Captain’s Blog – Real Estate

The name of this company is Helios Real Estate. It used to be Helios Properties and the reason for the change arises from our increased activity abroad where the term ‘real estate’ is more readily recognised and accepted. The term Real Estate was first recorded in 1660 and in its literal sense means ‘true’ or ‘actually existing’ (for real) and ‘of the land’ (for estate). History lesson over, Future lesson about to start.

Helios deals in land and buildings, buying sites or physical assets which it then develops and sells (hopefully) at a profit. The value of the land depends on several factors including primarily location but also condition, topography, former use, level of contamination etc. The one underlying truth is that there is a definite limit to the amount of land available to be developed. There is only one world and for the purposes of this article at least it isn’t getting any bigger. That is the ‘Real’ in Real Estate.

Meanwhile according to a recent piece in the Economist newspaper, in the non-real Metaverse the Taj Mahal is currently being sold for the crypto equivalent of $200,000. The Eiffel Tower is going for $400,000. That represents a big profit for the current owner who paid just under $400 for each asset. There is more. In November Republic Realm paid $4.3m for a piece of ‘land’ in a place called Sandbox. Also in that month Tokens.com spent $2.4m for a plot in the Fashion District of a place called Decentraland. Sotheby’s (the real one) has opened a virtual gallery in Decentralnd’s Art District. We should have been there early. In 2017 Helios Non Real Estate could have bought plots for $20 each. They would be worth $100,000 now. Republic Realm is investing in 23 different metaverse platforms. Its strap-line is ‘Investment, development and infrastructure innovation across the global metaverse & NFT ecosystem’ and it has a very interesting website. 

I will leave you with this taken from it … A virtual Gucci handbag sold in May 2021 for 350,000 Robux or $4,115. That’s $700 more than a physical (or real) one would cost. I’m off for a lie-down.