to contain permanent increases in the US currency.
Real estate companies have seen cryptocurrencies as a way out of the currency crisis and are offering this new option to buyers and investors. The initiative meant that home and office sales no longer declined in the South American country.
“For me, (Bitcoin) is another means of payment, as you can pay in cash or by bank transfer. It is a mechanism that facilitates and allows a new way of moving money " Gabriel Brodsky, CEO of Predial, one of the largest real estate companies in the country, told local media iproup.com
