And you thought that The Matrix, Tron, Ready Player One and many others like them are simply just some SiFi Movies and/or someone’s Hollywood Big Screen Motion Picture fantasy.
The truth is that Metaverse, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality are not a thing of the future anymore. They are here right now. Actually, the technology has been here since the late 80s, but the general public did not catch up to it until recently.
If you like documentaries, there is an awesome short documentary called Year Million currently streaming on Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and a few other streaming apps. This gives you a very clear understanding of how the technology works and where we are so far and which direction we are heading.
In March, Gabe Sierra, a contractor whose family has been in the construction business for more than 30 years, will take offers for his latest creation: an 11,000-square-foot mansion with seven bedrooms and a pool in Pinecrest, Miami. “LA Times Posts”
To sweeten the deal, he’s throwing in the same house and a King Kong-size bright green gorilla that scales downtown skyscrapers and stalks the streets of South Florida.
The twin home is in the metaverse — a catchall phrase for the growing conglomerate of immersive digital worlds where avatars work, play, and purchase goods. Pixelated parcels of land are being bought, sold, and built upon in a market now worth $1.4 billion, making the metaverse a new frontier for real estate builders and investors.
Mr. Sierra, an avid gamer who uses a purple gorilla as one of his avatars, paid $10,000 for a digital parcel in an online world called the Sandbox, and then partnered with Voxel Architects, an architecture firm specializing in virtual 3-D properties, to build the digital home to pair with the real thing. It all hits the auction block in March, and he’s hoping for a sale price of around $10 million.
Metaverse Real Estate, Who Knew!
To the greatest extent possible, Mr. Sierra strives to blend the lines between physical and digital in Meta Residence One. A real-world build is paired with a digital expansion. “As these technologies become more immersive, it’s going to make a lot more sense.”
Metaverse real estate operates similarly to real-world real estate, where prices fluctuate based on supply and demand. In most virtual gaming universes, the number of parcels is already set, so, as the number of buyers increases, so do the prices.
Just like real-world real estate, metaverse real estate is priced according to supply and demand. Although the internet itself is limitless, most virtual gaming universes are already divided into a limited number of parcels, so as the number of buyers increases, the prices rise.
Financial transactions in the metaverse are handled in cryptocurrency and powered by blockchain, a digitally distributed ledger that eliminates third parties like banks. By 2026, the metaverse real estate market is expected to grow by $5.37 billion despite the implosion of FTX.
In the Sandbox, one of the most popular metaverse worlds and where Mr. Sierra made his $10,000 purchase, much of the virtual land rush has been fueled by global corporations such as Adidas, Atari, and Warner Music Group, all of which have purchased land to create entertainment, sell goods, establish virtual headquarters, and host immersive events.
“Land is becoming the infrastructure of the metaverse,” said Sandbox cofounder Sebastien Borget. The actors in this ecosystem develop and offer services to help people find the right land, buy the right land, and understand its value.
Virtual real estate didn’t take off until late 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg announced the rebranding of Facebook to Meta, a hyper-public bet on the future of the next digital frontier.
Metaverses have been around since 2003 when Second Life emerged as a three-dimensional virtual world platform.
Metaverse land sales have climbed into the seven figures since then, including a $2.4 million property purchased in Decentraland in November 2021 and a $1.65 million property in Otherside two months later.
Brick-and-mortar builders are also tapping into the metaverse for new customer acquisition. One of the largest homebuilders in the country, KB Home, recently opened three model homes in Decentraland where potential buyers can explore customization options.
Do not miss the wave of Metaverse Real Estate Reality
The truth is, the metaverse is as real as the real world if that makes any sense. I guess what I am trying to say is that it exists and we are connected to it in one way or another. If you want to get a piece of the pie in the Metrix digital world, you better hurry up before it too becomes inhumanly and unrealistically expensive.
Nevertheless, a tangible Real Estate Parcel is still my way to go!
As a professional and ethical state-licensed agent, my fiduciary duty is to always act in the best interest of my clients. I can only give you my professional advice, suggestion, guidance, and opinion, of course, limited to the code of conduct laws given to me by the state governing agency, but at the end of the day, you are the final decision maker and I must respect your final decision.
