How the Metaverse Will Shake Up the Real Estate World

The metaverse will not only transform the way we buy and sell homes and commercial property in the real world – we already have the opportunity to invest in virtual property in the metaverse!

The metaverse – a connected, persistent virtual universe where we will be able to work, play, learn, and socialize – will be a game-changer for the world of real estate.

Not only will it change the way real estate agents work and the way we buy and sell real-world properties, but we’ll also have the opportunity to purchase land in the metaverse itself.

Let’s take a look at how the technologies like AR and VR are already transforming real estate and look at some predictions for how the metaverse will shake up the real-world and virtual property investment worlds.

Immersive XR Real Estate Tours

Imagine eliminating the big hassles of house hunting, like driving around, wasting time looking at houses that aren’t a good fit, and trying to make sense of confusing floor plans. This will be possible in the metaverse, as you can tour houses from the comfort of your living room.

Immersive 3D real estate tours were already growing in popularity before the pandemic hit, and the pandemic accelerated this trend. As the world locked down and in-person home tours became an impossibility, real estate agents needed to get creative, and reached for immersive technologies to help their clients explore properties and make buying decisions.

In the metaverse, virtual tours will help to create a deeper emotional connection than looking at floor plans or photos, and will help buyers gain a deeper understanding of the pros and cons of a particular property.

Real estate agents are also using AR to virtually stage properties and provide instructions for tenants or house hunters. In the future, we may even put on AR glasses and see digital real estate agents guiding us around properties, telling us all about a house or apartment’s most appealing features.

Savills, a leading property advisor in the UK, was one of the first real estate agents to use VR to market properties. They created a customized immersive, interactive VR tour of a multi-million-pound mansion. BoxBrownie, RoOomy, and even Sotheby's are also using AR for digital staging. They digitally augment photos of empty rooms and fill them with furniture according to each client's personal tastes.

The Metaverse Land Rush

Celebrities like Snoop Dog and major companies like JP Morgan and Samsung are already buying plots of virtual land in the metaverse, and anyone can join them in buying their own land parcel.

People and businesses could buy real estate in the metaverse for one of two reasons:

1. They want to use it for something specific, like turn it into their own virtual “home” in the metaverse or use their plot of land as a place of business.
2. They are buying metaverse real estate as an investment, similar to Bitcoin ten years ago, or purchasing NFTs today. This is risky, but right now, the metaverse real estate market is booming – average prices increased by a factor of 10 over the past year.

Want to buy land in the metaverse? Start by getting hold of some cryptocurrencies. These three are popular choices:

• Ethereum
• SAND, the currency connected with the metaverse platform The Sandbox
• MANA, which is connected to the community-based Decentraland platform

Purchases of land in metaverse platforms can be made directly from the platforms themselves, and sales and ownership transactions are recorded via NFT transfers.

You can also buy metaverse real estate on the third-party resellers market, through platforms like opensea.io and nonfungible.com. These platforms allow sellers to list properties, name their prices and connect with buyers.

According to reports, metaverse land sales hit $500 million in 2021, and that number is expected to double in 2022.

Immersive experiences will become more and more common in the next few years in the real estate world. Real-world buyers will be able to test drive properties without leaving home via sophisticated immersive experiences, and digital investors will be able to invest in property in the metaverse.