(Photo by Sarah Pflug from Burst)

We always thought real estate was a tangible asset, but some recent news has us rethinking even the most basic real estate fundamentals due to virtual real estate investments. Because — hold on to your hats! — some of the latest real estate investments aren’t something you can physically touch or live in at all. 

While prices for homes and land are still robust, it seems the sale of virtual land is equally as enthralling. Yes, there’s recently been a record-breaking buy of some non-existent land!

Looking at Virtual Real Estate Investments

The current virtual property sales record was broken in Decentraland on Thursday, June 17, 2021.

Decentraland is a virtual place that exists in a blockchain-based online world. It isn’t a game exactly, but an online place where users can purchase, build, and monetize virtual reality applications — like virtual land which they can control and manage, even if they can never move in to their homes of or visit their land physically.

The currency used to purchase land in Decentraland isn’t tangible either. Here, ownership of virtual land is bought and sold in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). 

An NFT is a particular crypto asset — a unit of data actually — which only represents the object, like a photo, video, audio, or another type of digital file, and records the ownership status of that digital item on blockchain. Decentraland’s own cryptocurrency, the NFT, is called MANA. 

Decentraland is made up of 259 units or “parcels” of land that are sold by virtual acres or portions of virtual acres. What do owners do with all of their non-physical space? The same things they do in physical ones! In virtual worlds, people like to display their NFT art collections, socialize and walk around with friends, visit buildings that others have created on their land, and attend events “together.” 

And sales are surging! 

The price and urgency of blockchain-based virtual real estate investments has mirrored that of the real estate market in real life. Though this is especially true since early 2021, when NFT’s really started to be so wildly popular in currency markets. 

The recent Decentraland sale was a record purchase for the “place,” though it may not be an anomaly moving forward. In another blockchain-based virtual world, The Sandbox, a patch of virtual real estate investments sold for around $650,000 earlier in the same month. And in Somnium Space, another virtual venue, an estate recently sold for $500,000!

Virtual real estate investments fund called Republic Realm purchased the patch of virtual land in Decentraland, buying it for more than $900,000. The land actually cost 1,295,000 MANA — which happened to be worth $913,228.2 at the time of sale. 

This is the most expensive purchase of NFT land to date, as well as the largest land purchase in Decentraland in terms of virtual size, all for a plot of virtual real estate investments that makes up 66,304 virtual square meters (16 virtual acres).

Real estate remains one of the most exciting assets and continues to be a strong investment. Though now this “tangible” asset is taking off into exciting new realms while reaching record-breaking levels. While this might not be your cup of tea, it could be something for the future. However, there is still plenty of actual real estate to invest in throughout NoVa.

While LIST WITH ELIZABETH® can’t sell you a patch of land in Decentraland (yet!), we’d love to help you find your dream home in a place you can actually live! Contact us to find out more about properties available in real life in some of the best areas in Northern Virginia.