Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Getty
In late 2017, when bitcoin surged 1,000 percent in value to nearly $20,000 a coin, there was a flurry of excitement about how crypto might replace traditional down payments and mortgages. But the visions of crypto bros snapping up luxury condos in dogecoin didn’t exactly pan out. Developers were wary, most sellers dismissed crypto financing outright, and co-op boards hated it to the extent that many brokers thought it was better not to mention owning crypto at all. Landlords were even reluctant to consider renters whose assets were largely in crypto, even if those assets were substantial. The ensuing years of widespread speculation, meme coins, volatility, and the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX quelled any remaining enthusiasm.
In the past year or so, however, things have started shifting again thanks to bitcoin’s multitrillion-dollar market cap, the Trump administration’s support of the industry, and wild stock-market fluctuations. Crypto, despite its past volatility and a lingering aura of shadiness (and criminality), is increasingly accepted as part of the mainstream finance world, especially after the passage of the Genius Act and Clarity Act over the summer, which laid out the first federal regulations and rules for the industry (and which also happen to be very favorable to it). It helps, of course, that one bitcoin is now worth roughly $111,000. And those trying to sell real estate right now, struggling with a spotty, slumpy market since the post-pandemic boom, are eager to make a sale in any currency. A few months ago, Christie’s even launched an entire division dedicated to crypto buyers.
Despite these recent changes, it’s still an emerging field and one that is largely shunned in New York — brokers say that California and Miami are really the hotbeds of crypto transactions at the moment. We talked to a number of brokers and developers in the city and beyond about their experiences with crypto clients and deals.
Arielle Biscayart, agent with Coldwell Banker Realty, Southeast Florida and Miami Beach to West Palm Beach
“In the Miami area, there are a lot of people who have been here for less than two years and don’t have credit, don’t qualify for a mortgage, but may have savings in other currencies, such as crypto. So it’s a niche you can add that expands the range of potential buyers and the exposure. Now there are a growing number of title companies that deal with crypto clients and lenders who will issue short-term mortgages with crypto as collateral in Florida.
The hardest thing to deal with is less the crypto itself and more the personalities of people who own a lot of crypto. They tend to be younger, on the restless side, very hectic. A lot of them do YouTube videos on the side or are influencers. Many are self-employed and have a nomadic lifestyle with an unconventional schedule, which can make it a bit challenging when guiding them through a real-estate transaction and its deadlines.
I would say the market will stay more of a niche until there’s less speculation and the financial institutions really accept crypto payments. Right now, it’s often more marketing than anything else. It’s funny — I went to an open house a few weeks ago. I was talking to the agent about the renovation, and he says, ‘By the way, the seller is open to crypto transactions,’ and he’s rolling his eyes to the ceiling. The seller invests in crypto and wanted to market his house to crypto holders. And the broker is thinking, Like I’m going to find a crypto buyer for this property.”
Neyshia Go, agent with Sotheby’s International Realty, Los Angeles
“I had my first successful transaction using crypto in August. [Go represented the seller of 8230 West 4th Street, which closed for $4.92 million.] I was showing the property when the other agent brought up that the buyer would like to use crypto so they didn’t have to pay the capital-gains tax. The first thing my client said to me is ‘Am I going to end up with a bunch of bitcoin I’m going to have to sell?’ When I said, ‘No, it comes to you as cash,’ they said it was fine. Once you sit down and explain how it actually works, I think a seller understands green is green. If you get cash proceeds at the end and it’s legal, do you care?
I would say it probably is more common with bigger transactions. It depends on how open and savvy the seller is, and people who own in the $3 million to $5 million range, they all have some form of crypto. Your entry-level sellers probably have less experience looking at crypto as a legitimate asset.
The three crypto offers I’ve had, the majority of the buyers’ net worth is in cryptocurrency. We’re talking $20 million to $40 million on the ledger sheet. A few months ago, we were about to accept a deal at $17 million — thank goodness I was versed in it, because the buyer’s agents weren’t — but the buyer backed out. I think if you have a property that’s been on the market for a while and you get a decent offer and it’s a crypto transaction, the onus is on the brokers to make sure you can do it.
It’s simpler than it seems. Essentially, it’s just a different form of escrow. We work through an intermediary who converts it and sends it to the seller as cash. If you take crypto out and convert it to cash yourself, it’s a taxable event and you pay capital-gains tax. If you do it through an intermediary, they charge 1.5 to 2 percent. That’s a lot less than capital-gains tax. Although almost everyone has an issue with the 1.5 to 2 percent fee. I think that’s really ironic given that they’re saving 25 to 30 percent overall.”
Jacob Wood, associate real-estate broker with Coldwell Banker Warburg, New York
“In 2017, I was working with a buyer from Virginia who was looking to buy an investment condo in Manhattan for under $500,000. We focused on upper Manhattan since it had appreciated rapidly compared to the rest of the island and found a Harlem condo he liked. He had about $10,000 in bitcoin that he wanted to use — bitcoin had appreciated rapidly; it was the first big uptick — and he planned to get a mortgage. He wanted to get it from his bank, which was Chase. The bank’s reaction was ‘This is trash; this is digital. Not only will we not consider this, we won’t talk to you.’ He needed to liquidate his bitcoin — not to get the mortgage but for Chase to even talk to him.
He bought the condo, and over the next year, bitcoin contracted about 40 percent. We were feeling pretty good that we’d timed things correctly and got him into the Manhattan condo market. He rented it out for a good amount for a few years, but Harlem condos plateaued in 2017, and bitcoin has gone up about nine times since then. Eventually, he sold the condo for a bit of a loss.
I’ve worked with buyers since then who had bitcoin, but no one wanted to use it to purchase. It’s been my experience that people who own it are pretty evangelical about it and they’re looking to hang on to it. Co-op boards generally look on it favorably now, but you can’t use it to qualify — they don’t consider it a dollar-to-dollar match with other investments. If you have $100,000 in bitcoin, they’re not going to see it as the equivalent of having $100,000 in an equities account. If the board is younger (40s and 50s, as opposed to 70s and 80s) and the crypto is bitcoin instead of something even less stable, I’ll have the buyer include it. The board will likely see it as similar to a retirement account: It doesn’t necessarily help satisfy a post-closing liquidity requirement, but the board is happier with it being there than not. If I get the sense it’s a more old-school board, I won’t even have the buyer include it because it will raise more questions than answers.”
Milan Nikolic, agent with Corcoran, New York and Florida
“I’ve lived in Dubai and Miami, and I am also licensed in Florida. Both of those places are much more investor-friendly, and they’re very into coin. I remember when bitcoin was first a big thing in 2016 or 2017. Our office had a listing in Miami — it was in an Icon building in Biscayne Bay — where you could buy it for, like, ten bitcoin. It wasn’t even in dollars. In New York, there is not a lot of confidence in crypto. It’s not as investor-friendly, and there are a lot more finance people here than crypto people. People are wary, it’s uncharted territory, and there were scams that didn’t give it a good name.
I’m seeing an apartment in the Waldorf Astoria with a buyer from southeastern Europe who is looking for an investment unit. The country they’re from is developing rapidly, but it’s hard to get money out. They would be interested in buying it in bitcoin, so we’ll see if that’s possible, but I think we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. They are also interested in One Manhattan Square, which may be more open. Most developers in New York are not interested.”
Erik Mendelson, head of the cryptocurrency real-estate division at Avanti Way, Florida
“When bitcoin was $38,000 to $40,000, I was going to brokerages and trying to create a crypto division, but none were interested. It had bad connotations. Then it gets to $68,000 and a large brokerage in Miami calls me about starting a division. Then they changed their mind; I guess the CEO was still uncomfortable. Once Trump got in office and it hit $100,000 a coin, I had every brokerage calling me. I went with Avanti. I think we were the first to create a division, before Christie’s, although they may have spoken about it first.
After COVID in 2021, I was a little drunk at a party and a client pulled me aside and said, ‘I’m worth $40 million in crypto, but no bank will give me a loan. Can you help me buy something?’ I said, ‘Of course,’ but I had no idea how I could help him out. None of the banks at the time spoke bitcoin; no one understood bitcoin. Banks said, ‘Your client could liquidate and sell his position. He could lose all this tomorrow and then he’d have nothing.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but if you’re lending on a job, the person could lose it the next day.’ The banks would rather lend to someone who makes a $100,000 W-2 salary consistently than someone who has $5,000 in their account but is worth $40 million in bitcoin. A week later, someone else came to me in a similar situation with about $60 million in bitcoin.
Now it’s changing. In June, Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, issued an order for Fannie and Freddie to prepare proposals for considering cryptocurrency to qualify customers for loans instead of just looking at their cash holdings — without requiring the borrower to first convert the crypto to U.S. dollars, which would create a capital-gains event.
People who have a lot of bitcoin, it’s their most valuable asset. It’s appreciated 60 percent over the last 15 years. It’s not good for an agent to say, ‘Sell your most prized asset.’ And clients don’t want to pay capital gains. My strategy is to direct them to crypto-lending companies that are outside FDIC. Then they don’t have to sell their most valuable asset. If I want a million-dollar loan, I give $2 million in bitcoin and they’ll give me a loan tomorrow. When I pay back the loan, let’s say at 10 percent interest, I get my bitcoin back. I give up custody in the short term, but I get it back.
These days, six or seven developers in Miami are accepting crypto. A few years ago, it was, like, one. And developments Cove and the Rider can take crypto directly into their crypto wallets.
Most of my clients are wealthy and they haven’t needed a job in, like, ten to 15 years. When they have monthly expenses, they sell a little of their bitcoin. They’re hoping the bitcoin goes up faster than their mortgage payments. From what I can see, there are not too many people using crypto to buy anything — leveraging is their preferred method. I did have clients in the past who were so rich in bitcoin they didn’t mind selling off enough to buy a property for $1 million or $2 million. But bitcoin has gone up, like, 300 percent since they bought it, and their property may have gone up 70 percent.
There’s a whole new financial class getting rich off crypto. As I say, the riches are in the niches. You don’t know who the crypto buying community is; you can’t judge the crypto banking community by the cover. It’s not necessarily someone driving a Tesla. They’re technologically-minded, progressive — it’s a small community. Anonymity is important. One of my customers sold smoothies at festivals and events for bitcoin when bitcoin was below $100. Now he’s filthy rich.”
Jesse Ottley, president of the development-sales division at Cervera Real Estate, Florida
“You hear a lot about crypto transactions, but it’s largely been through intermediaries. We are actually transacting directly, wallet to wallet, at the Rider Residences in Midtown — a coup for us, a coup for the developer.
The way it works, our developer has a wallet; he had it set up for the purpose of taking crypto. We proceed with — know your crypto and know your coin — due diligence. We’re working with a platform called Milo. Kraken or Gemini also. They allow you to trade and convert crypto, do due diligence into the history of the coin and the client. Then they take the crypto into escrow and take out a U.S. line of dollar credit against that crypto. During the transaction, value could go up or down, so we make sure that the buyer cushions any differences in the time it takes to do the trade. We’ve done a transaction like that as well at the Rider Residences. The last buyer actually made $400 during the closing.
Developers have been cautious because of the fluctuations, but we’re in a social and market environment where it’s becoming a lot more common. Instead of this underworld, niche product, it’s becoming institutionalized. It’s a milestone for our industry. And Miami has become something of a crypto-culture capital. Mayor Francis Suarez famously took his salary in bitcoin.
What’s interesting about a lot of these buyers is their belief in the concept. It’s more ideological — we’re seeing that across the board. We’re seeing buyers who don’t want to give up their crypto, buyers who bought it for 50 cents and now it’s $110. They believe it’s going to go to $1,000.
The typical crypto buyer is in their early 40s, a fintech professional, Northeast transplant who’s been living and renting in Miami for more than four years. Stealth wealth, drives a Tesla, a bitcoin lifer. No plans to buy real estate until they found out they could leverage rather than spend their coin.
A lot of these crypto owners are asset rich but may not have income streams from their day jobs or careers that match their wealth in crypto. It can be hard to get traditional financing. There was one individual that bought through Milo who had over $10 million of acquired crypto. He was still living in the $250,000 house he’d bought over ten years ago. He was able to leverage that and buy a $3 million house. His wife was the happiest. She has been with this guy who had $10 million in crypto forever in this $250,000 house, and now she’s living the life that someone with $10 million should be living.”
