Bryan Ellis’ thoughts on The Virtualization Of The Real Estate Industry
Landlords and rehabbers take notice – you may soon be focused on the new concepts of “Virtual Real Estate Investing“. What is meant by “Virtual Real Estate Investing” ranges from online games like SecondLife (where real profit can be made) to the use of internet technologies to make normal real estate investors more profitable.
To separate fact from fiction, I asked Bryan Ellis for comments. He’s the man many consider to be the father of this new form of investing.
Ellis says he adopted the term “virtual real estate investing” sometime before Y2K after he realized that making money online is conceptually very similar to making money with physical real estate.
One example of the parallels between virtual and physical real estate Bryan Ellis cites is the similarity between the monetization of domain names versus physical property. “There’s a huge difference between a website and a piece of real estate, but the ways you can profit from them are similar: ‘flipping’, rental/leasing, advertising sales, etc…all of these apply to both markets” he states.
The parallels really are obvious. After all, if you own a valuable piece of real estate, it’s “valuable” because other people are interested in that specific piece of property. Likewise, if you own a desirable domain name, others will find value in it because it serves their purposes. So it doesn’t matter if you own physical real estate or virtual real estate – you’ll likely use similar strategies to turn them into money in your pocket.
In our next installment of this series on virtual real estate investing, Bryan Ellis will share the internet analogies to the physical concept of real estate development.
