‘Selling Sunset’ Star Christine Quinn And Tech Entrepreneur Husband Have Plans To Disrupt The Real Estate Industry

Christine Quinn might be best known as a cast member on Netflix’s hit show Selling Sunset, but the LA-based real estate maven’s latest role goes beyond traditional real estate. Quinn and her husband, Christian Dumontet, a software engineer, tech entrepreneur and investor, who sold his company Foodler to Grubhub in 2017 for $65 million (bootstrapped by him with no investors), are launching their first company together with plans to disrupt the real estate market as we know it.

RealOpen, launched today, bridges the gap between digital assets and physical goods. Using secure, proprietary software, RealOpen allows anyone, anywhere to purchase or sell a home via crypto, in a time when many brokerages and agents might shy away from the process. It’s the first company of its kind.

“We saw a great market opportunity for cryptocurrency digital asset holders,” Dumontet, an early investor in cryptocurrency, tells Forbes. “ Cryptocurrency market caps are over $2 trillion dollars right now. Our initial target demographic for RealOpen is crypto whales, commonly defined as somebody with $5 million dollars or more in digital assets, who holds it without selling in hopes of future profits.”

RealOpen works with the entire MLS inventory, in addition to off-market homes, and units buyers, sellers, and agents. How it works is after you find your home (be it on your own or through RealOpen’s platform), RealOpen will verify your crypto assets to prove you have access to the funds. Traditionally, buyers seeking to purchase in crypto would have to liquidate their crypto to get a proof-of-funds letter from the bank.

“People might ask why they wouldn’t just sell their crypto for cash first and then purchase the home with cash. First, in doing that, they would lose participation in the cryptocurrency market,” Dumontet explains. “If you think about the home buying process, it can take months to decide what’s right for you. In that case, if someone were to sell their crypto for cash first, they’d have to do that, then get the verification proof of letter funds from the bank, and that incurs a taxable event at that moment. With RealOpen, they can keep their crypto throughout that entire process, which means continued participation in the market. We provide continuous verification of funds throughout the process so that the seller knows, as the buyer places offers, that they really do have this money and they can’t play games with the transferring cash in and out. That taxable event only occurs at the moment of the closing.”

Once the all-crypto offer is submitted, buyers work with a RealOpen agent to finalize contingencies, terms and timing before the agent presents the seller with an all-cash offer. If an offer is accepted, RealOpen helps buyers convert 3% of their crypto holdings into cash to enter escrow. Immediately before closing, the remaining 97% of the crypto offer is converted into cash.