Gerry Palmers Tech 01.10.2022 20:Jan PM EST

Metaverse Real Estate Could Be the Next Big Thing in 2022: Is NFT Land a Good Investment?

Real estate has been a lucrative, booming business depending on how the economy runs. But what if you turned the trade into the metaverse, does it stay that rewarding, viable or even reasonable?

Believe it or not, a metaverse real estate is actually happening, and trading them as NFT land has been worth millions. There have been enormous investments in virtual land in the metaverse lately, with even the biggest players throwing their hats into the emerging arena.

These businesses across industries, including tech, traditional financial, crypto and real estate, have been buying land on digital platforms such as The Sandbox and Decentraland. Top executives from these firms have begun charting business plans for their firms thriving in the virtual metaverse conjured up by game developers holed up in their rooms.

PwC, Prager Metis Buys Virtual Properties for Emerging Metaverse Clients

Accounting firms PricewaterhouseCoopers and Prager Metis International LLC have started these metaverse real estate investments, The Wall Street Journal reported. PwC purchased a virtual land at an undisclosed amount at The Sandbox, while Prager Metis acquired a site on Decentraland that houses a three story property for about $35,000 in December last year.

Even celebrities are into the spree, with rapper Snoop Dogg reportedly developing his "Snoopverse" in The Sandbox, recently purchasing a plot of land worth $450,000, Crypto News disclosed in a report.

Meanwhile, a metaverse-focused real estate company, Metaverse Group, also bought virtual land on the Decentraland platform for $2.43 million.

For those who have mostly question marks on their heads with what they are reading, the metaverse these companies are seemingly crazy about represents a new wave of connected worlds that has been massive trend recently. Even Facebook rebranded its parent company to Meta to go with this incredible trend.

Metaverse as an Emerging, Thriving World to Socialize, Play, Work, Learn

This metaverse refers to those linked virtual three-dimensional worlds, wherein real and digital worlds mesh through such innovations as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). People enter this immersive environment through such devices as VR headsets, AR glasses and smartphone apps.

Users are set to interact and thrive in the metaverse as digital avatars, as they explore the world and create content. The metaverse is set to become a collaborative virtual environment, wherein inhabitants can socialize, play, work and learn.

Several metaverses are already existing, including those in virtual gaming platforms The Sandbox and Decentraland. Just like how a website forms part of the two-dimensional World Wide Web, these metaverses should form part of a grander, widely connected metaverse.

As people thrive in the metaverse as virtual inhabitants, they would naturally do a lot of activities in the environment. One such activity is buying and selling items, such as parcels of virtual land.

Trading metaverse real estate can actually bear fruit through non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which is the considered as the primary method in metaverse transactions, particularly in monetization and exchanging value.

Better known as digital assets that are mainly pieces of digital art, such as videos, images, music or 3D objects, NFTs can also constitute virtual land. There are metaverse platforms, such as OpenSea, wherein users can purchase and trade plots of land or virtual houses as NFTs.

To illustrate how lucrative trading real estate as NFTs is, investment fund Republic Realm spent a reported $900,000 to purchase an NFT representing a virtual plot of land in Decentraland. NFT sales data as per DappRadar revealed that the transaction has been the most expensive NFT land purchase in Decentraland.

Will it be a worthy investment? It seems the returns could be massive in the near-term, especially in 2022 when the metaverse further rolls out.