Virtual Real Estate Guide
By Nouhaila
One of the most ridiculous purchases in the metaverse was someone spending almost 500,000 USD for a plot of land in the Sandbox to become Snoop Dogg’s neighbor in the game… (it even got them recognition by Snoop Dogg through his tweet)
Andie | Wilder Spirit @Andie2682
Congratulations P-Ape Bought it：70,903.8222 ($458,038) https://t.co/TSp5fpTXr3
But what’s all the hype about? In a quick article, I’m going to be explaining all you need to know about web3 gaming + metaverse and show you exactly how and where to get started.
TL;DR
- Choosing the right land
- Risks involved with making the wrong purchase…
- How can you make money off metaverse land ownership?
- How to buy Decentraland LAND
- Some metaverses + games to look out for 👀
Choose the right LAND
Okay, okay… I get it! It all seems super sexy and attractive so you want to jump on the bandwagon as soon as you can. But you have to make sure you choose the right investment if you don’t want to fall off the wagon as fast as you get on…
So when choosing your next big investment, here is the crucial criteria that needs to be considered.
Location, location, location!
- As I proved to you earlier, people care about where they’re going to live. Buying land somewhere remote and without lots of users around drives plot value down. Therefore choosing a strategic place (i.e. next to a Plaza in Decentraland or Snoop Dogg 👀) can result in the price of your land parcel soaring up!
Land scarcity
- Since land only has value if there’s a limited supply of it and a hard-to-please demand for it, considering how scarce the land you’re buying is/will be is extremely crucial.
Content, utility, and content
- By content, I mean what is going on on these plots of land. Are there any cool experiences that are providing value to users and are driving foot traffic? If there aren’t then that means your plot of land is uninteresting, resulting in less demand for it.
Game popularity/community.
- You must’ve heard somewhere that the way to make loads of money is by buying low and selling high. That’s true… to some extent. Lots of small projects are small for a reason. This means that you’re not experienced, it’s better and more secure to trust the majority’s decisions. So investing in more popular games can often be the better decision.
Project team reliability
- Builders of certain games often have more control over the code than people think. So it’s important to make sure those people are trustworthy and public.
All this to mitigate the following risks:
- The project failing. Resulting in your land becoming near absolutely nothing. This often happens when people who misunderstand how a game works invest blindly, causing its value to soar… more than it’s worth. Which, ultimately, leads to its collapse.
- The project team often has power over all the components in the game. And there are some teams that build hype over their project simply to run away with their users’ money. This makes the project’s developer team reliability one of the most important things to consider when buying virtual land.
- Buying land in the wrong location can cause your investment’s value to depreciate. For example plots of lands that are near plazas and main roads in Decentraland usually end up having more value than those on the farther edge of the map.
- Web3 gets its reputation for a reason. There are lots of scammers out there waiting for the next web3 user to hack. So when talking about anything blockchain-related, it’s important to keep in mind ways of keeping our account and assets safe.
HODL, but what else?
What most people in the crypto and DeFi scene do is HODL. Meaning they buy an asset, sit tight, and wait for it to appreciate in value. But there are multiple ways to generate possibly even more value by a metaverse land purchase:
- Rent property
- A simple and obvious way to make passive money is by renting out your plots of land.
- Become a metaverse ‘real-estate agent’
- Flip your assets. Buy land plots when they’re low-value then sell once they’re at their higher/peak value. Gary Vee is one of the most famous NFT ‘flippers’ in the industry, he was able to make a fortune by buying NFT’s and selling them for a higher value.
- Create cool content/utility
- Once you own some land, a great way to make revenue from it is by building and providing some cool experiences and having people pay to use your land. (e.g. Online galleries, concerts, in-game businesses…etc.)
Buy DecentraLAND
Some steps that should be done beforehand are installing a crypto wallet, preferably Metamask. Buy some ETH. Then connecting to OpenSea.
- Go to Decentraland’s OpenSea profile where you can choose which plot of land you’d like to buy.
- By scrolling down, a few LANDs on sale will show up in this format:
- I chose the first LAND plot by random and this gives you all the information about the plot of land and its location, as well as its current owner, owner history, and lots more.
- Next, click “Buy now” and it will give you a MetaMask pop-up window asking you to either connect to MetaMask if you haven’t already, or confirm your transaction.
- For me, it says that I don’t have enough funds since my wallet doesn’t contain 3.3 ETH. But when you’re buying yours, all you need to do is confirm check out and the land is all yours!
And there you go! You just bought your first ever land in the metaverse! But, you might be asking… “how do I know where to start?”
Oooh, that one’s cool…
Crypto has been getting lots of traction over the last couple of years, and we’re starting to see amazing new projects coming out regularly. There are a few metaverses I think everyone should be looking out for
Now, it’s all up to you to explore the space and go however deep you’d like. I’m confident that there’s something for everyone in web3. From DeFi, P2E, NFT’s, DAO’s, and so much more 🙂
