Bitcoin’s rising mainstream appeal is opening up innovative avenues for the housing market to entice a new type of customer, and other cryptocurrencies are starting to build momentum within the real estate industry. The industry is already trialling the use of digital currencies to pay for things like services, rent, services and sales deals.

Many businesses across the globe are now merchants that accept cryptocurrencies and the number is quickly growing.

There are already many news stories around of real estate agents and brokers accepting bitcoin as payment, and developers are also doing the same, with recent news headlines of a New York property developer accepting bitcoin for payment on a whole complex.

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies, although still in their early stages, have so much potential to change the way real estate is attained and traded.

The main potential change is when cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Litecoin, become more widely accepted as a form of currency to conduct property transactions.

The main issue with buying property with cryptocurrencies, is that the market is highly volatile, meaning that in the time it takes for a sale to go through, the price could increase or decrease in value substantially. If you take a look at the3 average time it takes for a home sale to close, (lets say 50 days as an example) and we look at the bitcoin price from November-December last year.

Bitcoin’s price on 6th November 2017 was $7,300USD, and roughly 50 days later, it hit record highs of $19,783USD. Now in the grand scale of things, that’s a huge difference for both parties involved in the sale. So, the volatility of the currencies like this make it very difficult to lock in a guaranteed price on a sale, and when you’re talking median house prices of around $550,000, using cryptocurrencies can seriously impact an end price for a contract.

Although the volatility of cryptocurrencies will remain an issue for some time, the technology driving it however, is a completely different story. New technologies based on the blockchain technology, like smart contracts will be used in many ways throughout the industry to increase security and will significantly reduce the time of real estate transactions.

This tech will allow contracts to be immediate, as well as instantaneous fund transfers, saving the broker ridiculous amounts of time.

Are you always struggling to have a steady flow of commissions coming in? Some months are great and other months you’re on rice and water, I’ve been there and so have most agents. How would you like to never have that problem again and have people coming to you to sell their properties?

Well, this is a case of working smarter and not harder!

Become an investment expert.

If you work in an agency with a rent roll you’re off to a flying start, I didn’t have one and it still worked, let me tell you how.

Call every Landlord and ask them if they would like to become a part of your “VIP list”. As a member, you will receive;

• Bargain properties, that must sell
• Properties with great returns
• Properties in unique location
• Properties in locations that have shown tremendous capital growth

Make sure members know that these properties will be sold quickly and that they will need to contact you directly as you will not have time to call them personally.

When I did this I didn’t have a rent roll to start with so I would ask every buyer (home buyers and investors) whether I sold them a property or not, if they would like to a part of the “VIP list.

The key to this is that you are sending these properties out as they become available with your agency or another agency (with that agencies approval), so you really need to keep an eye on the market and do not be concerned if you don’t get paid on every sale because some agents won’t pay commission on a great property as they know they can sell it themselves. What you will start to build is a very strong investor database that will trust you and will refer others providing you a pool of clients that will buy all year round, through good and bad markets.

Developers will be knocking your doors down to sell their stock and providing it stacks up as a great buy you will be able to move their properties. Brand new properties can be extremely attractive to investors because of all the depreciation deductions.

Whenever you are sending out a property make sure you create a spreadsheet that shows what the income is, expenses, depreciation schedule (this can be done by an accountant or sourced by doing some research) and importantly showing what they would need to have as either a deposit or in equity to buy. You should create a spreadsheet for 3 income brackets ($50,000, $75,000, $100,000) to show recipients that are employed if they used a PAYG withholding application form which basically means that instead of receiving a lump sum tax refund at the end of the year they can have that amount refunded over the 12 months in their pay packet by having less tax deducted, resulting in very little out of pocket expense to buy the property.

You must have the appropriate disclaimer stating that these are only example outgoing figures and that they should check with their accountant as everyone’s circumstances vary. Please make sure you’re up with the current tax laws with property investment by discussing this with an accountant.

Finally, it’s always good to put in additional content of any new laws that may affect investors and market stats from your area into your newsletter.

Most people will want to get onto this list and I found that they were, in many cases, forwarding these emails straight on to investors they know..

By following these steps you will create a permanent commission flow and have a recession proof business.