Disputes happen frequently, houses are seized, not bought outight, people die and ownership needs to be switched, any other number of scenarios might occur... on the flip side, what happens when a wallet containing the house is compromised? When you start to go down this line of thought, delegation to some authority begins to make sense...

To be honest, I found that every one of the interactions in the story has a similar set of limitations or problems. The whole thing reads as though it's been written by someone who's never actually been out in the world and interacted with people. Every one of the points can be pretty much countered with the same "OK, but what if something goes wrong with the transaction, or if someone wants to act in bad faith?"

To me this is the biggest fundamental flaw with unregulated cryptocurrencies - there are already a significant number of bad actors who are stealing coins but no "fix" (indeed this is by design) - other than calling the victims idiots and suggesting they act differently next time.

Unfortunately in the author's world, you're broke, homeless, and in every other way possible, SOL.