Real and virtual worlds converge with Propy’s NFT-powered home purchasing platform –

Bay Area-turned-Miami startup reports over $5B in property transactions, despite crypto winter

By Riley Kaminer

The internet has made it easier than ever to buy major assets like cars, yachts, and even an entire town online in a matter of seconds. Still, it takes an average of 50 days to close the relatively mundane transaction of buying a house.

Silicon Valley-turned-Miami startup Propy is flipping the script on the real estate market with its NFT-powered home buying and selling platform.

“We are focused on automating the home buying process,” founder and CEO Natalia Karayaneva told Refresh Miami. She noted that the various fees associated with the traditional home buying process are eating into consumers’ savings.

“That’s why we have developed the best technology to make home buying more secure and liquid, using the blockchain and smart contracts,” Karayaneva [pictured above] explained.

The idea is that prospective buyers can tour a home (in a metaverse environment or in the physical world), see an inspection report – and then purchase the house in just a few clicks. From there, the record of ownership gets placed in your secure wallet. Home purchases can be made in crypto or fiat.

When you’re ready to sell it, you can perform the same process in reverse. Or if your property has not yet had its NFT minted, Propy can connect you with a crypto certified agent to help get your house ready for sale.

According to Karayaneva, Propy’s process of purchasing a home is more efficient than traditional methods, which involve upwards of 80 professionals from a handful of separate firms. “You can lose the house, you can lose the contract, you can lose the money – it’s a very insecure process,” she asserted. “And that’s why 10% of the purchase price ends up going towards those expenses, to actually make it fairly secure. But instead we can utilize smart contracts.”

Charting Propy’s traction: users, funding, and 10,000 real estate agents

Early investors and users have found this model compelling. Since being founded in 2016, Propy has secured almost $17 million in venture funding. The startup reports having sold over $5 billion worth of properties through its platform, with more than 10,000 homes transferred via blockchain. 

Additionally, Propy currently has around 10,000 licensed real estate agents in their network. Propy instructs these agents on the basics of web3, enabling them to better understand the industry as well as the startup’s platform itself.

Karayaneva expects this growth trajectory to continue, if not accelerate. “The web3 space has changed dramatically over the years,” she said. 

“It has evolved to an extent that I didn’t expect,” she continued. “Cryptocurrency is going through a stage of mass adoption. Previously, it was only for geeks and engineers. Now everyone in America knows about cryptocurrency.”

For Karayaneva, the boom in NFTs over the last year or so was an unexpected boon for Propy’s…