Apr 6, 2021
The first real house selling via NFT
I’ve been thinking about this for almost a year and today I have decided to just go for it:
I am going to sell my childhood home via NFT to the highest bidding person. Since my family has left the property years ago and we can’t afford to keep it in condition, which is getting worse day by day.
Yes, the last couple of weeks have been full of wild NFT news and this is hopefully going to be one of them.
I won’t lie to you, the amount of money being shifted around for NFT’s recently has definitely played a big part in today’s decision of selling my house on the market via NFT auction.
I’m writing this article as a journal to take you with me on the ride.
Ask me anything about this on Twitter: ugnNFT
Discord: NFT-House-Auction
TLDR:
I have created an NFT auction to sell my property via opensea.io.
Check it out here:
Edit: cause I’ve gotten a few requests already here is some more information on the property and its location:
The property is located in the center of the beautiful fairytale-like town of Kransberg, Germany.
Again, I won’t lie, you’ll probably have to do some renovating to get it back into shape (see pictures above). Unless you want to live like Robin Hood, this house needs a lot of attention until you can move in.
It used to fit a family of five. So you can host your small family or bring a bunch of friends to this two-story property.
Living Space: ≈140m² Ground Total: ≈260m²
Lying right in the middle of a forest Kransberg (dating back to the 11th century)seems to appear out of nowhere, offering the perfect hideaway for beautiful long days in summer and cozy nights in winter.
Its beautiful castle (originally constructed around 1170) resides on the mountaintop and can be seen directly from the property, adding even more cozy character, as it illuminates during the night.
Kransberg is located within a 40-minute ride to its nearest big city Frankfurt am Main, offering an international airport and great shopping/sightseeing/nightlife options. There are several small towns with Multiple schools/kindergartens/shops covering all the basic things you’ll need within close reach (10 -15 min ride).
- Check out Kransberg on Wikipedia -
06.04.2021 — 09:00
I’m getting started and currently there are a lot of open questions:
1. How can I legally sell my property in Germany?
2. Can I legally sell my property to anyone worldwide?
3. Can I sell my property online without having real estate licenses?
4. On which platform can I sell my property (I want it up for auction).
5. How do I prove that I own the property and will transfer it to the new owner once bought.
6. What if the person buying the NFT never provides me with the details needed to transfer ownership of the property
7. What if the token is sold to anyone else before and after I have transferred ownership of the property.
1, 2 & 3 Sorting the legal bits / Talking to real estate lawyers:
I remembered that I am paying some sort of legal insurance every month and it includes talking to lawyers 24/7 on any subject.
Great for me, as it took only two phone calls and probably a huge portion of luck to talk to a lawyer who had actively taken part in the digitalization of real estate agencies and had worked on “similar” cases including some huge deals with the German government.
Although going blockchain was also new to her, she could tell me that in Germany I have all rights to sell my private property via any chosen channel to anybody around the globe without having a license - as long as it is my private owned property and I do not sell more than two objects per year.
However, she added that “If the person acquiring the object does not have a valid visa for Germany, simply acquiring property won’t have an impact on receiving any special treatment when it comes to entering the country.” Meaning that anyone can purchase an object but it doesn't mean that they can ever go and visit it if they don’t get a Visa.
Last but not least she made sure that I understand that selling an NFT in its self won’t be enough to transfer ownership of the property and that the holder of the token would have to go through the common process of transferring ownership of an object via classical contract and lawyer.
After the first phone call, I called a second lawyer just for confirmation and pretty much got the same answers, which left me with the following conclusions:
1. How can I legally sell my property in Germany?
-Via any channel and platform (eBay, personal website, newspaper advertisement, blockchain).
2. Can I legally sell my property to anyone worldwide?
- Yes, no problemo.
3. Can I sell my property online without having real estate licenses?
- Yes, as long as I am not selling more than two objects per year and I am the owner of the property.
11:00 am:
So far this is going great and went a lot easier than expected. Let's move on to question 4–8.
4. On which platform can I sell my property (I want it up for auction).
Now, this is where things are starting to get tricky.
Over the past weeks I have sent a couple of platforms a message stating that I would like to sell my house as an NFT and actually only received one answer:
My initial idea was to mint an ERC-721 token and then auction it on a website that I would host only for this cause. That way everything would be running via contracts and servers on my side.
After doing some digging I found Near as a base for my own NFT marketplace and played around with this tutorial:
https://globalcoinresearch.com/2021/03/05/create-an-nft-marketplace
Unfortunately, I quite quickly realized that this would come with some pitfalls like not knowing how to implement auctions and more importantly ensuring that people making bids would actually have the money ready to be transferred once the auction is over — instead of just fake bidding crazy amounts of eth without the intention of closing the deal.
So I resorted to the idea of using known platforms such as opensea.io, cargo.build, rarible.com, etc..
After spending a good amount of time with all these platforms over the cause of a year already, I will not go into great detail about why I am choosing to do this via opensea.io but my main points are:
- Opensea is very accessible and easy to understand.
- I can mint the NFT without having to set up anything myself.
- It has a track record of successful transactions, is trusted by its users, and includes an auctioning function.
- It’s more likely to be noticed.
5. How do I prove that I own the property and will transfer it to the new owner once bought.
This is another source of head-scratching. I’m still scratching and to make it very simple, for my own data safety I can’t just upload contracts showing that I own the property so it will have to be set on trust completely.
I am thinking of adding a signed document unlockable by the token, stating that I own said property and will transfer it once sold.
This brings us to my next question.
6. What if the person buying the NFT never provides me with the details needed to transfer ownership of the property.
If someone buys the NFT, they will have to provide the personal information necessary and sign documents required per German law to receive ownership of the property.
What happens if someone chooses not to send me those details though, can I keep the money?
To avoid this from happening I can only add a statement saying, that the person who buys the NFT will have 6 Months to send those details and will otherwise not receive ownership of the property and also won’t get a refund -ouch, let's hope that won't happen.
7. What if the token is sold to anyone else before and after I have transferred ownership of the property.
I will transfer ownership to the first person to provide me with the details needed while having proof of holding the NFT during closure of the deal. Meaning that if the token is sold within the first 6 months of purchase without claiming ownership, the new owner will again have 6 months time to claim ownership and so on.
Once the property ownership was successfully transferred I will no longer be the owner of the property and therefore the new owner will have to transfer ownership in case of selling the NFT to anyone else.
8. How will I communicate with the new owner.
I will add locked content with an email address for the new NFT owner to get in touch.
Everyone else can reach me TheEtherHouse@gmail.com for questions, etc.
13:00 — Everything seems clear, let's make an NFT at Opensea.io
I will not go into details of how to make a token at opensea.io as its suuuper straight forward I’ll add the link to the token here once it's approved.
Check out the auction here:
https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/54108438401911435239024549142332327895377516872423623009620534105234904973313
15:45 — This could have gone a lot faster but I’m reviewing everything five times. Also, I am now taking a break and I might go take some pictures of the property.
21:30 — Went to the house and took some pictures. of course, it was snowing and the place looks nothing as nice as it does in summer but we did need something to look at right?
I’m adding a set of pictures from today 06.04.2021 to the top of this article(Turning them into gifs to save some length of the article)
07.04.2021 00:06 — All set, let's mint the token and throw it on the market.
16:02 — Today I spent around 2 hours sorting small bits and bobs out. Finally, the sale is on, I had to approve my account at opensea.io for around 130$ and set a referral bounty at 2% !!
I’ll keep this updated once any news roll in.
