26/11/2021 Real Estate NFTs: How It Began

re-nft-for-sale-2

NFT FOR SALE

Propy Inc.

June 9th: I am in a hotel room in NYC: I am nervously staring at the screen of my small, rose gold colored computer. Thankfully, the WiFi is working well, − which is always an unknown at a hotel. In one hour, an irrevocable auction online will start. Truthfully, I have no idea what will happen.

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It all started in April this year, when I wrote an article sharingthe ideathat real estate is the perfect asset to convert into a Non-Fungible Token (NFT). This led to a life-changing collaboration with other innovative individuals, united to build something transformative.

I argued at the time that the reason a real estate property was the perfect candidate for an NFT was that it alreadybehaves likea digital assetin many ways. NFTing one provides numerous benefits, such as instantaneous settlement, and a simplified overall transaction process - exactly what young people who grew up with smart phones desire. Real estate transactions are long, tedious and archaic. I was hoping to show it was possible to change.

We have already seen a new generation of home buyers looking for other solutions beyond the status quo. Unaccustomed to the costly and lengthy, drawn-out process of home-buying, with its reliance on outdated methods of transacting business and multiple middlemen, they are demanding a transparent, “one-click” process that is quick, efficient, and reflective of the era they live in. They’d rather not buy a home than get into a hideous process.

After the article was published, I received many inquiries from real estate investors, agents, homebuyers, venture capitalists and coders asking how they could get involved. I was convinced that consumers were ready for this innovation, just like they were ready to buy art on blockchain. So I decided that it was time to discover how to NFT a property.

We’ve been working on this for years but there were remaining challenges that we needed to solve:

  • Creating the actual NFT
  • Wrapping the NFT within the U.S. legal framework
  • Inventing the “know your customer” process since most art NFT transactions are anonymous

We solved the NFT creation issues by switching the property ownership from individual ownership to a US-based legal entity. Doing so enabled us to simply transfer ownership of the entity via NFT, which automatically transferred ownership to the property. And, as an added benefit, because the entity held the property title, there was no need to record the title again in the county − saving significant time and money.




Then we developed a protocol that would transfer an asset from one wallet to another, collect personal names, and complete simple background checks − all of which ensured the transaction’s integrity.

Having all challenges resolved, we found the perfect property to NFT — a studio apartment, that was owned by a US-based legal entity. It was also the first cryptocurrency property purchased via smart contracts in 2017. Purchased by Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch and Arrington Capital, the NFT included the apartment and a piece of art by a famous local street artist Chizz.

With the NFT created, we scheduled a 24-hour auction on June 9th, 2021. While I was at first worried that we wouldn’t have bidders, over 40 bids were placed in Ethereum cryptocurrency. The winner was a first-time home-buyer − a millenial from Silicon Valley. After a stressful 24 hours plus six, 15-min extensions, sitting in the same hotel, ordering room service to not skip a minute from the online miracle, I was relieved − it was all successful. Technology worked. People wanted this asset.

The new NFT owner was thrilled with the process − it took only 22 minutes to transfer ownership − a far cry from his experience trying to buy a home in the Bay Area, a process he found far too complicated, so he never did. I learned about his experience after he kindly agreed to have a zoom call after the sale. He shared his plans to rent out the apartment as a historical one, and told me that he had been ready to pay double the price for this asset.

NFT or not, Millenials and Gen Z are already purchasing high-value assets such as expensive avatars, or automobiles online. They expect the same ease and transparency when buying real estate. However, higher levels of security and more data integrity are necessary to circumvent wire and other forms of cyber fraud common in such transactions. Real estate settlement on an immutable blockchain using NFT technology could very well be the solution these new generations demand.

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, speaking at the Milken Institute’s 2021 Global Conference, said that settlement on blockchain is applicable in many industries including real estate for “any transaction that requires someone to commute the trust between the transaction” [ participants].

People who will help consumers to NFT their homes could be entitled to royalty fees paid to their digital wallets automatically. These “NFT Miners” (similar to cryptocurrency miners) can receive small royalties for every future purchase as compensation for putting all of the data and the property to make it transferable (title report, inspection reports, disclosures ect).

Can the NFTrevolutionize the real estate industry? I say absolutely! We are not just seeing interest rise amongst younger buyers and sellers and tech-savvy crypto enthusiasts who want to diversify their portfolios.

Agents and brokers who are also interested in setting themselves apart from the competition are actively learning and engaging in the crypto/NFT/blockchain space. Here’s what Mauricio Umansky, CEO at The Agency shared with me when I asked his opinion about real estate NFTs at the recent Inman Real Estate Connect Conference, “As clients become more educated about NFTs, there is growing interest in creating NFT real estate with real property. Changes in technology always align with changes in the real estate industry and at the minimum, this is a novel marketing tool to reach an audience interested in the metaverse. On the other hand, it can revolutionize our concept of real estate commodity and what clients will come to expect in a transaction. I believe NFTs will bring significant change to our industry."

Arts

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliakarayaneva/2021/11/24/real-estate-nfts-how-it-began/?sh=85f77ee3b123

Interesting NFTs
The Scion
A young figure caught in a moment of distraction, aware only ephemerally of his unconscious being, as it engages in psychological and psychedelic layer spaces. His right arm casually cradles a moray eel; the figure is comfortable but not truly aware of the potentials for danger in such negligence. His shirt reads “Bello” in Pokemon style font, harkening back to a childhood straddling the millennial threshold. To his right side, out of the unconscious deep, shrouded alien heads propagate as a fractal totem, each new iteration a more sophisticated rendering of emotional masking over the cold mystery of the greys. As the scion of the Budgie-Sattva, the young man, in his distraction, is also simultaneously aware of higher levels of self discovery. To his left a psychological topology sets beneath the oracle side of an 8 ball ,hovering; its message a purest concept of acceptance. The “Scion” lettering is in 80’s HeMan style bold declaration. The lower right side of the painting is like a hybrid of melon, feathers, and seeds. The crystals in the background bring light; conducted, refracted, reflected, and dispersed, to balance the dark shadow of the figure’s physical body. The aura of the scion succeeds in layers to point, with a finger, and the crown chakra, toward a center of a mandala existing as nigh pure application of strokes, in essence painterly abstraction, but also revealing hints of the Aura of migraine, and the bi-hemispherical nature of the brain–noting concerns of the possibility of inherited mental disease. Yet the flourish of chakra as it sets against that center is robust, active, coherent, and reveling against all fear. Fundamentally, the piece speaks to the activation of one’s potential to begin to “Know Thyself”, and find greater awareness out of the enigmas of the mind–as an inculcated seed given to the rich soil of one’s own birthright.
Sweet Virgin Rare Gens
Good day! I'm Sweet Virgin Rare Gens. My friends describe me as tantalizing and gullible. I once made a rabbit pester. Maybe you and I can be partners in crime.
Reflection
#XCOPY #GIF #screen #time #mirror
Poem by Motoyoshi Shinno, from the series One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, Explained by the Nurse
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) Poem by Motoyoshi Shinno, from the series One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, Explained by the Nurse late 1830s - Japan
Alex in Wonderland
A figure, Alex, stands mostly naked in the midst of a physical and psychological maelstrom. He is clad only in nostalgic 80’s era socks, on a tenuous island between active waters and a variety of shark denizens. Sharks on the right side of the image are all beached, including a shark with a quartz crystal snout, an orange shark wrapped in a life buoy, and a shark further in the distance wearing an 80’s style shirt with the number “88”. On the left side is the largest shark, wearing bright glossy red lipstick and brandishing prominent teeth with braces. She is cordoned off from the figure by a roped float divider, and within her thought bubble is a warning symbol. Behind the figure, hovering in the air, are Grey aliens emerging from the distance, out of a series of elliptical UFO shaped interdimensional membranes. The Greys take on the visual form of spermazoa ostensibly impregnating the interdimensional thresholds. As is typical, these Greys inhabit a zone just behind the unconscious topology of Alex’s dissociative mind. Though Alex’s bottom half is representative, his top half mutates into a psychological cornucopia. In a manner akin to “Auto-Erotic Sphinx”, a predecessor work, the figure has self suctioned—an act of sensual infatuation, enjoyment, and exploration. Upward exists the figure’s primary conscious eye, adorned with a revolutionary beret emblazoned with a Bitcoin badge. The figure’s summit features the nose of a fighter jet facing off against video game Bullet Bills, one of whom is marked by a communist North Korean star. A cropped section of a UFO observes the contest. Alex’s mind branches both left and right. To the left is more singular embodied consciousness, manifesting two eyes and a Ganesh trunk grasping crayons. The right branch dissociates upward diagonally, emerging into an array of eyes, faces, teeth, tail, a unicorn horn, and much more—all of which participate in expressing his unconscious being; a democracy of psychic factions representing thought impressions and associations. All illumination and darkness– fernal, infernal, high consciousness and corporeal underbelly–reside in this realm. In the distance are relatively languid, light clouds, and against the firmament hovers a colossal distant eye peering over the scene and far beyond. This painting possesses underlying genetic traits with previous works such as “Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys”, “Dionysus”, and “Fuku-Shiva”. The work serves also as a nod to an earlier period of art inspiration during late teens and early twenties— born out of the nakedness, vulnerability, curiosity, and wonder inherent to coming of age and all subsequent psychedelic revelation.