Buying and Selling Land

I like the idea of land purchases being open and public. I was rather unhappy when they began to hide the names of the bidders in auctions. Of course I am a radical that way. I believe in complete privacy in your private world, and complete transparency in your public world.

I have made a few bucks in land sales. Not that I've gotten anywhere near that lofty level of Land Barony, but I turn a small profit on almost all my sales. However, most of my sales are of my one-acre plot after I've bought (at a fairly reasonable mid-range price), moved in, gotten surrounded by rotating For Sale signs and tiny plots, sold off my land (at a fairly reasonable markup at usually a $L1 per meter), and wandered around homeless for a bit. I move a lot. So, I sell often. The last place was a lovely little island, until an eight-story club appeared a few meters from my dock.

I almost never have more than an acre tier. I have another 1024 meters right now that I have given to the Neualtenburg experiment, but I suspect I will probably drop that tier if it becomes unnecessary in the future.

Currently, I have an acre on the top of a mountain peak. It's PG, since I was stupidly standing in the wrong sim when I bought it But, it's private and roomy anyway, so I don't mind. If someone manages to drop in on me at 180 meters in the fog and catch me changing my underwear, then I guess I'll take my TOS warning like an adult. At any rate, I put it up for sale again simply because I think I want to be able to try an auction again after many months of ignoring them. So, I marked it up about one Linden per meter - though I doubt I'll sell it that high. I expect, like most times, I'll sell at a microscopic profit. When I sold my last time, I took a loss of about 2.5 Lindens per meter.

All this is to say that I do NOT want to have to deal with a penalty for selling before a month is up. Sometimes I want to move today. Usually not, but sometimes I do. Sometimes I have to sell ahead of a price drop. If I wait a couple weeks, then I'm cooked. Sometimes I have to sell on an upswing. If I wait, I'm cooked again.

A limit on when you can sell will hurt the small realtor a lot harder than it will hurt the "Land Baron". If I had 100,000 meters in the market, I could surely schedule my offerings to my advantage despite the limitation. With a lousy acre, it gets pretty hard to maintain my nomadic lifestyle and still keep my capitalistic dignity.

So, "no" on time limits - "yes" on full disclosure.

Kathy -- come back, we miss you!

LF

Uh...ok. Come back where?

I think he means 'from the darkside'

As a 5 day old newbie i found this thread really interesting. If and when I buy my first land I now know not to sell it too cheaply and not to buy from land barons, although I don't know who they are yet. Shouldn't the Lindens give out this information at the Welcome place? It would save a lot of people a lot of grief.

Thanks for the info.

sorry for the delay. you bring up some interesting queries, onei, and i will share with you my perspective/understanding.

the average player does not have to bid on 50 auctions, but to bid appropriately on the few parcels they want. lisse's suggestions were good but the most important point she made is to gauge what is the market value and what margin land barons must maintain or are trying to maintain.

as you recall schwanson brought up the cost of tier in the land barons overhead. this overhead is .7 L$/m2 approximately. this means that if the tier is cycled once over the month, the land baron must have a markup of .7 L$/m2 just to break even. so a land baron must bid atleast .7 L$/m2 lower than the market value of land. the current market value is what you find inworld on the majority 512 to 2048 m2 lots. you can make a savings on larger plots by bidding in the auction by bidding over the land barons magic number. other wise it is market value.

generally speaking the best prices for land are offered by land barons because they have a strong interest in providing competetive prices. with the exception of hub land, land from land barons in new areas is priced much better than that by regular players in established areas.

The reason you see bulk buyers winning most of the large plots is because as a commercial enterprise they are more willing to pay closer to market value. a regular player will have to seriously consider investing 1800 USD to buy a whole sim, but the decision is much easier for a land baron who is parcelling it to the small parcel consumers. this week i have seen a few unfamiliar names winning large parcels by bidding the market rates. to me that is a clear indication that the auctions are working as designed.


i don't understand how this can be the case. if i indescrimintaly bid 3 L$/m2 for pg land and you find a specific beach you like and bid market price of 4 L$, you will probably win it.

while you believe that the land barons have a strong influence on land prices, i disagree, and believe that land barons bidding against each other are infact cutting thier own profit margins and consequently increasing LL's take off the auctions. The "crusaders" to me are ignorant zealots who blame other players for the price of land when the greatest most definitive control lies in the the hands of LL and their success at matching the growth of the community

i wouldn't say i'm winning. hopefully breaking even and then a little. i will grant you that for short spurts the big players can effect the market slightly, more so if they are taking advantage of LL oversights on land regulations, but the real effect is from the ratio of land available to the demand. even as a small time land baron, i cannot afford to hold on to land for 4 weeks.

my margin is very similar to kathy's. does that make her a land baron? just kidding.

meerha, i suggest the best place for you to buy land is the auctions. you can savea few bucks. but otherwise, there are plenty of land barons, the sl communities term for players speculate on land, who charge very fair prices.

"Well, as to the original poster on this thread: How about you stop griefing the person who was so nice and designed those gorgeous oriental style sale signs that I am using now? And, hmmm, how much did you actually pay for that land that you are trying to sell for, what? 80 L$ per sqm? Oh my! I really feel sorry for you, you must be very unhappy person with your attitute "

Anshe; First of all the original poster has a name; Its Catherine Cotton. As I told you after I neg rated the signs I dont like seeing those signs all over SL. Again as I also told you if you have a problem with how the system is currently set up for ratings take it up with LL. To rate someone is ones personal opinion. Also truth be told you were very rude and I recieved no less than 5 neg. rating that day.

Are you talking about my land in Griginano? Your numbers are way off base. It was taken off the market after I made a deal with Lordfly to purchase that land at a fair and reasonable price. The details are between LF and myself ty.

As for you last comment again uncalled for. Insults are just words to make the person saying them feel superior.

Cath

Kathy! Where have you been girl! I miss your posts, always eye openers

You make a lot of realy good points full disclouse absolutly agree with that also.

Cath

Just keep in mind that lot 512m2 is not worth 2999L$ and you should be ok. PG sims are usualy less per m2 and Mature sims. Supply and demand. Start off calculating L$2 per m2 and calculate value of the location into your figures. Then of course you must decide how much is it worth to you. When in doubt ask around. I for one would be happy to tell you if its a good deal or not.

Take care you

Cath

juxtaposed w/


i am also in favour of full disclosure. i think the whole idea of an open market requires transparency. my question is that beyond the auctions, which can always be available in a database style, how do we propose to track land which can be constantly joined and subdivided?

The tracking of course would be done by LL.

Catherine

brilliant! i love it! i am going to bake you some cookies!

I just don't know about you. Who else would be tracking these numbers? Of course its the job of LL they have all the data. Until we have full disclosure.

Catherine

but how will this information be presented? i can not imagine any clear and useful way to present this multi dimensional set of date. unless the historical data is given for each individual 16m2 tile.

in the life cycle of a sim, we have seen owners change, parcel names change, parcels divided, joined, divided joined.

besides weekly statistics for land sales of various sim types, pg vs mature, auction vs inworld, my understanding is you are talking about a full disclosure in the sense that i could, with the flick of a few keys and a double click, find the exact terms of your grignano sale to lordfly. my question is can anyone concieve of how this multivalent information will be displayed and sorted for me on my screen?

I rather like those signs. I especially liked the floating platform one on the water parcel I purchased a while back. You might want to consider having those signs self-destruct as the plots near me had the prices jacked up by others but the signs were left.



Please stop responding to every post; it's very tedious and it often contributes nothing to the discussion.

Originally Posted by Anshe Chung
How about you stop griefing the person who was so nice and designed those gorgeous oriental style sale signs that I am using now?
<----------------------------
ROFL - Thanks for those awesome signs.

Prak is this your thread? No

Is this your forum? No

Did that little blurb add anything to this thread? Again No.

Dont feed the trolls!

Cath

Hi. I'm a newb to SL, but I thought I might point out some fundamentals... if you've been reading threads in correct chronological order, that will sound familiar. I posted on dwell, too.

I don't own any land, and I don't know that I'll ever own more than my 512 landless when I purchase it. It costs real money, aside from the cost in L$. But let me approach the situation from an SL standpoint and turn it on its head.

An island is 65,536 m2, and gains SL $195 per month.
A 512 m2 plot of land gains SL $5.
An island can be made out of 128 512 m2 plots.
Therefore, an island of 512 m2 plots nets SL $640 per month. More than three times as much.

From a strictly monetary standpoint, they are losing money by allowing people to buy huge swaths of land and parcel them out (especially since they charge both the first and second owner the monthly fee). From a social/market standpoint, they have a similar problem: land barons may or may not be harsh masters, but they add cost and sell to those who really can't afford the added cost - the little people looking to expand their land from free. SL should want these expansions to happen, should facilitate them in every way, because it is THE MOST EFFICIENT DISTRIBUTION FOR MAKING MONEY.

From a monetary standpoint, it would be smart for SL to charge a linear flat monthly land fee - like half a cent per meter of land or somesuch. This means that owning in bulk isn't valuable. If they wanted to benefit the up-and-coming waves of passionate young members (young in the game, if not in life), they would actually scale it up, so that owning a whole island was prohibitively expensive.

What? Big plots of land are useful? You want a theme park? You want a desert surrounding your oasis? Sure. It doesn't have to be strictly linear, just enough so that huge chunks of land can't be efficiently snapped up. Maybe the key is the 2000 m2 plot - that's the most efficient land ownership. Maybe 8000. That can be figured out: what size of land is generally used to draw the most visiters per square meter?

Alternatively, charge based on perimeter. Then, big lands will be cheap to maintain... IF you keep them intact. Nibble away at them, parcel them out, and your perimeter shoots through the roof. Sure, it can be avoided by carefully selling 'on the grid'... but it's some help. Or, make land cost more early, and get cheaper as you go on: you buy an island, it costs, say, $500 the first month, $250 the next, and $100 per month after that. Adjust as needed, but the idea is sound: land brokers lose and SL gets more people developing their lands fully. Again, this solution also has problems, but it might help.

You can't change the nature of the game by crossing your fingers and begging people to be nice. You have to change the nature of the game by, well, changing the nature of the game. Change what is profitable. That's what people persue. It's more efficiently profitable to own huge chunks of land. So people do it.

SL will never do anything like what I have listed, although I see no errors in my logic. It benefits SL and also destroys land hoarding. Double win. The ideal situation, from a business standpoint, would be that ALL land was owned at the most expensive level - at this point, 1024 meter plots (512 free). The prohibitive L$ cost of land is preventing this, to a large extent: anyone with enough money to buy land tends towards larger, more efficient parcels. It is costing them real money, and causing grief in the gamers. That makes it unwise on every level.

-Ansi

Ansi,
I do see fault in your logic. If all the large parcels are bought by land barons and split up for sale, then LL does in fact get the higher tier fees once that land has sold. In fact, they get the baron's unused tier (because the land sold) and the buyer's tier fee, they make more this way. They also do not have to use man hours to parcel up the land, the baron does it. Most businesses offer discounts for ordering in bulk, with good reason. It offers incentive to the user so that they can justify the larger purchase. There are far less administrative costs associated with 1 large land owner than many small ones and those savings are passed on to the large land owner. I am sorry you are having problems getting your desired sized parcel, if you want IM me inworld, I may be able to help.

Yes, that's a good point. I would think that parcelling the land out would be semi-automated, or even fully automated, but if the so-called 'land barons' are actually doing SL's work for them (saving SL time and money), then they are definitely aiding the game. In that case, there's really no problem with baronism on that front - the L$ price increase is worth the efficiency.

And, yes, when a baron sells off parcels, the baron pays tier for it as well as the buyer... but how often does a baron 'sell out'? If the land stays in his hands for months, SL is losing money that they would have gained by fostering a system of smaller, cheaper sales. Given the quick movement of Linden dollars (which, according to their figures, transfers owners at over 70% a month? Holy Cow!), I would suspect that barons sell out pretty rapidly, in which case these middlemen are actually earning SL more money. Probably not a whole lot more, but certainly some.

I don't know if they are harming the game world by player dis-satisfaction. I don't know enough about the world to say yes or no. But if they are, that would count against any money SL earns or saves by them. It shouldn't be all that hard for an SL employee to figure out, given a few hours of looking at the figures.

Side note: Buying in bulk only matters when you are selling in a bulk that wouldn't have been ordered otherwise. As I understand it, all the land is bought out as fast as possible... so SL has no reason to 'sell bulk cheap', because they can't sell any more. Best to sell expensive!

And thank you for the offer about land help, but at the moment, I'm probably just going to buy myself a 512 starter somewhere. That'll be enough for me for at least a few weeks.

-Ansi

I am talking about you tripple neg rating the creator of the signs and griefing her all over, spreading false rumors about a person who is in no way related to my business, other than being so nice to make me signs that look a lot nicer than what I had before. I am not talking about the obscenities you threw at me nor am I talking about the other people you talked into tripple neg rating my account.



How funny. Weren't you just all over forums pushing for land sale information be public? But of course I understand this does not apply to your own dealings Such as every other standard you try apply on other people of course exclude yourself



I never met you, I never talked with you, I never talked about you until you suddenly neg rate and insult me and my friends. I guess by your statement you must feel like super girl now

Takes a deep cleansing breathe....

"Griefing her all over", "spreading false rumors" "other people you talked into tripple neg rating my account"

Those are all bold face lies. My opinion of you just hit rock bottom.




Over at what forum, this thread? Yes
Why would that exclude me? It doesn't



Your right you have never talked to me before.

"I never talked about you until..." So your admitting to talking to others about me, and your doing so openly in a public forum.

Now re-read your first paragraph Troll.

I see how you run your land business now. No I don't think I will be buying any land from you.

what do y'all think of this?

/13/75/25337/1.html

Khamon, anyone who had nothing to hide would support this. Totally agree that all this information should be open.

Went to old auctions for the first time and was really shocked at how few of us 'ordinary' residents win auctions and I think that the fact that LL appear to condone the barons is a disgrace.

I just did a little exercise, looked at one sale and went to see the land - the baron (who shall remain nameless) had purchased a 2016sqm of land for L$11,910 (just under L$6 a sqm) and had obviously bought the adjoining plot (presumably for a similar price) because the land on sale is now 4064sqm and the price is L$32,512, i.e. L$8 a sqm. No-one needs to be a mathematician to work out that for doing absolutely nothing at all, they will make a profit of L$2 a sqm.

I really don't know what the answer is but something surely has to be done.

Catherine, keep fighting the good fight.

Latonia

it's not a disgrace; it's just business. land barons pay a LOT of money to ll each month. they'd be foolish to give that up. granted it's a short term, dot.comish mentality. but it's paying the bills right now. i dunno what they'll do once our sense of community is wholly destroyed and people start disappearing in droves. most mmorpgs just close after a year or two of net user loss.

ll will likely start pushing commercial use of the product then. both the server and client should be well tested and stable by that point in time. it'll mean licensing the server software and giving up the idea of running the entire w3b on a single grid. but the only option will be selling the company entirely to recoup the millions of dollars poured into it over the last two years.

yeah yeah i'm being honest and practical. everyone please just blow me off as a cynical fool so your heads don't explode. that's so hard to clean off the keyboard.