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You must also purchase the amount of cryptocurrency you’ll need for the real estate transaction. For example, if you’re buying in Decentraland, you’ll need to purchase MANA coins. If you’re buying in The Sandbox, you’ll want to stock up on SAND. These can all be purchased on open cryptocurrency exchanges using your local currency or other cryptocurrencies.

Unlike a real-world real estate transaction, the purchase itself is almost anti-climactic. Once you have your digital money in your digital wallet, you simply go to the platform’s marketplace or a third-party site and click the button to buy. It takes a few seconds for the platform to verify the transaction, which includes checking that your wallet contains enough currency and that the property can be conveyed to you legally.

With those checks complete, the money comes out of your wallet and an NFT representing your purchase goes into it. An anonymous identifier that is connected to your wallet and belongs to you alone is recorded as the new owner of the property.

It works essentially the opposite way to sell a virtual property. You’ll list your property for sale, and someone else will do the clicking and go through verification before their crypto is traded for an NFT, and your wallet will trade one NFT for a pile of crypto — at a profit, with any luck!