Bichlorides

Landlords and rehabbers take notice – you may soon be focused on the new concepts of “Virtual Real Estate Investing“. Everything from using the internet as an avenue to make more money in real estate to online games such as SecondLife seem to be included in the popular definition of this term.

To get the facts, I sought out the man generally considered to be the father of virtual real estate investing: Bryan Ellis.

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.

Bryan Ellis cites the similar strategies one can employe to make money from “virtual property” and “physical property” as a primary parallel of the two markets. “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. Consider this: If you own a piece of real estate in a desirable neighborhood, your real estate has value because other people are interested in that location. Likewise, if you own a desirable domain name, others will find value in it because it serves their purposes. Regardless of the type of asset, you can sell or lease or use any number of strategies to turn the assets into cash.

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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