Bitcoin is a next-gen, all-digital currency that’s already a global phenomenon.

Developed with high levels of security and anonymity in mind, it’s touted as a potential replacement for paper- and coin-based money in the near future.

Some industries, including real estate, are capitalizing on this emerging trend by letting clients buy property via Bitcoin. It’s a significant departure from tradition, but it’s one that is quickly gaining momentum.

1. Miami, Florida

A Miami man recently made news by selling his home in Coral Gables for over $6 mln — or approximately 1,600 BTC.

The steep selling price is enough to rattle the headlines, but Bitcoin has been a part of the Miami real estate market for several years. Although it was only launched in 2009, tech-savvy real estate agents, investors and buyers quickly embraced the new cryptocurrency.

Realtors in the area are confident that South Florida — particularly Miami — is an ideal market for Bitcoin. They cite the worldwide reach of Bitcoin as a primary factor in driving increased interest and attention to the region. Using an alternate form of currency opens up properties to buyers and investors from all over the world, including Asia, Canada, South America and more.

2. Dubai, UAE

The United States isn’t the only country to capitalize on the growing Bitcoin trend. A developer located on the Isle of Man recently announced plans for a joint residential-commercial development valued at $325 mln. Prospective residents will be able to use Bitcoin to purchase their property, with studio apartments starting at 33 BTC and one-bedroom apartments from 54 BTC — or approximately $250,000.

Some of the development’s units have already been sold for modern currency, but the remaining residential properties are reserved for Bitcoin purchases. Commercial units are not currently available for purchase via the popular cryptocurrency.

3. New York, New York

Investors and real estate agents in The Big Apple also believe Bitcoin is the way of the future. The team with Magnum Real Estate is assuming a huge risk by accepting Bitcoin for deposits and purchases for recently converted apartments in Manhattan’s East Village. Known as Liberty Toye, the property represents a huge shift in the way we conduct business this century.

Real estate investment trusts have been looking to diversify their portfolios this year, and New York City provides the ideal launching ground. Known as an entrepreneurial-minded city that isn’t afraid to take risks, we already see homes and apartments available for Bitcoin. It’s only a matter of time until commercial buildings follow suit.

4. Lake Tahoe, California

The popular vacation destination of Lake Tahoe accepts Bitcoin, too. An unnamed buyer recently purchased a 1.4-acre property with Bitcoin on a 42-site resort. The undeveloped property sold for $1.6 mln, or 2,739 BTC, making it the largest Bitcoin-driven real estate transaction at the time it happened in 2013.

According to reports, the Bitcoin purchase was originally the buyer’s idea. While we haven’t seen any further developments involving Bitcoin in the Lake Tahoe real estate market, the sale shows off the potential of digital currency in the industry and opens the way for future deals in both the residential and commercial sectors.

5. Bali, Indonesia

The island of Indonesia isn’t the first place you’d expect to see a Bitcoin-backed real estate transaction, but it was actually among the first locations to support the cryptocurrency.

An unnamed buyer spent more than 800 Bitcoins, totaling approximately $500,000 at the time, for a villa in Bali.

Although residential real estate agents and buyers are comfortable with using Bitcoin to purchase real estate in Bali, we have yet to see any listings in the commercial or industrial markets.

Despite the uncertainty of the Bitcoin market, tech-savvy investors and agents are — at least for the time being — willing to take a risk on the cryptocurrency.

There are many advantages in doing so, but the risks are too steep for some to take the plunge.

To learn more about purchasing real estate with Bitcoin, contact an expert member of the 9 Core Realty team.

The South Florida housing market got its first glimpse of what Hurricane Irma did to residential sales volume in September and the results can hardly be a surprise: closings for existing, single-family homes in the tri-county area fell by 31 percent, according to figures released by local Realtor boards.

The reports they compiled showed the combined closings in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties declined to 2,735 compared with 3,964 deals completed in September 2016.

There is no doubt that Hurricane Irma impacted real estate activity throughout the month of September. In addition to most businesses losing up to five working days, no closings could take place until FEMA lifted our disaster area status.

It should also be noted that federal-backed lenders required new appraisals on properties under contract due to the hurricane and many buyers and sellers experienced delays in acquiring the services of crews, inspectors and appraisers last month.

Along with the missed days due to the hurricane, September also had a shortened work week with the Labor Day holiday.

Area real estate experts expect a bump in closings in the forthcoming months once homes on the sales block are re-inspected and South Floridians finalize their stalled sales.

The storm did nothing to erode prices, as the medians trended upward. The median price in Broward last month was $357,600, up 10 percent from a year ago, according to the Realtors of the Palm Beaches and Greater Fort Lauderdale. Palm Beach County’s median price increased almost 3 percent, to $325,000.

Miami-Dade experienced an increase 6.5 percent, from $314,500 in September 2016 to 335,000 last month, according to the Miami Association of Realtors, which also noted that single-family home prices have now risen for 70 consecutive months.

The statewide median sales price for single-family existing homes last month was $239,900, up 7.6 percent from the previous year.

Similarly, townhouse and condo closing sales also declined about 22 percent throughout the tri-county area, with last month’s 2,738 sales compared to September 2016’s 3,543 sales.

Median prices for townhouses and condos rose in all three counties, reaching $156,000 in Broward, $172,000 in Palm Beach County and $234,000 in Miami-Dade.

To learn more or invest in South Florida real estate, contact an expert member of the 9 Core Realty team.

Are you an investor who’s considering buying a house in Florida? Wondering where your money would yield the highest return?

According to ReviewHomeWarranties.com, Florida is indeed a great place to invest in based on last years’ statistics, in general. Still, it really depends on the type of house/condo you buy and in which city. They recommend some research prior to investing.

Here are some facts to get you started

real estate2017 proves to be another strong year for the American economy. In spite of doom and gloom prophecies after president Trump’s election, the economy has been doing better than ever. The S&P has gained more than 250 points since January, and the real estate market has gained an incredible 6.9% .

The question is how did the Florida housing market fare this year? Was it up to par or better than the national real estate averages? Would buying a house at the beginning of the year have been a better investment than others?

Let’s inspect the statistics

Based on a survey conducted on the Miami Herald less than 3 months ago, Miami properties are gaining modestly. Most people believe that we are currently in the middle of a property cycle, but are seeing uptick of interest in buying versus rent which can indicate prices are not stopping anytime soon.

In addition to that, the article indicates that more than a third of the buyers last year are foreign, which beats the national average by a lot. Real-time data from Zillow tells us the people who were surveyed had the right idea about the Miami real-estate market. It has been gaining very modestly in comparison to the national average – only 1.9% this year.

One  particular area which has shown a tremendous growth was single-family homes all across Florida which grew 7.5% in sales, in comparison to last year, based on data from FloridaTrend. In fact, the impact on single-family home prices all across Florida was noticeable, beating the national average on real estate investment by more than two fold!

Florida single-family homes have gained more than 13% so far this year, from an average of $195,000 to $225,000 in September 2017. Another thing that could demonstrate an uptick in interest for single-family homes in Florida is the increase in demand for home warranties, which are bought exclusively by single-family homeowners. These have seen an increase in 2017 based on data from ReviewHomeWarranties’s Florida section.

The Sun Sentinel reports a completely different situation particularly in South Florida. The newspapers’ experts are concerned with  thousands of high end condos and high end single family homes built in the South Florida region which are driving prices down. That concern is spot on, since prices are starting to decrease significantly after reaching a peak in mid-year in Palm Beach.

The average price now for a single-family home is only $4,000 higher than it was in January 2017. Between January and May, single family homes have increased by $11,000, but dropped $7,000 in the following three months. The trend is unique to single family homes, but other high-end condos in Palm Beach have also shown stagnation in 2017 (those peaked earlier in the year and have shown a huge dip in mid-year to recover back to January’s prices in August).

In Tampa, it seems like the biggest upward trend was at around Nov-Dec 2016, and since then there has been somewhat of a stagnation in prices, especially in top-tier assets, but low-tier assets have gained tremendously each and every month this year. From an average of less than $90,000 for a low-tier asset in Tampa, prices have surpassed the $102,000 mark, an increase of more than 11.5%.

Overall, Florida property moved up 8.5% on average this year, and in particular sectors like single-family homes or low-tier houses in Tampa, which have beat the stock market and the national real estate average. Some areas, particularly Palm Beach and Miami, have not shown price growth even remotely close to these figures, but these are areas in which property prices have recovered very significantly in past years, so it is explainable.

To learn more about the Florida market for investors or to purchase investment properties that create ROI in Florida, contact 9 Core Realty today!

The rise of rental housing has been one of the biggest trends in the post-2008 U.S. real estate market. But it isn’t all about falling incomes and unattainable mortgages.

Wealthy and well-educated Americans in large metropolitan areas are increasingly keen to rent, according to a new report by NYU’s Furman Center. Among households with more than 120 percent of area median income, the share of renters grew by 1.2 percentage points between 2012 and 2015, while it fell by 0.2 points among households making less than 50 percent.

The share of renters among well-educated households also grew more quickly than among their less educated peers, the report noted.

Renting households are still far more likely to be poor than homeowners: 41.6 percent of renters earned less than 50 percent of AMI in 2015, compared to 15.7 of home-owning households, the report found. A mere 21.4 percent of renters earned more than 120 percent of AMI, compared to 53 percent of home-owning households.

The report is based on data from the American Communities Survey and covers 53 metropolitan areas with 1 million inhabitants or more.

Large institutions have increased their multifamily investments since the financial crisis, pointing to growing demand from young Americans.

To learn about the rental market in your area, investing in rental home and build to rent homes contact 9 Core Realty today.

U.S. home prices climbed steadily in July even as sales have slowed, evidence that a limited supply of available houses is distorting the real estate market.

The Standard & Poor’s CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index, released Tuesday, rose 5.9 percent in July from a year earlier, slightly faster than June’s 5.8 percent annual pace.

Sales of both new and existing homes slipped over the summer, which typically might slow price gains. But demand remains strong and has created bidding wars among house hunters, pushing up prices at a much faster pace than incomes. The number of existing homes for sale fell 6.5 percent in the past year.

Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and Las Vegas saw the largest increases, with prices in Seattle soaring 13.5 percent in July from a year earlier.

Closer to home, the Tampa market saw a 7 percent increase in sales, while Miami saw a 5.1 percent increase.

Case-Shiller Home Prices Index

None of Southwest Florida is included in the Case-Shiller measure, but a similar pattern has been pervading the market.

Homebuyers closed on 1,317 homes in the Sarasota-Manatee market last month, a 6.9 percent jump, while the median price rose 3.8 percent, to $275,000 by the August measures of the trade group Florida Realtors. Manatee, topped Sarasota County in median sales price, $286,855 vs. $258,000, but the opposite occurred in hard figures of total home sales, 725 compared with 592, a 9.2 percent increase for Sarasota County and a 4.2 percent rise for Manatee.

Charlotte County home sales fell 0.9 percent in the August-to-August comparison.

Statewide, closed sales of existing family homes reached 25,235 with a median price of $240,000, a 6.7 percent jump. Condos and townhouse sales rose a modest 2.6 percent with 9,716 purchases on a median cost of $170,000, a 6.3 percent increase.

More in the market

Other cities in the Case-Shiller measure also were seeing strong gains during July.

Home prices rose 7.3 percent in Dallas and Detroit, and 7.2 percent in Denver. The slowest increases were in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, which both reported 3.3 percent gains.

With unemployment low and paychecks rising modestly, more people are in the market for a home. But construction of new single-family homes has been held back by a limited supply of land in hot markets and difficulty in finding construction workers.

That has intensified the competition in the housing market. Homes sold after an average of just 30 days on the market in August, according to the National Association of Realtors, down from 36 days a year ago.

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma began to pinch sales in August and should drag on the sales in the months ahead.

The Case-Shiller index covers roughly half of U.S. homes. The index measures prices compared with those in January 2000 and creates a three-month moving average. The July figures are the latest available.

To learn more about investing in SWFL real estate, contact a member of the 9 Core Realty Team today!