Blockchain and NFTs

The First NFT Home Just Sold for $175,000

Web3 and the Metaverse are staking a claim in real estate, and an NFT of a real-world home was sold for $175,000 over the weekend in Columbia, South Carolina.

October 28, 2022

NFTs continue to evolve daily. Roofstock, a real estate technology company, has sold a three-bedroom property as a non-fungible token (NFT) for $175,000 combining NFTs with physical property.

Now it is possible to buy IRL real estate along with metaverse property. The NFT holder has full rights to the property, and the sale on OpenSea showcases the house’s traits – the number of bedrooms, lot size, and property location.

The house was listed on RoofStock’s NFT marketplace, built on Origin Protocol.
“Cutting out intermediary fees is one of the pillars of Web3, and this is just the beginning. As more and more real estate is brought on-chain through NFTs, we will see more efficient and liquid markets for these traditionally illiquid assets,” said Matthew Liu, co-founder of Origin Protocol.

The rental property located at 149 Cottage Lake Way, Columbia was sold on the Roofstock onChain NFT marketplace by transferring the Home onChain identity to an Ethereum address owned by the house buyer Adam Slipakoff.

Roofstock explained that each rental property is owned by a limited liability company whose details are encoded as an NFT (Home onChain) on the Ethereum blockchain. The Home onChain identity can be easily transferred whenever ownership of the underlying property is changed.

“I never imagined I could buy and finance a house with a simple click, rather than going through the time-consuming and cumbersome traditional settlement and mortgage process,” said Adam Slipakoff, a seasoned real estate investor and the buyer of the property, in a press release.

According to Geoff Thompson, the Roofstock onChain Chief Blockchain Officer, web3 technology has helped the company develop a novel system where real estate investors can complete their deals seamlessly.

How Does NFT Home Ownership Work?

The LLC of the company that wishes to sell the home creates an NFT representing ownership of the home. The person who purchases that NFT then has ownership of the property. Though the purchase is digital, the ownership is very real — whoever owns the NFT owns the physical home in the real world.

This historic purchase marks the start of what could potentially be the future of real estate as NFTs, possibly opening doors to make crypto purchases for real estate a viable source of funding.

NFTs Going Beyond JPEGs

NFT usage has already reached different sectors of the economy. In the Sports industry, fans pay to acquire digital collectibles of their memorable sports events. As a result, the market for Sports NFTs has grown from about $1.3 billion in 2021 to over $2.6 billion by Q3, 2022.

Some big companies, like Starbucks, have also leveraged NFTs to reward their loyal customers. This leading coffee company allows customers to earn and trade NFTs with access to exclusive rewards.

Toxica creator Rona McGunn told CryptoSlate that NFTs have paved a new way for independent filmmakers to create and fund their passion without signing off their artistic freedom and copyright.