Authored by: @hetty-rowan

You want to buy a house?

Just imagine. You have been active in crypto for years. And you have a purpose. You want to buy a house. The first thought that comes to mind will be that you will have to sell some or all of your crypto to achieve that goal. The smart ones will make sure they don't have to sell everything anyway. Make sure they've also built a passive income stream so they don't have to start over from scratch. But what if I told you now, you no longer have to sell crypto to buy a house.

You can now use your bitcoin as collateral for a mortgage!

True, every citizen of the world can use this. But the disadvantage is that the house you want to buy must be located in the United States. And not everyone will be interested in that. Still, the possibility is interesting. And with this, a bit more mass adoption has been achieved.

The US start-up Milo introduces the world's first 'crypto mortgage'. With this mortgage, anyone around the world can buy real estate in the US with bitcoin as collateral.

Most investors actually sell their crypto to buy real estate, but according to Milo that is no longer necessary.

“Instead of selling your crypto for a down payment to qualify for a mortgage, a crypto mortgage lets you use your crypto to invest in real estate.”

Long-term loans

Currently, only customers who want to use bitcoin as collateral are eligible for Milo's mortgage loan. For the time being, the company only offers loans with a term of 30 years.

Milo shared that a number of loans have already been made as part of the early access phase, and expects the service to be available to most applicants on the waiting list in the coming months.

Regret selling bitcoin

Josip Rupena, CEO and founder of Milo, said the idea came in response to hearing countless stories of people selling their bitcoin to buy real estate, only to see it rise in value later. “Existing ways for crypto investors to access a mortgage are creating unintended tax liabilities or worse, seeing their crypto appreciate in value.”

Buying real estate in America

Milo says the company's other mortgage solution for foreigners has already brought in millions of dollars in loans and has applicants from more than 63 countries. This means that we can buy real estate in the US remotely, we don't have to go to America or an embassy.

At the moment there are 5557 applications on the waiting list, but I could not find how much Bitcoin is needed to qualify. Although I can imagine that this depends on the amount of the desired mortgage, of course. It has also not become clear to me how Milo deals with the volatile price of Bitcoin, but I could find that you can choose to pay your mortgage monthly in fiat, OR in crypto. That choice is entirely up to you. Another interesting fact is that because of this construction, not having to sell your Bitcoin but using it as collateral, your income tax will NOT be triggered.

I seriously hope that more mortgage lenders will see opportunities in this construction, but I am also curious about how this will develop. I can imagine that people who now get their mortgage now that the market is so incredibly low are in a very good position. But someone who put their 2 Bitcoins as collateral when Bitcoin was at 65K USD might have a problem. It is not yet clear to me how Milo will deal with this. And I think the company should provide some more information about that on their website.

A CEO who is Bitcoin fan

The company is based in Miami and CEO Rupena talked about the bitcoin mortgages at the North American Bitcoin conference on January 17. Of course, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez was also in attendance. He is a big fan of crypto, and he called the bitcoin mortgage a groundbreaking achievement.

Milo raised $6 million in seed capital from investors last year.

How do you feel about this new opportunity?

What is your opinion about this expansion of possibilities that can be found with crypto? Do you also get excited about it, or are you very reserved about this, and would you still prefer to fall back on the old trusted fiat system when taking out a mortgage? 1 dollar is always 1 dollar. It does not matter whether that dollar is now increasing in value or increasing. 1 dollar is 1 dollar. Unfortunately, you do have to deal with inflation and especially for taking out a mortgage you have to meet many other conditions before you are eligible.

Personally, I think this is a very interesting development, but of course I would like to hear your opinion about it.

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