Rant: Don't support the all new wannabee land barons

I've been getting annoyed with this so the 'Rant' forum seemed the perfect place to air my views, instead of boring everybody I see in SL with it. I know it's an old issue but it seems to have developed a little recently.

After the auctions of the southern (moon) sims a couple of weeks ago, a lot of land was selling cheaply and I noticed a few people that would previously have been called land barons dropping prices considerably to maintain sales. This was good to see.

In the more recent auctions (new islands, not the city, that is a very different place) I eventually won a plot (just bid L$5.5/m2 and went to bed nobody bid against me), but previosuly found I was constantly bidding against the same people. I have no problem with this in principle, they may have big plans for the area and need lot's of adjacent plots.

Unfortunately I see now that many of the plot's these people won are now up for sale at L$10/m2 when in many cases they have only paid between L$3 and L$4/m2 (I estimate that up to 1/2 the sim i'm talking about will soon be up for sale again).

Now consider if one of these new wannabee land barons makes a sale on a 2000m2 plot they paid about 7k for. That's 13k profit, they go off to GOM and sell the L$ making US$65 profit. There is also every chance that a new player, desperate for land, bought the L$ from GOM in the first place, costing themselves about US$90. The ONLY winner in this situation is the wannabee baron (and to a lesser extent GOM, although I've no problem with them, their charges are not excessive and the exchange rate is decided by the market).

As SL players we would all prefer to support the development of SL rather than the bank balance of a player exploiting others. So here is what I suggest, If you have L$20k to spend on land, spend it at auction, you will more than likely get a bigger/better plot for your money. If you get more land than you need, sell some small plots to newer players at cost, everybody wins.

Better still if your considering buying L$ with your hard earned US$, bid on a US$ auction setting yourself the same ceiling limit instead (e.g. US$90 if you were considering a 20k wannabee baron plot). This way you money goes directly to support LL and the development of SL, rather than just lining another players pockets.

The bottom line is that if nobody supports the barons they will eventually be forced to sell at cost or continue paying their monthly tier fees. Land is not as scarce as it once was and you do not need to pay these excessive prices. Some land may be worth $10/m2 to you, but if it is, buy it at auction, don't support the barons.

Incidently, In the past month I'm proud to say every land sale I've made has been at a loss, culminating in a small area I sold yesterday to bring me under tier at L$2/m2... It's really not about the money, I'm happy to help people out.

AMEN!

anyone who's asking $10 per square meter is asking for some negative ratings... too bad the system doesn't really let us give them to people who deserve them like that without gettin piles of them back in return

Just don't buy from them and they will go away. Do the math on the plot you are interested in. The farmers land will go fallow and they will leave not knowing what to do with it.

Thats not really fair to put a set price on it. The city plots are selling for over 30L/sq.meter so if someone decides that they need to sell their land for some reason you are going to neg rate them?

What if someone sets their plot of land they are building on to 70L/Sq.M not because they actually want to sell it, but because if someone wanted it that badly they'd be willing to move their build and give up their land for that.

There are many reasons to have high priced land and if you go around neg rating people without finding out why, thats not fair.

JV

If there's a spinning cube with lights and particles saying "LAND FOR SALE" it's safe to assume they don't fall into one of those categories.

Why on earth would you do that?

If you want, as you suggest, a little retribution, just don't buy the property. The land will sell at the price someone buys it for. $10 may seem expensive to you or I, but it might be a bargain to someone else.

Neg. rating someone because *you* dislike the profiteering of land is absurd. That's like me neg. rating you because you sold sassy little t-shirts at (what I think) is an enormous profit. It just doesn't make sense and breeds more negativity into SL than just letting it go and letting the market dictate pricing.

The trouble is sometimes they make it difficult to get land. I lost a bid war to someone who was willing to pay L$60,000 for about 3800 square meters. This was to someone who had joined in January.

For a lifetimer with a fairly large land allocation, it is becoming prohibitively expensive to buy a nice contiguous plot of land. I do like the idea of being able to sell L$ that I have earned in-world, but it can really come back and bite you in the ass. Double-edged sword and all that.

I don't see an easy solution to any of it. Maybe having "Land for the Landless" lotteries for plots up to 4096m^2 for those of us who just can't get any damn land without having to buy extra L$ on GOM. Really, why favor people with small land allocations but leave people with large allocations out in the cold?

well this was relating to a very specific incident where someone released a fairly sizable plot to public.. and within 15 minutes someone had bought the entire thing and set it for sale at $10 per square meter

that *DOES* make me angry.. and that *IS* in my opinion worthy of a -1 in behavior

p.s. or a -100 honestly if that pisses off enough other people too

YESYESYESYESYESYESYES put this in feature suggestions

I'm a lifer, I have no land (haven't really wanted it much until recently), and with the way the Sandbox goes down constantly I'm sick of it to the point of starting to think about getting land somewhere. The problem with that is I'm sure it's impossible to find a 4096 area at a normal price (not to mention that the neighborhood counts, too), and I'm not giving a so-called "land baron" more than it's worth.

eltee, I see your point, but I still, respectfully, disagree. I tend to think that, in this specific case, if this person had not come along and gobbled it up and set it at $10/m2, someone else would have.

Land, like it or not, is a commodity in SL. Punishing someone for making a living (big or small), is in my book petty behavior that in itself *might* be worthy of a neg. rating.

**disclaimer** In no way should my comments be construed that I will neg rate anyone who disagrees with my views. I believe in giving out neg. ratings only on extreme cases.

I'm not so sure. I don't think anyone has the right to do something that reduces the overall experience for the community as a whole, especially if it is for profit-motivated reasons. I don't recognize land barony as a god or TOS-given right.

I suppose the debate becomes: Is making land less available at public prices a "community service" or an activity that damages our community? I think it's the latter. All these people are doing is extorting money by holding land hostage for an expensive per-meter ransom.

Definitely neg-worthy behavior. Still money talks. For just a $9.95 investment, I can create an account devoted to doling out the negative ratings these people deserve. Actually, with referral bonus, it's only effectively a $2 investment. Hmm.....

and then that person woulda gotten a neg from me

thats neither an excuse nor a justification... thats like sayin 'this person was a bastard so if i hadn't've lied in wait and hit them in the head with a baseball bat eventually someone else would've'

aka its meaningless and hollow and only re-enforces my point that this behavior needs to be punished by the community

First, let me just say that this is only my opinion. I do not buy and sell land for money. I have owned the same land in the same sim since September. I have yet to hear a good, solid reason why we continue to thrash land profiteers.

Let's think about this one more. Buying up land to make money reduces our collective experience. Fine. Let's talk about other things that do the same.

We all hate lag, right? That reduces our overall experience, doesn't it? Every prim you rez, every texture you apply to a prim, every script you run, every party you host contributes to reducing the server/client performance, thus reduces our overall (collective) experience.

If you are going to neg. rate someone for lessening the collective experience for land profiteering, then you should be neg. rating pretty much anyone who builds/scripts/socializes in SL and not singling out one segment of our population that has a business you find distasteful.

In addition, the day the Lindens began auctioning land, it was solidified that land *is* a commodity.


Interesting idea. I'm curious... how does it damage our community?

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A reminder: we are not granted land anymore. It is not something that comes with our subscription (though, maybe it should). What comes with it is the *opportunity* to own land. Finding and paying for the land is up to you.

I can see situations where you might consider it worthwhile to neg rate somebody profiteering, but my original suggestion (ensuring your hard earned cash goes to LL where possible, not to the land barons) would force the price down over time, since keeping large plot's of overpriced land costs the baron money each month. I personally feel happy to know that i'm contributing to a land barons real life monthly bill by not buying their land. Just one sale could give them enough profit to pay the bill though, and the encouragement they need to keep buying cheap and selling expensively.

The important point is that nobody should give in and pay the prices being asked by some players, everytime somebody does pay them they make the situation worse. Regarding the city plots, I said in my original post that these are a very different case and you cannot really compare prices there with elsewhere (although I'm sure city prices will stabilise eventually). Sure there are cases for very individual plots, with unique value-adding features where they could be worth a high charge, but these plots are in a minority, most of the time a similar plot could be obtained at auction for about half the cost, or less.

I again urge people to buy plots at auction, benefitting LL, or from fair pricing sellers... not the barons, just remember one sale a month could pay their charges and allow them to continue, but it would only take 2-3 months for them to reconsider their business practices.