Crypto traders can now bet on real estate market prices after Polymarket and real estate data provider Parcl announced a partnership to create a new suite of real estate price prediction markets.
The partnership will be powered by Parcl’s daily house price indices, according to a press release. Under the terms of the agreement, Parcl will provide independent daily real estate indices that will serve as settlement benchmarks, while Polymarket will quote and operate the markets.
The first models will focus on major metropolitan areas in the United States, allowing traders to bet on outcomes such as whether a given city’s index will rise or fall over a set period of time. Each market will settle against the values of Parcl’s publicly verifiable index, giving participants a clear signal of resolution.
“Real estate is expected to be a top category in forecasting markets,” Matthew Modabber of Polymarket said in the release, emphasizing the importance of clear, verifiable data for transparent settlement. Parcl CEO Trevor Bacon presented the partnership as part of a “paradigm shift” in the way markets express opinions and report the truth.
The move marks a broader development for prediction markets, which have grown beyond election and macroeconomic betting into areas such as sports, pop culture and now real estate.
This isn’t the first time betting platforms have added property forecasts: in 2008, UK betting exchange Betfair handled markets linked to a property crash, and during the 2020 pandemic its Australian arm did the same as property prices oscillated amid lockdowns.
