“You can’t put your arms around a memory,” sang New York punk rocker Johnny Thunders — and you can’t hang your hat in a digital home in the metaverse, until now.
That said, as much as the digital universe is a popular place for battling imagined foes, you can also opt for a more peaceful existence and buy land, design a home and even furnish it.
In Florida, someone just did.
The new owner of a Pinecrest home in Miami-Dade County not only got a brand new mansion in the upscale village, which sits a little over 10 miles south of downtown Miami, but is also the proud owner of a fully built digital version of it inside the Sandbox.
Even though the home, plus the digital counterpart, didn’t hit the $12.5 million asking price, it all sold in a cash transaction for $11.2 million. That marks a sales record for Pinecrest, and notches up the highest price per square foot — $1,335 — for the area.
“The new owner has two versions: the brick and mortar one, with a roof and everything,” said Michael Martinez, a realtor with ONE Sotheby’s International Realty. Martinez pulled double duty, both representing the undisclosed buyer and co-representing the seller, Sierra Development, along with Kiki Rutten, also of ONE Sotheby’s International Realty. “But they also have one built in the Sandbox, which is a metaverse virtual world,” said Martinez. “It’s part of a game; it’s 3D virtual reality. You can tour it, sit on the couch, invite guests and throw a party.”
In fact, the digital version isn’t quite identical to the real-life one because it includes a nightclub. For the metaverse-minded, that means you don’t have to drive to South Beach to party — just head to your Sandbox property.
The Sandbox digital home was developed by Voxel Architects and Gabe Sierra, director of operations for the brick-and-mortar home’s contractors, Sierra Developments, who’s an avid NFT collector.
“There’s a certain community that follows the metaverse,” said Martinez. “The buyer is a young professional and this got his attention. He couldn’t believe it. This is the first time something like this was done in this way.”
It begs the question: Is this the future of home marketing, one giant step beyond the 3D digital tours now common for sales listings?
“I don’t know. It is expensive to create,” said Martinez, though how expensive he declined to say. “It takes a lot of time to build, too. You need to have the right team to recreate the real home digitally. I don’t know if the digital twin is for everyone, but we had great fun with it for this property.”
Martinez thinks what really sold the home was the home itself.
“Walking the home in the real world, you see how great the space is, and how the outdoors merges with the house, giving that great outdoor living people expect in south Florida,” he added. “It’s a very expressive home. In real life, there is emotion behind it.”
The newly built 1.09-acre estate includes the 11,000-square-foot American modernist-styled main house with seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms, and a separate one-bedroom guest house with its own laundry facilities and a garage.
Interiors tick all the boxes with high-quality finishes and state-of-the-art appliances — and along with a living room and a family room with a wet bar, there’s a wine cellar.
The outdoor component features a 40-foot resort-style pool with an infinity-edge hot tub, edged by a 60-foot-long outdoor lounge on a covered terrace with an adjacent al-fresco kitchen.
At the end of the day, the new homeowner can relax in the master suite, which includes a sitting room and a spa-like bathroom with a soaking tub.
Apart from the digital twin, four NFT art pieces were included in the sale. Those are displayed on the walls. The four NFTs, were transferred along with the Sandbox property to the new owner at the home’s sales closing.
“The buyer is into art,” said Martinez. “This home lends itself to a real-life art collection. It has 50-foot-high ceilings in different parts of the house. The home is very impressive, but the buyer first saw it as a digital concept. Then he saw the real thing and was even more impressed.”
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