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Fine & Country is believed to be the first estate agency in the world to make a move into the ‘Metaverse’ digital property market.
The firm’s office in Portugal wants to hook up with Exclusible, an NFT platform for luxury brands where users can access the property world of the Metaverse – a version of the internet that you experience through an avatar backed by Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
NFT stands for ‘non-fungible tokens’, which are individual digital tokens – whereas bitcoin is an identical digital token – meaning that investors can diversify their property investment portfolio in a virtual world.
Fine & Country aims to raise the brand’s profile as well as attract new investors who would hopefully then go on to buy property with the firm in the real world.
Metaverse money
It believes that along with cryptocurrency dealers and digital nomads, high-net worth tech-savvy investors have become a significant market segment for the business and that the Metaverse is a good way of engaging with them.
Exclusible CEO Thibault Launay wants to join forces with the agent and says: “We think it makes perfect sense for real estate funds and family offices to allocate up to 5% of their portfolio to Metaverse such as The Sandbox or Decentraland. We are also excited that a traditional estate agency is considering joining forces with us which will be a new channel of acquisition for us.”
Director of Fine & Country Portugal, Pico Durão (pictured), adds that investors can have fun in this new and super fast-growing digital property market of the Metaverse.
“It is a new world where you have the opportunity to go back in time to the likes of Manhattan Island or Mayfair London when they were Green Field undeveloped sites; an opportunity to buy, develop and sell what will become some of the most prestigious addresses in the world.”
The Metaverse is closer than everyone thinks, there are literally hundreds of new property technology companies, incorporating it into their offerings across the globe. The ‘gamification’ of the twilight world, is now becoming the new commerce market place, and with the property asset being the largest player – it is obvious that this will play into this sector.
The pandemic also is pushing the need to connect and explore, in a non-face to face platform, 2022 is upon us – so too will be some surprising pushes in the tech space, which doubles it reach annually.
Whilst I’m a tech fan I’m also a realist. The current hype exceeds the tech. Until the user experience goes beyond gaming this is still only something for a niche audience as suggested by F&C.
However as far as investment goes I’d put this in the “throwaway money” category….