New Real Estate Website from THE OTHERLAND GROUP

As it happens ever more frequently that (potential) customers are asking about the land our group currently has to offer, we finally decided to set up a website, where such information is now collected in an easily digestable manner. Check out:Please excuse us that this is not a terribly professional job with its own land database (Hi, Rathe, would you be willing to include our offerings in your nice system?), high class design, extensive help system or such. It is more of a quick hack based on the versatile TypePad blogging platform. We are sure that it will still be helpful for our customers.

The website currently lists descriptions of our holdings in 22 of 25 sims, distributed over some 800 parcels. Each article describes the major characteristics of the land and shows one or more pictures. You can easily look for land of a specific type. We currently list "flat" land, oceanside, lakeside, riverside and mountain land. Current "SALE" offerings are flagged too, of course.

Every portrait of a sim contains links for finding the location on the SL map and for a direct TP to that property.

This website is just the prototype for our future home on the web. Details are subject to change - and will change. The "real McCoy" is already under development and will see the light of the day sometime in April or May according to our current development timeline.

Check it out!

If you are looking for that special parcel ...

THE OTHERLAND GROUP
__________________________________________________

Looking for beautiful land? Check out THE OTHERLAND WEBSITE!
__________________________________________________

Otherland's having to create and maintain a website to feature their properties illustrates the business opportunity for someone to create and run a business of being a real estate broker in SL. Not necessarily to buy and sell land as a principal, but to list and promote properties and track their selling prices and generate "comps" information valuable to the marketplace.

The brokerage business in FL typically draws a 6% commission paid from the proceeds of the closing transaction (the realtors hover at closings like ants at a picnic). It might have to start in SL with commission payments based on trust or on arrangements like that discussed in another thread called "Towards a Theory for Enforcing Contracts, Resolving Disputes and Incorporation" at /148/86/78317/1.html).

A steady prospect of commissions could motivate realtors and their worker bees to provide more transparency in the expanding real estate market in SL.

Frank, thank you for mentioning that important aspect. I am not completely sure if this discussion belongs here, but as you have startet it, let me add some short comments from the perspective of the real estate seller:

We would love to cooperate with some kind of middleman/broker, if - and thats an important if - there would be some value added for us and the customer. This added value must be an obvious one for both sides because 6% commission in this business is substantial. Contrary to the RL real estate market, margins in the SL land market are not huge. And it is simply impossible to hold land for a long time and specuklate on rising land values. Tier would kill you!

So, from our point of view one of the functions of said broker would have to be a more intense turnover. At least this could justify a commission.

From the customers point of view a better market overview would be an added value: someone who knows the market, knows where to find which kind of parcel, how the neighbourhood will probably develop (very important in SL), and which seller has the best prices. The latter point is grossly overrated, though, because the biggest part in the cost of owning land in SL in most cases is tier and monthly fee for premium membership.

"Trust" is just a small part of the problem such a role would face. Just now I would say a bigger one is the perceived "added value" - or lack of - in a market whose mechanisms look like the RL real estate market on first view but are grossly different in many aspects.

The absence of land appreciation is one of the interesting aspects of SL, and the "tax burden" in the form of tier is significant in the absence of appreciation.

A recent interesting post about the appreciation of land values in Jesse (if it can be verified) raises some interesting questions about the effect of artificial scarcity and the effect of LL making as much land available as the market can absorb, precluding appreciation of common land unless a viable economic application can be developed that is not easily copied by every Tom, Duck and Mary.