Virtual Real Estate Sells for $4.3 Million!

Prices for virtual real estate set a new milestone Tuesday, with one company buying property in The Sandbox metaverse for a whopping $4.3 million.

Republic Realm, which invests in and develops virtual real estate and other digital assets, purchased the land from Atari SA, marking the biggest metaverse property sale to date.

This new record smashed the previous one set just last week by Metaverse Group when it

purchased a plot of digital land for 618,000 mana, approximately $2.43 million. The land is set in the so-called fashion district of Decentraland, an online environment.

These new milestones underscore the increasing appetite for stakes in the metaverse. The metaverse is an online space of interconnected 3D worlds in which people can socialize, work, shop, and play games. Crypto asset management firm, Grayscale, has said the metaverse holds a $1 trillion-a-year revenue opportunity.

Republic Realm owns about 2,500 plots of digital land across 19 worlds, according to WSJ. The company sometimes decides to sit on vacant metaverse property and wait for it to appreciate. Republic Realm will also pay an architect to design virtual homes or malls and then hire a game developer to build them.

Skeptics might find it bizarre to spend any amount of money on intangible property. However, Andrew Kiguel, the chief executive officer at Tokens.com, told the Financial Post there are valid uses for virtual properties.

"It's the foot traffic," Kiguel said. "You might want to build a house to invite friends over. You can decorate the walls with your NFTs, it's a way of socializing…. COVID drove a lot of this: when the world shut down, people turned to their computers as a means of interacting with people, and so the foot traffic in the metaverse continues to grow at a very high rate."

Kiguel expects more users to flock to the metaverse space with this growing adoption and promotion among brands and celebrities.

“The possibilities are endless. There’s museums and galleries, if you want to go in and see some of the most expensive NFTs sold in the world … you can go to Decentraland,” Kiguel said. “So, the possibilities are really endless.”