Landlords and rehabbers take notice – you may soon be focused on the new concepts of “Virtual Real Estate Investing“. There are many variations on what this term means, encompassing everything from using the internet to aid in real estate investing efforts to participating in online games such as SecondLife.
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.
An example of the similar nature of “virtual” and “physical” real estate Bryan Ellis likes to point out is the methods of making a profit from domain names compared to physical real estate. “These types of assets – websites and physical real estate – can be monetized in very similar ways like buy lo/sell high, leasing/rental and advertising opportunities” he says.
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. Similarly, ownership of a desirable domain name is valuable for the same reasons. 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.
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