Land Monopoly? wtf

Okay, I'm not new in the least but with the new version of Second Life I thought it appropriate to find one spot in a sim and settle down. Before it was typical for me to be a 'land hopper.' I explored the experiences of living in Perry, Hawthorne, Blue, as well as a few other sims over the past year. Given the fact that now no money will be returned upon releasing land, I think those of us who are 'land hoppers' will likely find one spot and snuggle in.

So for the past week I've been searching endlessly for a nice plot of land within my allotted amount, as I am a lifer. However I keep find land owned by the SAME few people who are nabbing land the moment it's available and reselling it for upwards of 20,000... and this is for a TINY plot of land. I suppose it's a new, and rather enterprising way to quickly accrue a ton of Lcash! Too a degree I completely respect this entreprenual venture, we are, after all, a virtual reality, and I should expect with the new version we would have an uprising of 'real eastate agents' who sell small plots of land at inflated prices and make a lovely profit. Unfortunately, on the opposite side of the coin, I do not see how this is a real service to the community. New individuals joining the game have not got an insane amount of money to spend to simply place their default cabin. Others searching for a new place do not generally want to buy a plot with another slice going though it that is owned (and for sale) by another player, thus you have to pay two individuals two large amounts of cash to obtain one small piece of land for your purpose. It's a curious subject, an obstacle I faced immediately while searching for land. Wondered what your thoughts on this were?

Wait until after Jan12 or whatever the new date is and see how much land becomes available?

Hope that these people bid ridiculous amounts in the auctions and use up all their money?

Good land was pretty hard to find before the whole Land For Prims thingy came into effect. I'm seeing more and more sims at 100% land usage.

I agree with you, while it is a great entruepeneral (I can't spell) opportunity for them, it is also a terrible kick in the gut for anyone new with little cash to spend, heck not even many people who have been around can afford 20k for land even with the large bonuses we got with 1.2.

So yes, your best bet is as stated, hopefully old land will be released when people move into the new land.

"If i can afford a sim I am buying a sim, when I buy a sim I can charge what ever i like for the land"


I am not saying this it is right or wrong, but it is apparently the future.

Catherine Cotton

P.S; What do you suppose the dwell bonus is for vast spaces of land?

i can tell you cat with authority that it isnt much. a drop in the bucket.

Nephilaine;

*nods Realy? well heck what is my incentive to take over the world then? Don't ya just hate it when Elfin go bad lol


Cat


j/k me I am always j/k its in my nature

This isn't so much a problem with SL, as it is a problem with the idea of a free market.

Free markets are an important part of life, they provide a very efficent way of distribuiting goods and managing prices. They absolutly should never be done away with. Every attempt to do so has been a terrible failure.

But what is BAD about them is that people start thinking that if something fits within the laws of free economies, then that means they no longer need to consider the moral implications of their actions.

How many times have you heard the phrase, "Hey, it's just buisness, it's not personal." Or "Thats just how things work in the business world" when they try and explain why they did some horrible thing.

Something being labled a "great business venture" does NOT mean it is a good thing to do. In fact, many great business ventures can be quite bad, and even labled evil. Does anyone rember the comapny that bought up all the flu vaccenes when there was a shortage and resold them to the highest bidder? Fly shots went from about $10 a dose to several hundred a dose.. most places that got them for the poor and elderly were unable to get any. That is evil, and saying they were just buying and selling on teh free market is no excuse.

Now, buying up land for $1 a square meter and selling it for 10 or 20 times it's inital price is nowhere in the same league.. nobody is going to die because of this. But it is still wrong in my eyes. Sure it's a very valid business. In the free market world, it simply makes land sell for what it is "worth". Worth in this case is pretty inaccurate because someone with $300,000 cash can pay way more than someonw with $5,000.

So my point is? Dunno... just that I dislike land speculators highly. And it's bad enough them running around buying up land to sell at high prices so they can get rish and.. what... afford more land to extort? But it's far worse when land is acutioned off in the first place.

Bah. Going to lucnh.. this is making me angry. And it is just a game.. but still.. people should have morals regardless.

**deleted**

The Lindens could address this by expanding the world at an aggressive pace for a short time, and temporarily glutting the market. The speculators lose their initial investment, and must cut prices to recover anything at all; and the lindens and the community would have time to develop some mechanisms for moderating prices (real estate directories? buyers' agents? UI tools for real estate buyers?) as demand slowly recovers.

I propose one such mechanism, a new UI dialog: Land For Sale. This dialog would display a tabular list of all land for sale in a sim, along with each plot's map coordinates, selling price, and unit price (in either L$/acre or L$/prim). A price-comparison tool liek this would quickly move us toward stable and reasonable land prices.

I had the same problem. I signed up before chrstimass, and had no problem finding land then. Which I sold before the christmass. Then when I got back from the hollidays, I spent hours searching for a suitable 1024sqm of land, not finding any. The only requierment I made was that it was one square, resonably flat and in a mature sim. I was willing to build under water, next to anyone, and in any mature sim, but had no luck.

I had only about 5000 in cash, so all the land for sale was too expensive ranging from 10.000 to 1.000.000 (yes one million). I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to wait without any land, untill I had earned enough through stipends to buy one of those 10.000 plots of land (not a nice way to introduce new players to SL).

Luckily yesterday I had a go at searching again, and found some public land in Tehama, that was perfect for me. So now I'm happy. I hadn't heard any mention of this on the forum till Phaylen posted this, I thought maybe I was the only one who found this to be a problem.

Little

No, all the land in mthe mature sims is almost totally used.

Now, this is a good thing mostly... sims liek Da Boom had 100% prim usage and only 60% land usage because nobody wanted to live there. With 1.2 you can now actually use those sims. Also people bought up land to reserve prims. Still, I'd rather have it this way where if you find land you KNOW you will not have your prims used suddenly by someone else.

But yeah, the land speculating is a pain... some people are just getting rid of land they used and now are moving. Thats fine. Buying it to sell it.. that is just wrong.

Well I must have been very lucky

I came back into SL after a 6 month break

I used to land hop and all was good.

I saw that now released land gets no refund...Doh

So I grabbed a little 320m square in Mocha

Empty land around but owned.

I asked the neighbour if I could take some of their unused land... Voila I now have 880m2 next to a cliff and water's edge

BEAUTIFUL

Best of All the land was sold to me at $1 per m...

Thank you Damian !!!

So my advice is if you see a good spot ask the owner if they will release any of this unused prim generating land,,,,

There are still fair peeps here and I still say ....

Before you buy anything ask around and you'll find soemone who will give it to you free !!

Long live the sharers !

i toowas graced by a neighbor who sold me a plot in olive. i chose prim limits were popular. i acquired it only by the grace of maryjane selling it to me and jarod & kerovia loaning me the money.

recently, maryjane sold me an adjacent lot and now fate park encompasses 1792sm. good things do happen.

now i'm bidding (lindens only) on a small waterfront down the hill so i can build a river home and a dock for my fellow sailors to use in the northern waterways. but if i don't get it, i'll try indigo.

if you're looking for land and don't want to bid, try to wait until the 26th. i really think a lot of land will go public then.

I agree with the "wait until after January 12th" statement. Even if it has been postponed to whenever.

Today I literally spend a few hours touring our beautiful SL landscape. I eagerly visited the spots on the map marked "Land for sale" and it seems that it's really getting out of control. I actually found a spot of land (Same one little saw maybe or perhaps another dreamer) for One Million dollars. Having visited tond of real estate aspects today it seems Chance Small is stationing himself to be the next SL millionaire. He is selling quite a bit of land blatted over over the map. (I suppose he'll have to be millionaire to run the casino's) but the prices are astronomical for a very small section of land.

Curiously though, with the new limitations put on how much land one can own, I have to wonder myself how this can really be THAT beneficial, unless of course they have the US$$ to bring their account to a god-like tier.

Anyone remember a looong time ago when the majority of the map was owned by Governor Linden and we all went a little haywire on the boards insisting he stop being such a tyrant? Well He must have stepped down because I hardly find any land owned by him. HOWEVER, I am SHOCKED at the amount of land on the map that is owned by lindens. Colin Linden, Phoenix Linden, Haney Linden, and it goes on and on. Not sure if these enormous sects are set aside for future use but with the introduction of a legion of ENTIRE sims that are going unused at the moment i would think that the lindens would release the stronghold on such massive amounts.

1 Million dollars... Oh My God

Whoever is trying to sell for a million either made a mistake or never checked the leaderboards. No one person even has a million. The top person doesnt even have a half million. Joke is on them if it wasnt a mistake.

Which sims are those? I just got back from a dogfight that covered most of the six vehicle sims.

Would anyone be offended if I sold a bit of land and put up a sign; "For Sale good price, only newbies need inquire". Only problem I have is some old timers have multipal accounts. How can I be sure who I am selling to?

Cat Cotton

There's a nice 512 meter plot gone public in Magenta.

If someone has a newbie friend in need.....

Catherine,

I can't speak for others, but personally I think it would be a great idea.

Thanks Seledor!

phew almost done with work .....hehe


Cat

That sounds like a great idea Catherine, I suggest contacting some of the newbies who have posted on the forum about not finding any land first though, theres no guarntee they are newbies either of course and not actualy second accounts, but still.

Also, what is it about Da Boom? Doesn't seem like many people want to live there for some reason.

Catherine! That's a fantastic idea, and I hope more follow in your footsteps, I think once i get settled i'll do the same thing, be the antimonopoly if you will. Buy land as it becomes available and put it on reserve for newbies to prevent verterans with money to burn from monopolizing and prostituting it.

Bless her heart, I receieved a message about the land in welsh that was available from a nice person, but it was bought when i went to inquire. I guess I need to be even quicker on my toes!

It's really funny there's this HUGE land craze, the rarity of available land has made it incredibly valuable in small portions. It reminds me of history in school, the great land claim where people literally raced, fought and died to claim land.

Hi.

I've never posted on the forums, but this topic has affected me directly, so I wanted to say something.

I'm pretty new, been around about two weeks, and finding a little plot of land to call my own has been absolute *hell*! Many times, I've logged off for the rest of the day, out of the sheer frustration of looking for land, and finding it too expensive, too small, or too late discovering it's set to only a "specified buyer."

I had just about given up, when a dear, dear friend who I'd recently met (who's name I won't mention, for their own privacy) lent me some money in order to buy a parcel of land. There are a few out there in the "few thousands" range, which, while not ridiculous in cost, is still more than the average newbie can pull together.

Now I've got my land and, with building and texturing advice from several friends, it's coming along nicely, and I'm *so* happy! I feel like I'm really settling in to SL, and have a home here.

So... those of you who might have been around for awhile, and collected a bit of a nest egg.... if you're interested in helping out the new arrivals, and helping them find a home in SL... consider lending them what it takes to buy their own land. I know not everyone can afford it, and with "newbies," by definition, you don't know them well. But if you find one you can trust, a little help to get started is often all anyone needs.

And on behalf of newbies everywhere, thank you to those who help us out... whether it be financially, educationally, or even emotionally... to make us feel welcome.