HN Explorer

Are you ready to spend your bitcoins buying cheap lands?

5 points by prophack ↗ HN
Hi guys! I've been testing my idea of selling low price lands by crypto currency.

There is a plenty of cheap lands around the world in equivalent to $5-25/sq.m. The question is mostly addressed to crypto currency owners. Are you guys ready to spent your bitcoins for that? Do you see that kind of service useful for you?

If so, I need to know if you guys are ready to pay first, receiving a contract that obliges the company to acquire and transfer the agreed property to your ownership. The service takes care about all legal details, you just need to provide all required personal data.

That should be a very fast way to change your crypto for a stable real estate object you can after sell for classical money or even use.

Thanks for reading. Waiting for your comments!

25 comments

[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 70.0 ms ] thread
al2o3cr
Shucks, why draw the line at just land? I know a guy who'll give you a great price on an NFT of the Brooklyn Bridge.
swiley
Heck yes if I'm actually allowed to use it (camp/farm/anchor boats if it's near the water.)

Email me when you have your thing working or if you need help, my email is in my profile.

stimpy69
I wonder if theres value in using Monero to do this. Seems like getting flagged for using bitcoins to buy major assets like this would be highly likely.
kjrose
I don't see why this would be an issue. You would have to run it through the various county land offices, but it would fall under the standard transfer of wealth for land title.

You just need to find someone willing to accept crypto for the land. I know of at least one land deal that was paid for with gold and silver.

prophack
My service is going to accept your crypto, purchases the property from the local owner for local currency, and then transfers the property rights for your name.
techrat
Your service...

So this isn't an Ask HN and more of a spam submission.

prophack
Why do you think so? I didn't even post any link. I just explain my idea and I'm trying to get a feedback if it would be interesting for someone.
gus_massa
Posting your own stuff here is fine, if you don't repost it too much. For example when Dropbox started the founder posted it as a small personal project here.

[I can't find it in the official rules, but there are some unofficial rules, like not concealing that the submitter is the owner, no sockpuppets or shills, ... But I don't see anything like that here.]

If I have to complain, I don't like when the title is a question. I'd prefer something like: "Project idea: buying cheap lands with bitcoins as a service" [Is the "as a service" part correct? Is the "Project idea" prefix correct? My version can be polished a lot.]

techrat
My specific issue is that it's a newly created account apparently offering to engage what seems like a money laundering scheme.
gus_massa
I'm not sure, but for me it looks like someone overoptimistic that thinks that a piece of paper is enough to "own" some land on the opposite side of the globe.

It may be enough to own an apartment in Manhattan, because you pay the security guy in the entrance of the building, and the maintenance fee and other stuff. And you can call a lawyer in case of a problem.

But for a piece of land in the middle of nowhere, it's not enough. You probably need to keep the local police station "happy".

Anyway, the combination of pseudoanonymity of Bitcoins and the lack of KYC measures may transform this in a laundering scheme if they are not careful.

gus_massa
If I some land, do I have to pay taxes for the land? Do I pay the tax directly or you collect and pay them? Is there any additional annual fee for your company?

Do I own a specific piece of land or just some abstract square meters in a big pool?

What happens if someone enters illegally my land? Do I have to go travel there to start a trial? What about flooding or fires? Fixing the fence?

How are I'm sure that you bill buy land that is worth $5-25/sq.m and not some crap land that is worthless?

How do I sell my land?

prophack
> do I have to pay taxes for the land? My idea was in reducing all complexities related to the property purchase. Normally you can't buy a land plot in any country having no local id, no local bank account, not to be physically presenting in the country, etc.

Instead of buying property by yourself, you get the property rights transfer operation just once our company bought the property for you.

> Do I pay the tax directly or you collect and pay them? Our company collects and pays them.

Basically, our company cares about all local taxes during the purchase. Probably your government can force you to pay additional taxes during the property rights transferring (in that the service can include these taxes to the final price, but the price can't be the same for all citizens around the world in that case).

> Do I own a specific piece of land or just some abstract square meters in a big pool? You own a specific land plot. I could actually even place a webcam to translate the video from your landplot in real time (that probably requires additional annual fee if you want to keep watching it after the property rights transfering; and, unfortunately, there are places out of network coverage).

> What happens if someone enters illegally my land? > What about flooding or fires? Fixing the fence? > Is there any additional annual fee for your company? The original idea requires no additional anuual fee. The property starts to be yours once the purchase & rights transfering finished. But we could probably offer a post-purchase contract with our partners for additional services like finding a tenant who could rent your land plot, the insurance, etc. Do you think it would be nice if we included these services during the 1st year in the optional premium price?

> How are I'm sure that you bill buy land that is worth $5-25/sq.m and not some crap land that is worthless? You can see the lot location, sizes, photos, etc. In the most of countries each land plot has a unique id you can check on the government website. The final price includes all local taxes and the company fixed %. Buying an overseas property by crypto you take the risks as you would by it by traditional currency.

> How do I sell my land? Once you have the property rights you can sell your land in any legal way. The idea of that service wasn't in converting your crypto into cash.

giantg2
Is that square meter or mile? It doesn't seem to make sense either way to me.

I'd like land. The cheapest land is usually not usable, or only usable in some small way. I want quality land.

prophack
Thank you for the feedback. How much are you ready to spend for the high quality land in that case?
giantg2
I typically see decent quality land $500-1000 per acre. This is in the rural eastern US.
e-clinton
I think the idea of land anywhere is a bit too broad. I think it’d be more successful if you targeted a specific purpose or type of land. For example, buy camp-site land. Or buy land in upcoming development area. Or buy farm land and rent it out to tenants.
prophack
That's a good point. Thanks for the feedback. That can be probably solved with categories / tags you can choose to see.

Which kind of land are you personally interested in? And how much are you roughly ready to spend?

rielychen
Then you are assuming that real estate is a better investment compared to land, which might be wrong :)
2rsf
No, why would I do that? a piece of land is cheap for a reason- nobody wants to buy it.
prophack
If nobody wanted to buy it, the price would be 0. The property can be cheap because of the bad location (from a commoner point of view). Try to think a bit widely. It is a piece of real land you own. You can build there a mining farm for instance. Or plant something that simply doesn't grow in your country. Cheaper land frequently means cheaper labor also.
quickthrower2
I don’t see the advantage over selling the Bitcoin for cash and using that cash to buy land from any real estate agent or use a buyers agent to help.

For tax reasons people might also borrow against Bitcoin for a deposit then get a mortgage to acquire the land.

prophack
Thank you for the feedback. Fair enough. I thought to make a tool which you could use to quickly withdraw your crypto (not only BTC). In case of classical withdraw operations over banks you normally has some maximum limits. The low price allows to buy a couple of objects in different countries with better risks diversification.
quickthrower2
I see I didn’t think of it like that. So getting a million dollars out of an exchange might be hard due to KYC and AML problems on the bank side. But you offer a way to go directly into an asset although I assume you have KYC and AML obligations too.
quickthrower2
Another idea and I’m sort of serious although it might sound silly to some.

First ICO an ethereum token with the idea to collect fiat cash and as soon as you have enough to buy property you buy.

Rent money goes back into the cash pool.

Always keep enough cash for property maintenance for 1 year.

Money is reinvested in excess of this.

Get the tokens listed on uniswap.

This is a nice way for crypto people to diversify with little hassle.

You can charge a management fee from the fund or take a transaction fee maybe 5% for your effort which will include managing the tenants etc.

Make yourself transparent and auditable.