Istanbul Real Estate in the Metaverse

By Justin Mays:

Istanbul Real Estate Metaverse

Just as we wrapped our heads around crypto and Non-fungible tokens (NFT), the Metaverse entered our lexicon last fall with a bang. For those of us interested in real estate the metaverse is a fascinating way to invest in virtual property. The metaverse is a unified virtual world where users can interact with each other and leverage human-computer interactions to exchange information.  The virtual real estate market is booming and millions of dollars have been invested as a result this new technology has the potential to transform how real estate operates as we try to shift the way we understand physical goods to the virtual world. Reimaging real-world activities in the metaverse allow for monetization in digital real estate.

 Virtual Real Estate

Virtual Real Estate is a collective space where users can play, build, socialize, attend meetings, attend virtual concerts, do countless virtual activities own, and monetize their virtual experience. Owners of the property have the ability to develop, lease, sell or use their real estate however they want. Virtual real estate boomed in late 2021  and prices began to skyrocket in 2022 and some up to 15.000 USD land tokens in 2022.

How to Buy Virtual Real Estate

To access the metaverse there are four main metaverse sites: The Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxers, and Somnium Space. Once you chose your platform, you can buy and sell parcels - the digital real estate segments - using the platform’s cryptocurrency of choice. The blockchain is used to assign digital assets with non-fungible values. Blockchain technology creates trust and transparency when making transactions. Digital real estate is traded as NFTs and virtual reality (VR) allows buyers to invest in digital land that they can view in 3-D form and interact with other users, although it is not a tangible asset.

NFTs are secure, and cannot be copied or stolen as there is only one but can be transferred as with any other asset. The metaverse allows for a wider pool of people around the world to invest in real estate, parcels come in all shapes and sizes and are available on a variety of platforms. If you have a crypto wallet there are no barriers to who can invest. It is a high-risk investment partially because of the cryptocurrencies that are used to buy NFTs that forward-thinking people and companies-like Nike and Walmart- are flocking to and can result in real gains but also in long-term losses.

Metaverse in Real Estate Industry

Redefining the value of land, the metaverse borrows on two of the three factors that real physical land is valued upon, size and location. The real utility is important when buying physical land but less important in the metaverse because one will never inhabit or visit the land in person, people buy virtual land to develop it or lease it out.  Not unlike the real world, Turkey has been a hot real estate market to invest in with Istanbul being the most popular city.

The emergence of digital real estate in the metaverse presents an exceptional chance for the commercial real estate industry. Some real estate companies are taking advantage of a metaverse in order to save time and money for their customers by performing 360 degrees virtual tours of properties and saving traveling time for their clients who will in turn buy online. 

Terra Zero Technologies was one of the companies that started offering mortgage loans for the purchase of virtual real estate. The company will hold the title of the property until the loan is repaid and the NFT is transferred to the borrower. Big companies which include J.P Morgan Chase, Nike, Adidas, Gap, Hulu, and Verizon have also started investing in virtual real estate.

According to Halkbank, the metaverse platform sold over 20 thousand parcels in Turkey of which more than 11 thousand parcels were sold in Istanbul. All of virtual Turkey’s most valuable land has been purchased and prices in Istanbul can range from 200 TL to 20 thousand TL. The most popular parcels in Istanbul mirror the most in-demand areas in real life, including Ortakoy, Bebek, Nisantasi, Kadikoy, and Istiklal Street in Taksim.