An international property startup is launching a way to store U.S. home titles in a crypto wallet in the hopes that this process can be scaled to drive a large number of blockchain-based real estate transactions.
The company, Propy, is currently helping sell an investment property in the Florida city of Gulfport, near St. Petersburg. The 2,164-square-foot property has five bedrooms and is currently listed for $650,000.
To facilitate this type of transaction, Propy creates a limited liability company that owns the property. Ownership of that LLC will be tied to the owner of a unique blockchain token known as an NFT.
Through this setup, buyers will be able to purchase these NFTs — and by extension their LLCs, and the properties themselves — through a cryptocurrency transaction.
The seller is a real estate and cryptocurrency investor named Leslie Alessandra, according to the listing on Propy. She’s hired an agent from Heckler Realty Group to represent her. Propy says it has been assigned to create the NFT and auction it off.
The home is also listed on the MLS, according to its page on Zillow. The overview doesn’t mention the NFT process or Propy, describing the home as an “auction property.”
The company plans to hold the auction for this property on Feb. 8, Techcrunch reports. Signups for the auction are taking place on the listing page on Propy’s website.
To get in on the auction, prospective buyers are being asked to sign up from the listing page on Propy’s website.
The home’s list price of $650,000 is on the higher side of prices in the neighborhood. Zillow’s estimates for home values on similar sized lots on the same block range from $250,000 to $640,000.
If these NFT-assisted transactions start to take off, Propy anticipates the early use cases will focus primarily on so-called “collectible” properties.
“Trophy real estate owned by celebrities, or in prime location, or with unique digital art and architecture can be regarded as a collectible,” Propy said on the listing page. “The level of pride of ownership is very high, and the purchased price is almost irrespective of the trading potential of the property, just like with other collectibles.”
Propy had previously sold an apartment in Ukraine through a similar process.
At an Inman Connect Now session in June, Propy CEO Natalia Karayaneva said she wanted to make agents a party to this process.
“We’re very ambitious in the company that this can potentially transform the industry and transform the paradigm of home ownership,” Karayaneva said at the time. “We see that we can empower … agents to transact faster and make their customer look at the agent with more satisfaction.”
