Spanish Real Estate Agency Offers an Apartment in Barcelona for Sale in Bitcoin- Taxes Must Be Paid in Fiat

A Spanish real estate platform has listed its first-ever property for sale for cryptocurrency. The offer is entirely online, and whoever wants to buy the apartment in Barcelona must pay in bitcoin.

Anyone Interested Can Pay 3.5 BTC for the Property

Per an official announcement, Idealista is seeking to sell its first property via BTC in the wake of a “second revolution” seen in the crypto industry.

The apartment is located in the center of Barcelona — close to the Rambla Catalonia — and the interested person should make all the arrangements online, said the Madrid-based company.

Although the first transaction made in bitcoin in Spain on real estate happened in 2018, the firm clarified it was done at that time “the traditional way.”

In fact, they referred to handling all the processes with papers and diligences offered by a standard real state agency.

Anyone interested in the apartment can pay approximately 3.5 BTC ($181,000 using today’s exchange rate) as of press time.

However, the company pointed out that the payment of taxes, notary, and registration, for the moment, must be made in fiat euros, “since everything slows down when it is the turn of the administrations.”

Crypto and Its Relationship With the Real Estate Industry

Idealista was acquired by EQT, a global investment group, for $1.6 billion. They’re also planning to arrange partnerships with around 40,000 real estate agents. Moreover, most of their customers come from Southern Europe.

According to the agency, the firms supporting the technology behind this listing are Inviertis and Kasaz.

The relationship between the crypto and real estate industries is nothing new at all globally. In 2019, Turkish real estate agency Antalya Homes sold nine properties using bitcoin core, mostly to foreign buyers. They also accepted bitcoin cash, Ethereum (ETH), stellar (XLM), ripple (XRP), litecoin (LTC), and tether as means of payment.

In the same year, a major Australian real estate group held a luxury home auction that could be paid for with bitcoin and binance coin (BNB). There have been many properties both bought and sold for bitcoin (BTC) throughout a myriad of countries worldwide over the years.