Premium Expires Still Keep Land?

I may be mistaken but I think I read somewhere that only Premium members man own land. If I bought Premium for monthly and I bought land, would I lose it after my premium expires? If I'm wrong please correct me, and someone please explain to me how this land ownership thing works. Did I also hear something about a Tier payment monthly? How does that work?

PS I am sorry if this is the wrong section. Feel free to move the post but please notify me if you do.

Yes, you have to pay the premium to keep the land. If it expires, the Govnah will repossess. You only pay tier if your land holdings go above the 512 SQM which comes with the premium membership.

More info here: http://secondlife.com/land/

Does the tier thing mean when you buy premium the game gives you automatically 512 SQM of land? Or if you buy land over that you have to pay monthly? How can I tell how much I will have to pay monthly for Tier? If the "Govnah" takes back my land, do I get a refund on what I payed for it? If I lost my land when I lost my premium, would I get it back later when I bought back premium?

Thanks for your help so far I hope you or someone else can help me with this too.

Unless things have changed you cannot "own" mainland if you are not premium. That means if your 512 plot is on mainland you will loose it. And if you are premium the first 512 meters is tier free (on mainland land only.......if it's on estate land that is up to the estate owner)............or paid, however you want to look at it.

There are still a few unanswered questions of mine and a few that just sprouted up.

How do I know how much I will pay as tier before I buy the property?

If I exit premium on private land do I still lose my property?

If I lose my property do I get a refund?

What are the overall differences between Main Land and Private Land?

https://secure-web2.secondlife.com/land/pricing.php

Only Premium accounts can own land in Mainland- yes if u stop being Premium you ose the land and no u do not get a refund. You do not need to be Premium if u get land or rent a spot from another Resident. Teh downside of that is that unless the Resident is an established land person u may very well end losing ur Lindens when the landlord leaves suddenly or other drama.

There are fans of both mainland and private land- u will find people that favor either or. Before u do buy land - read a lot.
Good luck and welcome to Second Life

Well I want to get some land I have lots of control over. I most likely won't use anything as a shop so private land sounds good to me. I know this takes a lot of research so you don't get in trouble with the deal so I have a few questions. I know that Private Land is full of Estate owners renting and selling off their land. I just want to buy some Private Land without any Estate owners above me in the ownership. Is that difficult to find? Where could I buy that? When you get land from the estate, if the estate owner leaves do I lose the land?

I don't know much exactly about how Private Land works so please explain everything you know about it to me. Thanks.

1. I believe there's a land purchase screen that pops up saying, "If you buy this your tier will be at the X level" but reading the land info would be helpful, plus I think Massively has a current article on SL tier.
2. On a private island you can rent without being premium.
3. No, of course not. Tier is like property tax.
4. You have to be premium to own land on the mainland but you can rent mainland oreprivate island parcels without being premium.

You can only rent, not buy, land on a private island. You would pay tier to the landowner, who would pay tier to LL.

Yes renting private estate isn't much different (you are just renting off a player not buying, they still own it), you can lose your land too if you stop paying, how quickly is sorta like how long do the lights stay on if you stop paying your electricity bill.

If you want the most control over your land you must purchase land that you pay Linden Lab directly. That would be land located on mainland..........or an estate that you purchase from LL. For either, you must be premium. Any land you rent or purchase from another individual or resident of SL has only the control over that land that the person who did purchase directly from LL allows..........it will be less control than that of the person who paid LL directly.

To answer your question........you do not have to be premium to "own" land. But if you want as much control over that land as possible you will have to be premium.........and pay LL directly (not a third party or middle man). The tier for any land is a recurring fee paid to LL (if you rent you are paying tier too.........except you are paying to the person who owns the land, not LL). The tier is based on the size of the land......the larger the plot the more the tier. The Second Life website has the details of all the costs associated with land bought directly from LL. You will have to discuss the details on costs with the estate owner if you rent.

Correction: There are two ways to own land in SL, with no other resident between yourself and LL. Those two ways are:

1. Buy mainland. You must be premium to do this, and you can buy any size lot that you can find. The most common starter lot is 512m2.

2. Buy an entire private island of your own (also known as a "sim" or "estate", 65536 m2). You do not have to be premium to buy an island. However, it is of course a heavy expense.

Before you buy anything, it would be wise to take 20 minutes or so and familiarize yourself with the map, enough to tell the difference between the mainland and islands by sight, know which mainland continent you are buying land on, and also recognize the major archipelagos (estates made of 30 or more contiguous islands).

And have fun!
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Worse than that.

You have to give up the land *before* you can revert to basic.

If you don't, and just don't pay, you lose it all. Land, account, inventory, L$ balance, everything.

What I said is that in order to have the most control over any land you "own" in SL you must pay Linden Lab directly...........and by doing that you ARE premium. A small plot owner on Mainland pays LL a membership fee of $9.95, $22.50/quarter, or $72.00/yearly separate from any tier involved. That makes the account premium. The estate owner also pays Linden Lab directly whatever the monthly, quarterly or yearly fee is.......that makes them premium also. They may not carry the "title" of premium account holder but they certainly are premium........in fact, due the amount of their recurring fees, they are on a level a bit higher than a simple premium resident. I tried to make that clear.........so sorry I confused you.

No, you aren't. You may have access to concierge support, but you aren't Premium unless you pay the membership fee. I know that YOU know this, Peggy, but you may be confusing the issue for readers.

The definition of "premium member" is quite explicit: https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417

You MUST pay the Premium Membership fee, as you mention. It doesn't matter how much tier you are paying for private islands, if you don't pay the separate Premium membership fee you cannot buy a 16m2 on mainland.

So just clarifying, islands are much bigger then the smallest 512 on mainland and they would cost much more right? For a being a beginner I want no tier so I think mainland sounds good.

I have a few more little questions about land.

If I buy land can I delete the previous owners things he built? (I believe this is a yes.)

Can I change the ground from rock to grass or something like that? (Is this only for islands?)

Can I change the time it's night and day? (Is this only for islands?)

I hope you guys answer my questions. I've got to say everyone in this thread has been very helpful. I hope this thread will help other new players in the future.

Yes you can return the objects.


This is only possible when you are the owner of a private sim.
It is even not possible when you own a sim on mainland.

With WindLight you can change your own day/night (make it look any way you like) and change the water, too. For instance, you might want a foggy evening, or a surreal purple day with scudding clouds and strong shadows. You can create your own WindLight presets and share them. You can't change the sim's default time except if you are owner or manager of a private island, but in such a case any visitor can override the settings anyway.

Experiment with WindLight - it's very cool.

Explore and get a feeling for the type of area you might like. Remember, sloping ground will give you a larger parcel, just like in real life. A 512 is small, but it's do-able. I built my first house (which is still there) sticking onto a cliff on a 512, and it has about seven prims I think (it's round with a curved rotating door). If you like sailing in SL you might like to be on the water. You could build in the sky. You could make your place a lovely meadow of flowers and just lie around on a hammock, then rez your sailboat and go exploring You don't need a house, so build whatever you think is fun - change it every day if you want to.

Another option is to use a holodeck that rezzes only the scene/room you wish to use at that moment.

Have lots of fun!

Wow all my questions are answered. Thanks for everyone who helped out. I think I'll check out that Windlight thing because it sounds cool. I'm not entirely sure how to get a holodeck but I could probably figure it out.

Is 512m a lot of space just wondering?

No, but it can feel fine if you are in a good location (not squashed up against builds on all sides). Go and look at some to get an idea if it's right for you. Prim numbers are tied to parcel size, so a normal 512m2 has 117 prims alloted to it.

You can buy a holodeck (the DragonForge rezzer is easy to use) or, if you feel adventurous, try the script available in the scripting library.

Hey I'm back with MORE questions. Me being as curious as I am did you think I was really done?

I'm thinking Mainland but I saw the prices for Islands and I said to myself WOW.

I know the full region is the top notch you can get but who would ever pay 1000$ for virtual property? Is that like aimed for businesses or what? I heard rumors of someone making 1,000,000$ in land of this game but I don't know whether that's true. Why would someone want to pay for that?

I was also wondering, where would I buy island land directly from Linden Labs for cheapest? Would a cut a deal with a player to give me full island ownership? Or would I buy an Openspace island? I mean seriously I don't want to pay 250 $ and 75$ a month. Why would anyone want to? Can someone explain to me what's up with these extreme prices? Where would I get private islands cheap with no one between me and Linden Labs?

Just saying here I'm not actually going to buy any private land soon. I just want to know for future reference. As you probably know from reading this forum, I ask a lot of questions.

You can't buy a open space sim or homestead sim if you don't own a 1000us$ FP region.

And why are people so crazy to pay 1000us$ for a sim and pay each month 295us$ tier for it ?
I can only talk for myself.
I'm in the land business. I invest into a sim. Make smaller parcels of it and rent them out.
In the rental price is the investment of the sim calculated, the tier I pay to Linden Lab and a profit.

In RL I have also some webservers. it's the same as with SL.
A sim = webserver
Tier = Bandwidth

I have to buy my webservers too. Put them in a datacenter and pay a monthly amount for the bandwidth.
I rent that server to people who need space for a website. The price of the hosting packages depends of the space they need on the harddisk and the bandwidth they use.

A sim is nothing more then a game server. Linden Lab is a company that rents game servers. All the rest isn't important for them. The more sims they can sell the bigger they get.

that's cheap. And those openspaces can't be used for much of anything but scenery around regular sims. The cheapest deal for an island you can actually use is a homestead for $125/month, and you already need to have at least one $295/month full island to get that deal. If you want to own land for less than that, you need to buy it on the mainland with a premium account, or rent part of a sim from the owner.

You can't.

Well I'm definitely not spending any money like that being the age I am. Lets just say I "might" be underage. So am I hearing you can't own an island unless you own a full island first?