As physical destinations are getting more pricey at a record high, there is increased patronage for tourism and adventures for real estate properties in the metaverse. They are equally experiencing more visits and traffic from persons interested in trying out what the metaverse has to offer. From luxurious houses to spectacular environments, the metaverse has become a sought-after ecosystem, and the fact that it is virtual makes it all the more intriguing.
Houses in simulated real estate are the next digital jackpot, which is why some popular brands are acquiring and constructing retail outlets for their clients in the metaverse. The housing value trajectory in some of the top metaverses has increased exponentially recently, showing how competitive the virtual housing market has become.
Metaverse real estate investors are now spending thousands to millions of dollars for a portion of metaverse assets like houses and lands, proving that the industry is starting on a good radar and is valuable.
This article is a guide to setting up your house in the metaverse and will also tell you everything you need to know about buying a house in the metaverse.
Buying a House in The Metaverse
Since the introduction of metaverse in the crypto industry, SandBox, a crypto project, attracted people who took an interest and are already investing in the ecosystem. Decentraland, its counterpart, is a blockchain-based metaverse game that has attracted technology giants to actively acquiring properties on Decentraland.
Buying a house in the metaverse is not a tedious task but only requires that investors have some MANA or SAND tokens in their Metamask wallet to enable them to make the purchase. These MANA or SAND tokens, the native tokens of Decentraland and SandBox, can be purchased on Coinbase, KuCoin, or Binance and transferred to your Metamask wallet.
Tip: When buying a house in the metaverse, remember that location is as essential as it is in the actual world. Having houses near plazas and neighborhoods is worth more than houses located at the borders.
How to Buy a House in The Metaverse
Before you proceed to buy a house in the metaverse, ensure that your metamask wallet has substantial tokens of the platform you wish to buy from to allow you to make a purchase. When done, go ahead to any metaverse platforms to buy the house.
How to Buy a House in Decentraland:
- Visit www.decentraland.org/
- On the menu, scroll down and select Start Browsing.
- Select Sign In, and click on Connect.
- Select Metamask from the drop-down menu so that the website can access the money in your wallet.
Note: If a "Could not connect to wallet" message pops out on your screen, open Google Chrome and select the Metamask icon. Click on Next, and then Connect.
- Go to the top-left corner of the website and click on "House." The platform will direct you to a page with a list of houses and their pictures.
- Select a house that meets your needs in terms of price and location.
- Click on Buy and follow the prompts that will direct you to the house's location.
How to Buy a House in Sandbox:
On sandbox, housing prices differ depending on the location of the house in the metaverse - there are cheaper houses and expensive ones.
To buy a house on the sandbox platform, do the following:
- Visit www.sandbox.game/en/
- Select Market from the menu.
- Scroll to NFT Category and click on Houses on the panel. Alternatively, type "House" as a keyword on the search button.
- Select the best filter for your requirements. (i.e., Newest, Lowest Price, Oldest, Highest Price).
- Choose the house that appeals to you and click on Buy.
- When you click Buy, OpenSea (an NFT marketplace) will open and take you to the house listing on the platform. Click on the wallet icon to connect your Metamask wallet to OpenSea.
- Keep track of the highest bid because you'll need to make an offer higher than that to get the seller's attention. Make an offer by clicking "Make Offer."
- Subsequently, enter the amount of SAND you'd like to bid (ensure that you have sufficient SAND in your Metamask wallet, or you'll get an error message saying, "Not enough SAND to make an offer").
Note: You can purchase SAND on KuCoin, Binance, or any other exchange that sells crypto and send it to your Metamask wallet.
- Choose the duration of your offer: 3 days, one week, or one month - you can choose your date if you wish. Make an offer by clicking "Make Offer."
- Your Metamask wallet will appear, and you will get an instruction to "Sign," which validates your intention to place a bid on the OpenSea listing. Your offer will show in the Offers section. You'll be automatically notified through email if your offer is accepted.
Where to Buy a House in The Metaverse
Decentraland and SandBox are the top metaverse sites where you can buy a house or other real estate properties. You have to install the Metamask wallet app, a virtual wallet for digital assets like cryptocurrency, or download the Metamask Chrome extension to use both platforms.
Fund the wallet with either Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies: MANA for the Decentraland platform or SAND for SandBox.
How to Set Up Your House in The Metaverse
To set up your house in the metaverse, you have to buy land first if you don't own one. You can do that by registering on the relevant metaverse platform and buying from a seller. Otherwise, you can buy from various real estate agents on the metaverse who deal in virtual land. They can also help you set up the house or share house building plans with you.
Also, you can quickly build a house in decentraland using the builder feature on the metaverse - a drag and drop tool that is easy to navigate for people who cannot create objects using other software. Aside from that, you can use other software to create objects and import them into the metaverse as a .glTF or .glb.
Conclusion
Although metaverse houses are in vogue, investing in them is nevertheless a risky minefield to navigate. The metaverse digital housing market can depreciate at any moment, leaving you with a devalued virtual house. It would help if you did your own research before investing, use funds you won't need soon and can easily forfeit.
