Someone just bought an NFT of a house for $175k and everyone is asking why
A three-bed house in South Carolina has been sold as an NFT (non-fungible token) to a real estate investor for $175,000.
The sale of the house was paid for with USD Coins – a digital stablecoin pegged to the US dollar – through the NFT marketplace Roofstock onChain.
“I never imagined that I could buy and finance a house with a single click, instead of going through the time-consuming and cumbersome traditional settlement and mortgage process,” said Adam Slipakoff, an experienced real estate investor and the buyer of the property, in a press release.
“Instead of waiting months for drawings, appraisals, title searches and deed preparation, I was able to purchase a fully home insured, rental ready property with one click.”
Getty
Twitter users pounced on the news of the crypto-based purchase, questioning its legitimacy. User Weezie1317 said: “Can’t wait for the trial on this.”
@NeaCais simply said, “Worst idea ever.” LA Realtor ArmandoCenturus said, “As a realtor, this shocks me.”
This house sold like a real word NFT for $175,000 over the weekend.
The way it works:
– The LLC takes ownership of the property
– They tokenize the property and create an NFT that represents ownership of the house
– Holding NFT gives you ownership of the house itself pic.twitter.com/fuUl3oGCHx— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) 18 October 2022
Some users felt confused about the process in the long run. Others were skeptical about the legitimacy of the sale as apparently no title was transferred to the buyer.
BenjiSmeeth said: “Too bad no laws exist around this. You’d still need a deed to actually legally own this house.”
Others were more optimistic. ClearwayCapital said: “I always thought of NFTs as a digital ownership title. It has a bright future with cars, livestock, cattle, traditional art, wine, basically anything. Real estate is the most inefficient, because in this case e.g. . there are two tiers of titles.”
This South Carolina home is not the first property to be purchased as an NFT. A four-bedroom home in Florida was purchased earlier in 2022 for $653,000.
NFTs are typically used to sell digital collectibles – such as art and music. The ownership of these NFTs is transferred and verified through the blockchain – a decentralized and secured log on the internet.
The LLC to the company that sold the home creates an NFT that represents the ownership of the home, and the person who buys that NFT then has ownership of the property.
Although the purchase is digital, the ownership is very real, as whoever owns the NFT now owns the physical home in the real world.
The historic purchase marks the start of what could potentially be the future of real estate as NFTs, possibly opening doors to making crypto purchases for real estate a viable source of funding.
