Estate agency launches first UK property EVER to be sold in real and meta worlds
Hampton Hall in Surrey, which is on the market at £29 million, is being sold both as a physical home but also an NFT in the digital 'metaverse'.
Fine and Country is to launch what is believed to be the first luxury home to be sold simultaneously both as a physical property and a digital or ‘meta’ version via a non-fungible token or NFT.
The agency has previously said it wanted to begin offering upmarket vendors the possibility to sell their home twice in this way.
Hampton Hall in Oxshott has yet to be built but is being sold by the estate agency as a package including land in the footballer favourite of Oxshott in Surrey, for £29 million.
This huge asking price buys 29,116 square feet of space, 11 bedrooms, ten reception rooms and a 380ft frontage with Corinthian fluted columns all in a neo-Palladian style.
But what makes the home a likely world first is that the purchaser can also buy its online counterpart in the form of an NFT.
This is essentially a version of the house in the ‘Metaverse’ that Facebook is so keen on at the moment, which can be likened – at the moment – as a budget version of the Matrix portrayed in the Keanu Reeves film.
Metaverse billions
Fine & Country won’t reveal how much the NFT version of Hampton Hall will cost, but this is more than a stunt – big tech is pouring billions of pounds into populating the ‘meta world’.
“While Hampton Hall might be among the first, I believe it certainly won’t be one of the last super-prime properties to be launched as an NFT, as there are several leading agents in the US who are openly working on huge projects,” says Sean Barrett (pictured), Managing Director of Fine & Country Richmond.
Purchasing NFTs and buying property within the metaverse has gained traction recently among early-adopter investors looking for a way to further diversify their investment portfolios.
Sean is correct – for those not in the know take a look at Natalia Karayaneva’s company Propy, they have been around some time and already transacted over a 1,000 properties utilising the higher stages of blockchain technology. Last October they were ramping up ways to give agents the ability to earn cryptocurrency tokens and personal NFTs on the Propy platform.
For those not following all of this, technology and adoption of doing things differently by younger people, may at a stroke leave agents behind.
Or as Natalie puts it, ‘As cryptocurrency becomes more popular amongst younger buyers and sellers, agents need a solution to help them, Propy makes the process easy – and we can even help clients sell their home as an NFT, significantly reducing the overall closing time and costs vs. a traditional sale.’ Sounds like science fiction – maybe look who is sitting on that company’s board. They are no-one’s fool.