Land Monopoly? wtf

Carolyn, as long as I've played the game, it's been difficult for newbies to acquire land. Pre-1.2, the issue was taxes. With 1.2, the absence of explicit land tax has made owning land easier, but you still need L$ to buy it in addition to the US$ land fees.

My advice to new players is the same as it was before v1.2: be landless for a while in order to accumulate a bit of L$. You can earn money at events or by selling objects. While land is the hot topic of late, there's really a lot more to do in SL than build homes or speculate on real estate.

A lot of the land buying sprees and land speculation have been driven by the fact that the deadline for actually approving of your land purchase is being extended to January 26th (and maybe extended even further out, who knows).

There is currently no cost to owning land (other than the initial purchase price), which has allowed those with deep pockets to buy up every scrap of land, and then sell it for a profit or even sometimes at extortion-level prices.

If the Lindens would just let the hatchet drop on the 1.2 changes and force us to all pay for our land maintenance (as was supposed to happen today, Jan 12th), more land would be available to buy. Until then, land just sits there idle, either owned by zombied users or inflated by land speculators.

Yea I also have same problems, in Tehama, where the sim is 100% full yet as a Lifetime member I cannot get my allowance of land, not can u finish the house ive started with the new punitive prim limits per parcel. All around me are tiny and not so tiuny unused plots owned by people I never see, never meet, and who have not built anyhting, or left some foundations maybe thats all. Waiting for Jan 12th to get any land in the Sim to get prims means that I too will be forced to buy any bit of land just to get prim value, and wont be able to build on it, cos the prims are sorely needed to finish my main house.

On top of that new arivals have moved in, on days when i wasnt on line, bought the last remaining land right round my land, so just as I arrived back in 1.2, with my land money refund to expand my plot, some speculator has bought it all, and place a 15,000 and 10,000 price on every 1024 parcel, which means a rate of about $10 a sq m and more. They are just greedy speculators and dont care that they now block me from doing any more building on my project i really like.

Now that we must wait till 26th I am also disapointed to see little plots of (laughable) 16 sq me springing up in Tehama with pric tages of 10k and upwards. As if anyone is gonna pay 10k for a 3 prim provision spot big enought for ur post box a mile from your house. (635$ a metre i dont think so...)

These people are just spoiling the idea for others and will get nowhere I hope.

How much land does an average newby want ?

I got 320 and started building

then i increased it to 880

Now it is plenty for a good simple build.