Latin American Countries Accept Payments for Houses in Bitcoin

Latin American Countries Accept Payments for Houses in Bitcoin

• There are already several countries in the region that have launched this form of payment whose growth is remarkable.
• Analysts expect this fledgling market to grow exponentially soon.
• “Its convenience and security to make transactions and investments”, has positioned BTC as the preferred payment option in crypto.

In Colombia, México, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panamá, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, it is already common for real estate companies to accept payments for the purchase or rental of homes in Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.

La Haus, a proptech company with operations in Mexico and Colombia, like many others in Latin America, announced on Wednesday that it will accept BTC for the purchase of homes or real estate development and investment projects.

The company said that this is the first fully integrated digital process to buy a home in Latin America. For transactions, users will be able to use the Lightning network and the OpenNode cryptocurrency payment processor.

Although the purchase/sale of real estate with BTC in Latin America is not new, since it has been happening since 2014, what is remarkable is the rapid growth that the crypto-driven real estate sector is experiencing this year.

More recently, real estate companies are beginning to accept investment in BTC to finance housing projects.

An Option for Unbanked Buyers

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, 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 security to make transactions and investments, and allows to attack clear problems in the region: inflation and the high percentage of people neglected by banks or unbanked," said the President and co-founder of La Haus, Rodrigo Sánchez-Ríos in a statement.

"As we expand, alternatives like Bitcoin help us overcome some of the obstacles to buying new homes with local currencies," he added.

The company plans to allow this payment option for all its properties that exceed 80,000 units soon. The goal is to further increase annual sales volume, which this year amounts to $1 billion in transactions.

Another company that is betting on real estate sales in BTC is the Argentine e-commerce MercadoLibre (NASDAQ:MELI), with a presence throughout the region. The company opened a real estate section last April on its digital platform for buying and selling homes and other properties with Bitcoin.

In Argentina, BTC helped mitigate the dollar shortage generated by the exchange control applied this year by the government to try to contain permanent increases in the US currency.

Real estate companies saw cryptocurrencies as a way out of the currency crisis and are offering this new option to buyers and investors. The initiative ensured that the sales of houses and offices did not fall more in the South American country.

"For me, (Bitcoin) is another means of payment, as one can pay in cash or by bank transfer. It is a mechanism that facilitates and enables a new way to move money," said Gabriel Brodsky, CEO of Predial, one of the largest real estate companies in the country, to the local media iproup.com

On The Flipside

• Cryptocurrencies are expected to spark a real revolution in the future of real estate transactions in the near future.
• Digital money is opening up immense possibilities to the real estate market, since it offers investors an agile and safe way to protect their assets from the current global inflationary crisis.

Why You Should Care?

• Although the crypto-driven real estate market is still incipient, analysts say it will soon see exponential growth.
• The simplicity and speed of operations with cryptocurrencies without financial intermediaries will help further push the growth of the sector.

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