The "Selling" of Estate Island Land

I found this very interesting post, buried under a misleading thread name. The issues are much larger than waterfront land for sale. The project in itself is very ambitious. It is an experiment in action right now, as forum goers quibble about it in the new polysci forum. You can read the entire post here...
Mature Waterfront Terraformable

Here are two key points made in that thread...



Plots of land "for sale" in this 14 sim (no longer eight) sub-continent show on the map and in the land for sale section of the in-world find menu. I find this extremely misleading because once you arrive at the plot of land you find that you are unable to buy it. You must enter into a rental agreement to "purchase" it.

Why do estate owners have the ability to show land for sale when they actually retain full ownership and are simply leasing it? This is an example of how it shows up in the land for sale section...


My other concern is the erosion of what I thought was a delicate balance of adding land to the grid as new people arrive. It seems apparent that any estate owner can purchase as many sims as they desire and place them up "for sale". I thought that the addition of new regions was carefully monitored as population demands. I see this new continent as a threat to the overall stability of SL at large. At the very minimum, estate owners could see their expansions as a failure and decide to dissolve them, leaving all the residents there in the lurch and with a foul taste of SL in their mouth.

This is not an attack on anschechung.com. Please keep the discussion civil. I am concerned with the process, not the people involved. Attached is a pic of the growing continent.

Xyz Veva is abusing the system!! Oh btw this isn't an attack on an individual player, so please keep all conversation civil.

Loki, remove all specific references and examples of an invidual player and then make your point. Otherwise, you are singling out that individual player, no matter how many statements you make to the contrary.

It is a visible place on the map. I am not naming names just to name names. She is not abusing the system. I am concerned that the system is flawed. Please dont flame. I see it as a serious issue, time will determine if it is or not.

I had exactly the same reaction to all this. I was confused by the use of the word "continent" as well when I saw there was the Linden-sponsored New Continent with things like the Oil Rig and the Sacred Moth Temple, and then there was Ansheland.

I went out to Ansheland early on...then made another visit to these really incredibly dune places, and I was puzzled to see that in fact you could actually right-click on the land and just buy it...and least it appeared to be so. I even right clicked and started to buy, thinking you could do that, but then I saw I had the wrong group activated without the tier, then I crashed, and by the time I got back online, the plot was taken.

I even asked Anshe how this work...she deeded the land? I would "buy" it using the land buy devices on any Linden land, and then...what? Have access to it...but pay the tier to her? I never got a clear answer to this but I assume that as in Midge, she will soon have notecards and such out to explain these things.

I'm going to assume that the new tools just let you appear to actually right-click and buy land, but that all that happens is that you have entered into essentially a rental contract with Anshe. You'll be paying her tier separately on PayPal, which is what we did at Midge. I found that system worked great. She had more gradations of the tier levels, and you could also just pay your tier in advance so you didn't have to think of that land getting lost for awhile -- it does not appear you can pay Lindens in advance like that for tier.

I agree that some very alarming questions are raised about how all this land gluts the market and frankly devalues all our land where we already own, and depresses prices. And for those who already dominated the markets in the old world, and are still getting very healthy prices for their land, like Anshe and Blue, it just raises the age-old questions about the oligarchs and their privileges and the lack of oversight, accountability, and avenues for competition.

My own personal posture in the game is not to sit around and whine about the land barons but to find ways to compete with them, at least at my lower level, and I actually think I've had some success in stimulating them to work better on some issues and innovate on some areas. And I can only expect this area, too, will be one where they will improve and excel given their considerable resources.

But unless you have money and sims to compete with them at that game, I think it's unfair to take potshots at them, or demand Linden socialism be extended to stop them.

This idea that the Lindens release land tied to the population growth is a kind of corporate myth, IMHO. Maybe the Lindens really do believe they do that, and maybe they do. But since they won't tell us the numbers and how the newbies buy, we can't judge this.

People are concerned that high land prices for both New Continent land and some scarce mature waterfront land in the old world are bubbles that will burst. Like snow. Everyone remembers the snow sims with a shudder and a chill.

I wouldn't be so worried about anshechung.com or blueburke.com (or whatever his site's name is) disappearing because they are solid presences in the game. I would be concerned about the inability to follow through with fine-tuned customer service given the enormous amount of work they've added to their workload without any real visible increases in staff.

At the end of the day, all of us are just quit-renters on the tsar's land.

linden lab is caught in the middle of maintaining a stable world of their own and allowing users to build their own grids. they'd be far better off licensing the servers for people to build their own worlds altogether, but the software isn't nearly ready for that as it's still being experimentally developed. when it's ready for production, they can release a licenced package and all the new worlds will migrate to their own colos.

ll won't be loosing anything because the private grids owners will technically be leasing the software with an annual license to cover updates and maintenace. they'll also have to pay an annual fee if they do want their grid to be accessible to and from second life. but a lot of them won't many will be self contained and operated to serve their niche(s).

it's actually a good problem to have. it's great to see people succeeding as tiny versions of lindenlab metering out their own continents as they caculate demand. it gives ll a little builtin, relatively harmless "competition." won't it be funny if droves of people start preferring to live in anshe's, schwanson's, and other's sims rather than the mainland operated by linden lab.

the mainland is cute and all; but ll eventually has to back out of the babysitting business and be the host. this is just a baby step along the way.

This is just another thing that wasnt thought out. So many were clamoring for purchased sims to allow this to happen. Now that its happened they should look back upon themselves and realize they did it to themselves. This is also why any sim I may own will be mine alone, not rented not used to game the system.

Sometimes when we get what we want its worse than it was before. At the very least that ad is misleading and actually a outright lie. Those are NOT for sale, they are for rent.

I always tell new people to not get involved with land until they thourghly understand it. Knowledge is their only protection.

For the moment, I'd be less worried about this if I were you (and if I were in the land business): Anshe's residential islands so far have been catering to special interest markets, first the foriegn language sims (Anshe, when are you going to do Zhongguo-sim? ) and now the desert. And parts of the subcontinent were pre-existing islands that she purchased from other people, I believe. It may draw a limited number of people away from buying on the mainland but I don't think it floods the market in quite the way that, say, the mass release of new mainland that has happened before *cough*snowsims*cough*.

Of course, after a certian point, the large land realitors *could* end up competing with LL itself...they make more money from more people paying tier on smaller plots of land because the higher a single person's tier, the less they pay per meter. Then LL might have to change their business plan.

This is really awful. If Anshe wants to rent or "sell" land more power to her but there is no way it should show in Land for Sale or on the map unless I can actually purchase and own it. If the Lindens want to make a Land for Rent by Owner tab on the map I'd be OK with that. If the Lindens responsible are reading, what do you think for sale means? I click on buy and it says it can't be bought. People have enough trouble understanding the process of buying land and you are confusing the issue by doing special programming for estate holders that will make things worse?

Land on my continent is in fact for sale under certain terms and conditions. This is very much same deal Linden Lab offers to people. Just the terms and conditions vary.

If you "buy" on mainland, then Linden Lab deeds some land to you, under certain conditions. If you fail to meet those conditions, such as if you fail to pay your tier fees or if you start building skyscrapers in Boardman the Lindens will reclaim the land from you. So if you want argue with legal terms, then in fact you just rent land from Linden Lab. Or more exactly: you buy one promise from Linden Lab to be allowed use/rent the land as long as they are going run their service and consider you compatible with their terms and conditions.

If you "buy" on my continent it is not Linden Lab but it is me who deeds land to you. You agree to terms and conditions that include zoning rules, paying tier fees to me and generally you accept me as person who administers the region you buy in. You are free to set your land for sale and sell it to other person for whatever you want to charge. You only notify me of ownership change and I transfer and, of course, make sure new owner agrees to zoning rules and tiers up. This is major difference to renting.

Of course you can raise the question of what happens if Anshe shuts down the sims. I can only say that if sim fails (not possible to populate) the worst case that could happen would be that the sim as one whole would get sold and each land owner receives his/her share of the proceeds. Imagine investing in one company and if company goes bancrupt each owner gets share of the liquidation money. But this is definitely not what I am planning for, as little as Linden Lab plans to shut down half of the Second Life grid. Beyond this it comes down to one pure matter of trust in how I do business. If you don't trust me enough, don't buy in "Ansheland". If you don't trust Philip, don't invest in Second Life at all. If you have even the slightest doubt or some bad feeling in your stomach, then please "buy" on the mainland. Or better just rent land for L$, which I also offer in all of the sims I administer. Then you also don't risk that tomorrow land prices drop. Don't burden yourself with worries.

But if you decide to buy you get one good deal. You pay less than currently on mainland and you receive added value of one managed area. If you are one person who likes to build nice and appreciates nice environment then "Ansheland" is for you. If you want extreme freedom without compromise and don't care for beauty this place is not for you. In "Ansheland" we are one community of people who try work together to have one nice area. In some way we attempt something like civilization where individuals give up one little bit of freedom and try to reach compromise so that the experience for everybody becomes better

thing is, we don't purchase and own land now. we pay a fee to linden lab for land just as anshe's customers pay her. then we pay monthly rent for the land to ll just as schwanson's customers pay him. ll may revoke our "ownership" of the land or decide to take the sim offline at any time, with no warning, for no reason and sans compensation just like any estate sim mall owner might do on a whim.

this is one tough horse pill to swallow for sure. but it's in the tos.

ll added the feature of setting estate land for sale so that it appears on the map specifically to accomodate people renting areas of their estates. they're even providing the capability to set subdivisions to varying groups so that renters can edit their rented land. eventually they'll add an actual rental feature so that, even on the mainland, we'll be able to contractually rent land to someone with full rights (other than selling) for some period of time at a set amount of money.

imagine having that built into the interface. it'll be brilliant.

I agree with Essence. It seems appalling to me that one could buy land, only to find out it is completely different from regular buying land. I "bought" land in Meins and pay "tier" on it to the guys who run it, but I never for a minute was under the impression I was buying land like land is normally bought. (By people with premium accounts.)

If they are setting it up so you can somewhat unknowingly end up under the direction of another player rather than under the Lindens, then this isn't right.

coco

I don't think you would go back on your terms Anshe but there are surely other estate owners who would. You have to trust LL in order to take part in SL. This is not the case for you or other land owners. For some new player who just wants to get his first plot and doesn't understand the difference between buying land from LL and has never heard of Anshe or Joe Scammer is as likely to get scammed by Joe Scammer as to get a reasonable deal from you.

The confusion begins

Offer and demand, ever heard of that ? What you see as a delicate balance is nothing more to me than one more monopoly that is hampering the growth of the Second Life universe. On the long term LL should end up licensing the server software (mechanisms for asset migration are possible).

Here we have an example of someone other than LL investing money into servers to add to the landmass, if there is demand for such land others will follow. If not, well, too bad for Anshe.

I have more thoughts on this issue and I have posted them in the hotline to Linden. If LL wants to change the notion that just they sell land they need to express the difference between buying Linden land and other player's land and how you agree to the other player's terms of service when you do.

no they don't essence. ll have already clearly explained how we "buy" land from them along with all of their terms and conditions. they've even clearly deliniated that we have no rights at all in the matter.

anshe, to name a name, also very clearly explains the process and terms before taking someone's money. ll gave estate owners the ability to mark island parcels for sale so that people could see they were available on the map and in find. they also limited the transaction so that we can't buy the land directly and automatically subject outselves to the landlord's conditions.

what more needs to be explained?

Thanks for the replies, it makes more sense to me now. I dont really have a problem with estate owners leasing land in this manner. There are pros and cons to it for sure and knowledge is power.

I think it is important that the differences be blantantly obvious from the start and not learned in haste when the person is right there ready to buy. People sign up and expect to do business with Linden Labs, its a bit confusing to then enter new contacts with seperate business entities once in the existing world.

For starters, perhaps the land for sale on the map could be another color so that the estate status of the land is more obvious? And, add more description to the land section of the website explaining in more detail about purchasing estate land.

And, the land tools itself should have a popup (configured by the estate owner) that explains terms of purchase. As it is now, if someone tries to buy the land they get a message that it cant be transferred, and leaves the buyer a bit bewildered. A popup with a basic description of terms for sale would benefit both the buyer and seller.

eek how many sim island owners are now kicking themselves for selling their islands cheaper than what they paid for them? So this then does away with the 100 transfer fee? Since you can break up an estate now and sell it off. Ekk so many questions so few answers here. This sure works in anshe's favor. Bites toungue.

Cat

No you still can't sell it off in the way you're thinking, ie be the named owner of the plot and pay tier to LL. You can only transfer a whole sim (for which the fee still remains of course), not small pieces of it. Anshe is selling these plots and making the buyer aware that they will not be the named owner, and that they will pay tier to her.

No you still can't sell it off in the way you're thinking, ie be the named owner of the plot and pay tier to LL. You can only transfer a whole sim (for which the fee still remains of course), not small pieces of it. Anshe is selling these plots and making the buyer aware that they will not be the named owner, and that they will pay tier to her.


Of course this still means that Anshe is responsible for the land fees payable to LL.

hiro is correct. estate owners enjoy two new related features:

the ability to set subdivided parcels for sale making them visible on the for sale map and listing them in the land sales tab of FIND

and the ability to "deed" a subdivided parcel to a group giving the officers the all the editing rights i.e. terraforming, setting urls & managing access/ban lists WITHOUT granting them the ability to sell the land.

in both cases, the estate owner retains full and absolute ownership of the land. these features simply make it easier for them to "rent" parcels to people by granting them ownership rights without them actually owning the land.

and now for something completely the same: this works just exactly like ll "selling" us land on the mainland. we claim to have ownership of it i mean we paid for it right? and they bill us for taxes every month because it's our land right? and we have absolute power over the land right? we have no probelm accepting that lie^h^h^h abstraction. apply that same interpretation to estate parcel "sales."

I think that Ansheland is a good deal. There are a few too many steps in this process, however. There should be notecard givers on the land that tell you what's what so you can read it.

The argument that we rent from Linden Labs essentially so this is just like renting...well...not quite. When you buy from Linden Labs, you can do what you want, terraform on demand, build what you wish, name the plot, put in music, etc.

When you get deeded estate land from Anshe, these things may not all be done, and certainly not instantly, they will queue up in a customer service list to be done manually most likely.

Still, exchanging a bit of freedom and a bit of time gets you some securities you don't have when you buy griefer-grid-land from the Lindens and then try to stave off the idiots.

I still think that the presence of all the New Continent sims and Anshe's estate sims depress prices, glut the market, work to their advantage, and devalue land for the rest of us. That's pretty obviously seen in world.

Anshe can position herself quite well, dumping old inventory for less, then charging a LOT more for scarce waterfront land in the old world, and charging for vulnerable griefer territory like *cough* that water I bought last night from Anshe for $10/meter. Ugh. What a pernicious practice. But we all know that Anshe can get away with this now because people will pay not to be griefed on water (as we've seen them do many times). She needs to make up the losses she's had on doggy, laggy land in the old continent that you can't even give away. I dunno, what's not to like for anshechung.com? Sell old land, even devalued, but get more US dollars for Lindens because the rate is stronger now. Sell scarce waterfront mature or griefer-prone water in the old continent and get 9 or 10 per meter. Sell new controlled zoned sims -- loads of them -- and help keep prices depressed for anyone else who thought to sell their land in the old worlds LOL. Buy some of the New Continent land, but sell it less than the wannabee greedy baronlets who are trying to chisel others with New Continent sales. Honestly, you have to say that Anshe has positioned herself in these new markets absolutely superbly. But...as she herself say...you will have to part with "a little freedom". And....how about that customer service queue? It's just not going to move very fast...

Ok I'm a bit confused as to how this all works but basicaly what I have read is that anche is the middle man? Basicaly renting the land then?

Ok second question; who gets the dwell and development bonuses by doing "business" this way? the ppl who rent or the land owner?

Not attacking anyone or any idea here, I just havent got a grasp on the entire picture yet.

thanks
Cat

the estate owner gets all the dwell both ways.

shouldn't it be i can see your hands moving; but i can't see what you're saying?

random, my understanding is that the new feature of deeding estate parcels to groups allows the group officers to terraform, set urls, edit access/ban lists and such directly without any help from the estate owner. i may be wrong though.

I just don't like the sound of this at all. It doesn't sound like it is crystal clear. As a new player, my understanding of land purchases is like was outlined in what Essence quoted in the Hotline forum. If there is going to be something to help people like Anshe, it apparently isn't nearly clear enough as it is.

Nothing personal against anybody, but I don't want to play Anshe Land; I want to play SL.

coco

With new land deeding feature there isn't much of a request queue like with rented land on the mainland. People can do most thing themselves. And there are things they can do in "Ansheland" that they can't do in (most) mainland sims like having deep cellars or caves below their house.

People also receive all dwell payments. The only thing they potentially miss out on is the developer incentive awards. But this benefits everybody in the sims as it keeps the high traffic / high lag establishments away. Normal home owners don't quality for dev award anyway.

Below some new screenshots for you