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Home sellers try to capitalize on housing market and crypto

Janna Herron, Personal Finance Editor at Yahoo Money details challenges home sellers and buyers face in the housing market.

Video transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: In today's Your Money segment, home sellers are trying to capitalize on two very hot markets right now, the housing market, but also the crypto market. Here to fill us in is Janna Herron, she is Personal Finance Editor at Yahoo Money. Janna, good to have you here.

JANNA HERRON: Thanks for having me.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: So tell us about this, how are home sellers try to capitalize on these two hot markets?

JANNA HERRON: So home sellers are starting to put in their listings that they will accept Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency for payment of the house. Now it's a small, but it's a growing trend. Realtor.com data found that last month 14.3 listings per 100,000 homes, did include the description that Bitcoin or crypto could be accepted as payment. While that seems really small it is actually a high for them, that rate. And the last time they saw sellers interested was in March 2018 when crypto had captured the imaginations of investors.

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ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: So what are some challenges or obstacles I guess, that home sellers are coming up against when they're putting their home on the market and saying they're going to accept crypto.

JANNA HERRON: So one of the things is it's just a very hot housing market. So the sellers that I talked to, who by the way were also home flippers, so they're investors, both in housing and in crypto. They got multiple offers but they were all cash for US dollar and so they couldn't turn that away. They got-- they sold their homes over asking price. So finding that Bitcoin home buyer is a little bit difficult.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: You know, I had actually interviewed a while ago the owner of two bars here in New York City, a longtime restaurateur, who was putting his bars up on the market for crypto. Do you think that-- but he was not having much luck finding people. I mean, even though it's such a hot area, not a lot of people wanted to come in and actually buy it. What are some of the challenges on the buying side, those who are out there looking right now, how does this market start to convince them that crypto is a legitimate way to buy this property? I mean, if we're expecting crypto to go mainstream at some point, you're going to need it to do things like buy real estate.

JANNA HERRON: That's right. And there has to be an easier way to do that. And in the housing market, if you're planning to say, use your crypto gains as a down payment, you're going to have to go through the mortgage process, and mortgage lenders right now are a little bit scared to touch those gains because they're not totally sure where they're coming from. It's harder to track and they have to make sure that you didn't just find this money in the couch or somewhere else that might be nefarious. So some buyers that I've talked to and some mortgage lenders I've talked to, said they're just not doing that.

KRISTIN MYERS: Janna, I'm curious to know I know that we're talking about using cryptocurrency to purchase real estate. Is it just Bitcoin and Ether, are you hearing perhaps of interest, for example, to accept Dogecoin to purchase real estate. There are so many different cryptocurrencies out there right now. So many are doing so well and are running hot. So what are willing to be accepted right now and what isn't?

JANNA HERRON: It really depends on the seller. The sellers that I spoke to, one of them just wanted Bitcoin and was a huge believer in Bitcoin that this was the future. Another one would take Bitcoin or Ethereum. So I think it really depends on what that seller really believes in, which crypto is going to be successful. But Bitcoin is definitely the most popular.