House vendor wants to be paid in bitcoin
An Auckland father of six is selling his family home in Auckland, with all proceeds to be paid in bitcoin.
Altar Peni said he and his wife had spent months putting plans in place to sell their three-bedroom, one-bathroom home in Mā ngere in such a way that would allow them to immediately convert their equity into cryptocurrency.
He said the buyer could pay for the house in cash, cash and bitcoin, or fully in bitcoin. But ultimately all proceeds will be transacted to the sellers in bitcoin. ‘‘There is a real piece of real estate you can actually get with your bitcoin,’’ Peni said.
The couple ran a candyfloss business that suffered from event cancellations during the pandemic and resulted in a loss of income, he said. He began looking at other ways to create income for his family and started researching bitcoin.
‘‘I looked at it deeply and did a course online.’’
Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency, or cryptocurrency, that can be transferred instantly from peer to peer without needing a bank.
He believed cryptocurrency would be like the internet, where only a few people used it at first and then down the track it would be something people could not live without. ‘‘I guess it is the future of money.’’
Peni and his wife bought the house in 2014 for $378,000, he said. The property has a capital value of $810,000.
The family had been living in the 110-square-metre home but recently moved in with Peni’s in-laws to help them out, he said. The family home was rented out but the mortgage still needed topping up, so they decided to sell, he said. Investing in bitcoin was ‘‘a long-term savings mechanism’’, he said. ‘‘It is basically just to provide for our family long term.’’
Bitcoin would rise in value for those prepared to ‘‘stomach the volatility’’ and hold long term, he said.
A recent crypto sell-off has seen the value of bitcoin plummet 57% in the past six months to be worth $32,336.
Peni had been working on the details of the sale for several months, planning with real estate agents and lawyers how the sale and transaction would play out.
Agent Tom Rawson, from Ray White, said when the house went to auction, there would be a ticker showing what the bidding was worth in bitcoin.
Software had been developed to facilitate the bitcoin auction, he said.
‘‘We are going to run an auction where we will have a live bitcoin-to-New-Zealanddollar figure running,’’ Rawson said.
‘‘At the fall of the hammer, we will agree on the bitcoin amount, providing it is a bitcoin buyer.’’
Even if someone who did not have bitcoin bought the property, the proceeds of the sale would be put through an exchange and paid to the family in bitcoin, he said.
‘‘Regardless of if a normal person buys it or a bitcoin person buys it, the family want to end up with cryptocurrency.’’
He said he had never seen a house sold using a bitcoin transaction. Rawson said he expected the house to sell for around its CV.
With cryptocurrencies having recently fallen in value, there might be fewer people wanting to sell their bitcoin but, on the other hand, Peni would be able to get more bitcoin for his home than he would have when it was sitting at record highs last year, he said.
The agents were happy to be paid commission in either cash or bitcoin, Peni said.
The auction was set down for July 19 but could be brought forward if a pre-auction offer was made, he said.