Gulfport property sells in historic NFT house auction

A home in Gulfport is the first home to ever be auctioned off as a non-fungible token (NFT).

On Feb. 10, the home at 6315 11th Ave. South, was sold for $654,310, or about 210 Ethereum (ETH). The sale marks it as the first-ever NFT house auction in the United States. 

The home at 6315 11th Ave. S. All images were provided by the Heckler Realty Group.

NFTs are commonly used for digital assets such as art and music and can be used to trade ownership rights to physical objects. It is then stored on a blockchain, a form of a digital ledger.

The ownership of the home is through a limited liability company, which was transferred over as the NFT and made available for purchase. 

A user named “A.J.” purchased the house. A.J. (the first initial stands for Amanda), was competing against another bidder named Tyler. The competing bidder offered roughly $651,229, or 202.5 ETH, for the property, according to the auction details. 

Amy Heckler, real estate broker, represented the seller for the auction, Leslie Alessandra.

Alessandra is a real estate investor and co-founder of the Tampa Bay crypto company DeFi Unlimited.

“This technology will revolutionize the real estate industry providing speed, transparency and security on a level not seen before,” Alessandra wrote in a description of the auction. 

Alessandra worked with the Palo Alto-based real estate technology company Propy, which minted the property rights into a digital token and hosted the online auction. 

The sale also marks Propy’s first NFT-backed property sale in the U.S. Propy’s NFT-backed property sale happened last year when the company auctioned off TechCrunch CEO Michael Arrington’s Ukraine apartment.

Although A.J. was competing with one other bidder, thousands of bidders signed up for the online auction of the Gulfport property. The approved bidders were required to have a MetaMask cryptocurrency wallet that held over $650,000 ETH. 

The auctioned 2,164-square-foot home was last sold in 2020 for roughly $250,000. 

The four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom Gulfport estate was built in 1951. 

The Gulfport home will not be the only NFT-acquired property in Tampa Bay. Propy will conduct another NFT auction for a condo in Tampa, according to its website. Further details have not yet been released.