Crypto traders can now place bets on housing market prices following a partnership between Polymarket and real estate data provider Parcl, aimed at creating a new range of housing price prediction markets.
This collaboration will utilize Parcl’s daily home-price indices, as detailed in a press release. Under the arrangement, Parcl will provide independent daily housing indices for settlement references, while Polymarket will manage and list the markets.
The initial offerings will target major U.S. metropolitan areas, enabling traders to wager on various outcomes, such as whether a specific city’s index will rise or fall within a set timeframe. Each market will settle based on Parcl’s publicly verifiable index values, ensuring clear resolution signals for participants.
“Real estate should be a primary category in prediction markets,” stated Polymarket’s Matthew Modabber in the announcement, emphasizing the need for clear, verifiable data to ensure transparent settlements. Parcl CEO Trevor Bacon described the partnership as a part of a “paradigm shift” in how markets convey views and signal truth.
This initiative represents an evolution in prediction markets, which have expanded from focusing primarily on elections and macroeconomic trends into new realms, including sports, pop culture, and now real estate.
This isn’t the first instance of betting platforms integrating property forecasts: in 2008, the UK betting exchange Betfair launched markets associated with a housing crash, and during the 2020 pandemic, its Australian segment followed suit as home prices fluctuated amid lockdowns.
