Moving to the metaverse: Talking Tech podcast

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Hey there, listeners. Mike Snider here and welcome back to Talking Tech. Brett Molina is out today. Joining us is my USA Today colleague, Terry Collins. Welcome Terry.

Hey Mike, thanks for having me on. Again, I appreciate it. Hope it's been a good holiday season for you and our listeners.

Me too. It's going fast. Lots of interesting things still to write about and to look forward to, as we often do at the end of the year; look forward to what's coming in 2022. Recently you wrote about one of my favorite topics, which I don't think is going to go away in 2022, the metaverse. But you focused on one aspect of how the evolution of the metaverse could affect a specific business that of real estate.

Oh yeah, that's right. So thanks. So this story came about after I pitched an idea to our editors about the technology that'll be used to power of the metaverse. Your great story explaining what the metaverse is inspired me. Please, listeners, give it a read if you haven't already. So yeah, there was two different things I saw happening. One was potential for home buying that could be changed by the metaverse and two, companies buying virtual real estate in the emerging metaverse space for up to thousands, sometimes millions of dollars.

Let's take these, let's take these two prongs here individually. Talk a bit about what home buyers could see in the future as the metaverse evolves.

Yeah, sure. So one of the tech I mentioned is how machine learning and artificial intelligence is used by this Austin, Texas based startup called UpEquity. It's a digital market startup that uses its underwriting technologies; includes machine learning, AI and other algorithms to verify clients, applications, and approvals faster. It also works with buyers who need to have all cash offers. In UpEquity, executives claim that they reduce closing times of home buying from a typical industry standard from about 50 days to 18. They also believe that the newer tech, the Apollo, the metaverse may soon cut closing times even lower, maybe as soon as 10 days.

They believe that they're in it to also maybe help millennials who sometimes who want homes but sometimes they don't have enough credit, sometimes they don't have enough cash on hand buy a home. And the competitive housing market that may, sometimes buyers who are very interested in home just give up all cash offers, which puts them at a disadvantage. So that's one of their strategies. But UpEquity also believes that the tech and the metaverse may include buyers taking 3D immersive home tours, possibly bonding on the spot when even take the actual tour inside a home. So there's already some virtual reality that does that. But we're talking about even more intimate level of technology like the spark bidding wars, the likes we haven't seen yet.

So the good news is you might have more tools in your tool book if you're hunting for home. The bad news could be, you got to act faster.

Yeah. You might be at a point where you may have to decide whether to buy a home in a matter of minutes instead of hours or even go anything, probably more snap decisions and whether to buy that house you want and looking for.

Interesting. So a company like UpEquity that could help you get your financing quicker would be a good partner if you had to deal with this impending reality, I guess.

Yeah. Right now they're currently licensed in California, Texas, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Georgia. So mostly almost all the major cities and they plan expanding to at least a dozen more states soon.

So now Terry, now what about this aspect of virtual real estate?

Oh yeah, sure. They're entities like Tokens.com. It's a Toronto based blockchain company. So in October they bought about 50% of the metaverse group, one of the world's first real estate companies, for about 1.7 million, But they didn't stop there. A month later, they spent then nearly 2.5, near record 2.5 million to buy 116 parcels of virtual real estate land in the metaverse that CEO Andrew Kiguel hopes will attract grants who want to advertise in space. They brought in a virtual land site called the Central Land. That's one of the more popular sites known right now.

I got to touch on this a little bit about this on the story I did earlier this year about the metaverse. It's pretty crazy that these plots of virtual real estate are going for thousands and then can depend on where they are and what place like the Central Land you mentioned. If there's a buying trend hitting that place, the prices can evolve exponentially, right?

Yeah. I asked Kiguel why he wanted to invest in so much digital land that technically really, you can't touch. And he just said he's betting on the potential profits from what may happen in the metaverse. He said he was motivated to buy space after seeing Central Land host a four day metaverse music festival that had some 80 artists and attracted 50,000 visitors to the site in October. And so what he wants to do with his land, he wants to develop a virtual fashion district, similar to, to Fifth Avenue in New York and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. He thinks that he could do it. After his purchase price, another metaverse real estate company Republic Realm now says he spent a now record 4.3 million on digital land through the Sandbox, another virtual real estate site. So this is going to be a pretty competitive space possibly going forward for those who have the means to do it. Kiguel said that his metaverse portfolio is valued at about 10 times higher than his purchase price.

He thinks with the purchase that he made with being in a downtown core of his virtual land space, he's just going to reap benefits. Like I said before, it's pretty competitive because others are investing in for lower prices and other land sites, including SuperWorld and Upland. An expert who I talked to whose mentioned in the story said she brought land in the Sandbox and Upland and she's just open to the possibilities of what it might present. I think that's one of the things your story touched on and I think mine maybe reinforces it, that there's so much unknown but it's worth the risk, this other form of, as Mike once said, owning a piece of the internet. And I think that's why we're into the space now, like where we're seeing companies like Facebook rebrand itself to name itself Meta to try to get a piece of the market that's coming before us sooner or later.

Terry, these are all very interesting insights. Thank you for taking time to explain this to us. You can find Terry's story on USAtoday.com or the USA Today app. You just search for metaverse. There's a lot happening in this field and I'm sure we'll be covering it in the following year and years to come, probably. Terry, thanks for joining us.

No, thank you, Mike. Appreciate it.

Listeners, let's hear from you. You have any comments, questions, or show ideas- you can find me on Twitter @MikeSnider. Please don't forget to subscribe or rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcast. And if you want tech news delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to the Talking Tech newsletter. It's out every Thursday. Just go to Newsletters.usatoday.com. You've been listening to Talking Tech. We'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.