One of Southern California's largest independent escrow companies, Glen Oaks Escrow, has announced its first property refinancing with a Bitcoin-backed loan.
The company stated that this is the first time a refinancing has been completed using Bitcoin as collateral. In the July 28 announcement it added that it has previously facilitated a number of real estate transactions that used BTC as the form of payment.
Glen Oaks Escrow, which started accepting Bitcoin payments in 2018, views the transaction as proof that Bitcoin’s value proposition is becoming clearer to debtors and creditors. Company Chief Operating Officer Joe Curtis commented:
“Seeing a lender use cryptocurrency for a refinance shows us that this payment method is continuing to grow in how it's used and who it's used by.”
He added that seeing the lender rather than the home buyer using BTC in a real estate transaction “tells us that this technology has the potential to continue becoming more prominent, even if it is still considered new to our industry.”
In another crypto related real estate development, a Dogecoin aficionado from the U.S. state of Utah has offered a 10% discount on his property if the buyer pays in DOGE.
On July 27, a local TV station reported that the owner listed the $389,000 home for sale and will accept seven cryptocurrencies but prefers Dogecoin due to his belief the 10% discount would quickly be made up for by Dogecoin price appreciation. After applying the discount, the amount of DOGE required to make the purchase would be around 1.7 million tokens at current prices.
Way back in 2017, Cointelegraph reported on the first-ever BTC real estate transaction which occurred in Texas.
Related: 5 Cities That Let You Buy Real Estate with Bitcoin
These two new stories are the latest positive developments in the real estate sector. On July 23, Cointelegraph reported that an increasing number of real estate firms are accepting payments in cryptocurrency.
CEO and founder of The Crypto Realty Group, Piper Moretti, told Cointelegraph that many buyers purchasing real estate with digital assets are taking loans out against their cryptocurrency, so they can still benefit from holding coins while putting the value to work.
In May, it was reported that buyers could even use Dogecoin to make a property purchase in Portugal. FNTX Capital Suisse partnered with Portugal-based property developer 355 Developments to offer condos for crypto in the capital, Lisbon.