Glen Oaks Escrow, an independent escrow company in Southern California, is now accepting cryptocurrency.
The company will use leading Bitcoin processor BitPay to settle transactions. By using BitPay, escrow funds can flow from buyer to seller in Bitcoin. BitPay converts the crypto into cash and then wires it into the designated escrow account.
“Increasingly, blockchain and cryptocurrencies have the potential to become a bigger part of real estate transactions, and this is one step to be ahead of the curve and enable transactions to happen through this vehicle,” says Joe Curtis, COO of Glen Oaks Escrow.
Glen Oaks cites “an increasing number of homes currently listed on the market that are accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment” as a key reason for allowing Bitcoin as a payment option. “Cryptocurrency transactions go much smoother when escrow is dialed into this cutting-edge way of purchasing property,” says Piper Moretti, licensed realtor at Christie’s International Luxury Real Estate.
The real estate industry is starting to harness blockchain technology in multiple ways.
The first luxury condo in Manhattan was recently tokenized, allowing buyers from all over the world to own fractions of the high-end real estate. Several other real estate companies, including Meridio and Leaseum Partners, are also using blockchain to remove friction from real estate transactions and to facilitate cross-border transactions.