Why the ultra-wealthy are using bitcoin to buy real estate

Market Domination welcomes Christie's International Real Estate Southern California founder and CEO, Aaron Kirman, to break down why some ultra-wealthy individuals are using bitcoin (BTC-USD) to purchase real estate (XLRE).

00:00 Speaker A

Another theme I want to touch on. I thought this was really interesting. So people understand you launched this crypto division. You've actually done, let me get this right, something like $350 million in crypto deals. How does sort of how does a crypto real estate transaction actually work there? Like walk me through that, just practically.

00:15 Aaron

So, let's back up. We noticed a huge demand because we had a bunch of buyers calling us saying, we want to buy houses with crypto. And at the time, we didn't have a way to actually execute those deals. So, I created the first, you know, division that actually is able to execute. Uh, start to finish, it's slightly different than the regular process, although we do follow a lot of the regular steps. Uh we have a holding company that holds people's crypto and uh we made it super easy for the consumer to be able to start to finish be able to buy using crypto monies. And it's been absolutely amazing. Um, we think that it's going to be a main way that people are buying homes in today's segment. And um the sky's a limit. I think we did about $400 million in deals the past six months.

00:48 Speaker A

Wow. Aaron, that's impressive. Let me ask you this, does the Bitcoin price cycle, does that sort of impact luxury home demand? Meaning, meaning when prices go up, people feel richer than all of a sudden people are knocking on your door, right, I'm ready for that $10 million home.

01:00 Aaron

Funny enough, we've seen we've seen the reverse floor plan because Bitcoin is low, we see people wanting to invest in other assets, uh such as luxury real estate. So we've seen an uptick, uh but I can only assume once Bitcoin goes back up, we're going to see even more. Um so less, you know, once once that market becomes a lot more stable, uh we're expecting it to be a multi-billion dollar business.

01:15 Speaker A

I I final question I'm just curious to ask. When you're dealing with these crypto buyers, did you ever notice any kind of difference between like a traditional buyer, just in terms of, I know, more, were they faster to act, more maybe greater risk tolerance? Did you pick up anything different?

01:25 Aaron

Uh faster to act. They want they want more discretion. Uh they are from all over the world and they are people that are very impulsive. So they're like, I want this house, let's go. And in fact, they get frustrated because we still have to follow the system of buying and selling houses, whereas they're ready to click a button and if they had their choice, they would buy it tomorrow and be done.