A South Auckland family is hoping to land a buyer with Bitcoins when their three-bedroom home goes to auction next month.
Altar Peni, who owns 6/26 Tennessee Avenue, in Mangere, with his wife Nardia, told OneRoof that bidders would be able make offers in New Zealand dollars or in Bitcoin at the auction on July 19.
He said that last October he started investigating how buyers could purchase his family's brick and tile house using the cryptocurrency. Pulling all the details together had taken almost eight months, he said.
The agents marketing the home, Ray White's Tom Rawson and William Vaea, said that if the house was bought with Bitcoin, it would be a New Zealand first. While there have been other properties listed as accepting cryptocurrency offers, all have been purchased with New Zealand dollars.
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Peni said that he had tapped crypto law experts Patrick Wilson and James Cochrane, from law firm Stace Hammond, after seeing Cochrane talk about non fungible tokens in art (NFTs are a form of digital assets).
Matt Paget, chief operating officer of blockchain ventures and trading company Techemy, and Rory Manchee, chief executive of Brave New Coin, the Techemy subsidiary that provides the pricing indices on the crypto market, have also lent their expertise.
Manchee said Bitcoin real estate deals in Australia were not actual auctions in Bitcoin. Bids were made in dollars, with the winning bid exchanged into Bitcoin after the auction. He said a Bitcoin sale of Peni's home would be "a significant transaction in residential" real estate".
The Peni family have owned the house for six years, but were selling to care for elderly parents. Photo / Supplied
Peni said creating an auction in Bitcoin had been “a process. “When I started in October, the market was hot, then life happens. I didn’t want to rush it, there were emails every week," he said.
“It took a while to get the sale and purchase agreement, and then for Rory to piece everything together so it was a smooth ride for the buyer. Jeremy and Patrick asked me the hard questions at the start, and then they were fully on board.”
He said he had been investigating the crypto currency market since early 2020 when Covid wiped out the family’s candy floss business. “All the events got cancelled, but we’ve still got mouths to feed. I used lockdown period to investigate different ways to make money,” said Peni, who also is a part time primary school teacher.
“A friend in Australia was my inspiration. He’d been into Bitcoin and had made a bit of money. I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole – the more research I did, the more it opens your eyes about institutions, banking, inflation.”
Peni did courses with an online American academy, watched videos and followed the burgeoning crypto community online.
This month Bitcoin dropped below the all-important psychological barrier of US$20,000 for the first time since late 2020, with turmoil in cryptocurrency market deepening.
Peni was not worried about the drop in the crypto market, even though he had lost money on his first dip into Bitcoin trading.
“It’s our view it’s long-term savings for our kids. I’m not a trader. I’m just looking forward five to ten years," he said, adding that his Christian faith meant that he and his wife would be content to just have a better life, with debt cleared, rather than make huge amounts of money.
Peni and his wife Nardia have six children aged from one year to 18 years. They bought their Tennessee Avenue house in 2014. Two years ago they moved out to care for Nardia’s parents, but rent from tenants was not enough to cover their outgoings. “Most Pacific Islanders do this, looking after our parents is showing our love for them, you make those sacrifices," he said.
“But I’m a dad, I want to have milk in the fridge and bread in the pantry for my kids. We’ll pay off the banks and then it is rebuild time for us.”
Peni doesn’t know who the buyers with Bitcoin for his South Auckland home will be – most of his connections are with an international community, online. He is Samoan, and his wife is Tongan, and while both are aware of island nations' growing interest in making Bitcoin legal tender, they are not connected to any members of their local community using the crypto currency.
Rawson said that “reninventing the wheel” for creating an auction process that included a Bitcoin exchange took its toll. “In that eight months, property prices have come back as much as 30%. So all things considered, they are selling and buying in the same market.”
Peni and his wife have also made the unusual move to include their personal story in Ray White's marketing campaign.
"You might be wondering 'why a bitcoin auction?' Well, we believe bitcoin is an asset that will grow in value over time, and the way things are, nothing's getting cheaper. So this is our way to provide for our children, for their future," the listing says.
6/26 Tennessee Avenue, in Mangere East, Auckland, goes to auction on July 19.
