Land Developing - the Fair and Balanced Proposal!

Certain block of First Land lots (50%?) could be set aside for this purpose:

1. A "licensed" realtor can claim building permissions on a First Land lot by paying, say, L$256. This would be rationed, perhaps no more than one per day/week etc.

2. When the lot was ready for sale, they would then click a box to put it back on the market to first timers at, say, L$1024.

3. They could then solicit (politely) new residents to come live on the lot that they developed.

4. When they found a buyer, the land purchase would also transfer all objects in place.

5. L$512 would go to LL, and L$512 to the realtor.


This would regulate the process, with the mechanics in place to prevent any monopolies or price-fixing. It would require a large coding investment, but would avoid the "yet another type of land" problem of some other proposals.

In step 2, you could allow people to set an arbitrary markup, to allow for builds with higher values than others.

New land owners would still be paying the same for their land, but instead of buying a house in a box, and struggling to place it, they'd have a ready-made home.

Any abuse loopholes here?

I think the general idea is nice... but...

Abuse could happen by someone claiming to be a realtor and just building something like a giant penis on it. Of course LL could easily clean it up, but still, added work.

Another abuse could be someone actualy living on it for awhile before "releasing" it back to be sold.

Don't most first land plots only cost 512? You're saying people would pay the same ammount, but it seems like they'd actualy be paying more? Unless theres two different types of land?

This would cause them to explain "another type of land", you'd then have a blank canvas land and a developed peice of land, I myself don't find any problem with this, I think people could easily grasp the concept between the two, but just saying.

Also as well as building a nice house, you'd have to keep prim limits in mind also, a nice looking house is pointless if it takes up all the prims, so builders could also cause more problems by "conning" new users into building a great looking house... but then thats all it is since users couldn't put anything else in it and would have to delete some of the house or just delete the whole thing because they don't have the ability to delete just some prims from the house. Just something to consider with that.

I think its a good general idea, I'm all for nice development and good use of real estate, but probably the best way to do something like this would to do it on your own.

Something else you could do simular is to offer discount development to first land owners, i.e. you have your regular charge of finding and developing a regular peice of land, but then you also have a discounted charge for finding good first plots of land for people and developing it.

Maybe realtors could "flag" or "reserve" land for specific users (which would become unreserved if the user finds their own plot within the time, or have a time limit on it).

I dunno.

What's the point? You can buy houses anywhere. You can get a quite a lot of houses for free or $1. There's an endless crowd of people willing to help newbies get settled in for free.
If in the real world we could fly around with a load of houses in our pocket that we could get for free or a dollar, there would be no need for moneygrubbing middlemen like RL realtors and you would just buy or rent land from someone, then pick your house and place it there.

Why?

HERE, YOU FUCKING vBULLETIN BOARD! HERE'S SOME MORE FUCKING CHARACTERS FOR YOU! FUCKING TEN CHARACTER LIMIT!

LOL Mole, you so funneh

True, but once you have the house, you have to position it. Terraform to remove the ground bump from your living room floor. Put furniture in. Arrange rocks, plants, little fuzzy squirrels and birds, etc.

I think Philip's point is that people will be coming to SL for whom doing these things themselves is not as fun or easy as we find them to be. And they will actually want this service. Maybe. We don't know. We're just talking about how to cope with it if they do.

This is really no different than someone coming in, searching and buying First Land, then employing a builder and landscaper to make it "home" because they can't do that themselves. Except - this way, they don't have to wait. It's already done, and theirs as soon as they buy the lot.

For those who want to build themselves, or employ others for a custom build, there would still be plenty of "normal" First Land for them. I see this as a small pilot scheme. If there's no demand, it can simply tail off and die..



I'm not so sure. I know there's an endless crowd of people willing to help people buy the land that they own. I've yet to see the endless crowd helping people get their First Land, and settle in.



Oh, my dream! I so wish I could do that in the real world! Right now, we're selling our house to move to a cheaper part of the country - but we don't know where yet. When we find our dream place, we'll buy land and build. But if we could have bundled our current house into our pockets and taken it with us, and rezzed it on land in the future, that would save so much hassle!

This is an optional service. By restricting it to just a few First Land lots, it leaves the door wide open for people not to choose to go this route. I have no idea if anyone would want this, even.

Your point about free or $1 houses can be applied to anything in Second Life, though. Why pay $400 for an outfit when you can make one yourself in the Appearance Window? Why pay $250 for a couch when you can find free ones at the bazaar? Why pay $1000 for a skin when your AV comes with skin anyway?

We see so many threads about people frustrated with their building skills. They can't get their homes to line up, their doors are all off-kilter and their plants look like weeds. For those people, and those people only, this might work.

It would provide an outlet for people who want to sell developed land, so they would not be buying up and developing land that someone else wanted for their own build, or for prims.

For myself, I'd be happy to do this for free - there's nothing I like better than buying a small lot, and making it into a home - whether for me or someone else. That's my fun time. But, as Philip has said, we're moving towards a more commercial world, and if my doing this has value to someone else - then, by all means, I'll take a profit!

The vast majority of comments against any sort of land development proposal have been that "we don't want or need this". I'm just saying - let's see. On a very small scale. And let's do it free of any "buy, mark up and sell" motives. These developers would not be buying the land. They would be paying for the opportunity to develop it. They would not own it. They would be limited to the rate at which they could do this. And if no First Land buyer liked what they did - if they all flitted off and bought virgin land - then the developer would be out his L$256 per lot. Only if he did a good job, and there was a demand for his work would he make any money at all.

And he wouldn't be doing it on land someone else wanted in the first place

(BTW Eggy, I see you liked the cabin I put on the land you bought from me - I need to zip over and sell i to you in place some time )

Hence the need for some sort of licensing system for developers. You couldn't be a developer unless you already owned land - which would remove the desire to live on the land you were developing. Put a penis on it? You lose your license, buddy!



They all cost L$512, yes. I see this as a short cut:

1. Traditional way - newbie finds and buys First Land for L$512, spends another L$250 on a nice house, takes two frustrating days with the edit tools placing it, hires a landscaper for L$500 to make a waterfall and flower garden. Total cost L$1262 - time, up to a week.

2. New, fast track - newbie finds and buy Developed First Land for L$1024. Total cost L$1024 - time, seconds.



Furnishings could be included. Realtors would be expected to explain what prim limits are, and builds with more prims left open would be more desireable. Con someone? they report it, you lose your license!

Cuz Philip thinks it would be nice to have realtors

Who gets licenses and why? How would you control who gets which first land plots to develop? What is to prevent 'realtors' from snatching up all the better located first land plots and leaving people for whom the entire program was created the poor choice of lower quality plots or paying twice as much for a plot they just want for the location?

How is this anything like how conventional realtors work? How could 'realtors' fail in your system? What are they risking for the privilege of fleecing the landless?



So why don't people just charge less for houses and landscaping? They could specialize is 512 m^2 plot design. Or why not take the developer idea and apply it to a non-captive market of anyone looking to buy land; or would having to buy the land first would introduce risk that would cut into the profits?

Business models that require government support to be sustainable should be rethought.

I'm not sure. I'm open to ideas on this.



I envision LL allocating all the First Land lots in one Sim for this pilot program. They wouldn't be better or worse than any other lots. For a typical roll-out, there'd be 19 other Sims of First Land for people who don't want a developed lot. In fact, I suggest the lots available for development be precisely those that ARE less desireable. More boring land textures. Further from the coast. Harder contours for building.



Okay, "fleecing the landless" is a rather inflammatory phrase to use here. They are offering an option to the landless which is not currently available. The landless are perfectly at liberty to ignore this option and buy undeveloped lots in the other nineteen new Sims.

The realtor/developer risks losing their L$256 stake they paid for the privilege of developing the land. In fact, there could be a time limit. If no landless person has found the developed lot nice enough to build in X number of weeks, the build is deleted, and the land reverts to normal L$512 undeveloped land. The developer gets nothing back.



Good question, why don't they? Why does anybody on Second Life charge what they do for what they make? They charge according to what their time is worth to others. What I'm proposing here is a direct response to Philip Linden's suggestion that new residents should be able to go on hosted tours of land to buy - and that land should be "ready to live on".



People are doing that. Currently, the user base in Second Life does not provide a demand for those services. Philip envisions a time in the not too distant future when this will change. Doing this for First Landers is also a way to avoid the "buy low, sell high" accusation. Because you're not buying the land!



LL support in providing the technical tools is not government support. We have already heard that the ability to sell land plus the objects on the land in place is getting a higher priority spot on the to-do list. Because LL control the supply of new land, and the mechanism for validating who can purchase new land, and whether it can be built on before purchase, they have to be involved.

Consider this:

1. If I had suggested that a Linden build a house on, and landscape First Land lots in new Sims before release, what would your reaction have been?

2. If I had suggested that selected residents be allocated building permissions on one First Land lot in order to prepare it for settlement, but receive no monetary reward for doing so, what would your reaction have been?

In fact, there's an idea. A new addition to the leader boards!

How about this: every time a new Sim rollout occurs, established residents are each allocated one of the First Land lots in the new Sims. Maybe a lottery, as there is for Burning Life lots. They have a two week period to work on it. After that time, these are released for the landless to purchase. Perhaps for more than L$512, but no money goes to the developer. Instead, the speed at which each lot sells is used as a measure of how attractive the build was (the lots would have to be uniformly terraformed, shaped and inland for this to be fair). The ranking would be part of the leader board system.

If a developed First Land lot doesn't sell within two weeks, the price is lowered back down to L$512, and buyers who want undeveloped First Land can buy it, delete everything on it, and revert the terraforming!

Lest I be misunderstood, I'd like to clarify some things.

I want to do this. I want to take First Land lots, develop them and then act as a buyer's agent to help the landless find their dream home. I want to do this with a fierce passion. If I have to pay for the priviledge of doing so, I will. If I get to do it, but for free, I will. Any monetary gain for me is just icing on the cake, and if that would make it unacceptable to the community at large, I would gladly waive it.

So far, I have been helping people find land they want. First Landers, old timers, you name it. And I have been doing commissioned building. These have been fun activities for me, but something was missing.

When I read Philip's blog entry, a light bulb went on for me. This was the missing link. I want to help people (who have no interest in building or landscaping for themselves) find their first SL home - and see their eyes light up as they fly over the hill and spot the cozy little cottage with the white picket fence and the great view over the ocean.

I got close to that two nights ago. I helped a brand new player find First Land when he was at the point of despairing. We flew around and around the Lost Lakes, making notes, comparing locales and neighbors. He picked. He bought. He wanted a house. He wanted to terraform, but terraforming was turned off for the Sim. I offered to rez some houses I'd made to show him what would fit. He loved the first one I put out. I normally sell it in a box for L$350, but he had little money left. I positioned it, placed the doors and interior furnishings, and let him have it for L$100. He modified it, messed something up. I passed him another copy of the house with copy/no transfer enabled.

This was the best time I've had in SL in five months. The only thing that would have made it better for me would have been if I'd been able to bring him to see the lots already built on and landscaped.

Now, do you consider the L$100 I got from that to be "fleecing the landless"?

If you do, you should probably consider all content sales in SL to be rip-offs.

Am I the only person here to think this might be the best SL profession to have? Really?!

1. The Lindens have far more valuable things to do with their time.
   
2. They can already do this, albeit after the land is settled. Why should Linden Labs spend time and energy selecting people? And how would they be selected?
   

Both would responses would also include a comment about government support of specific business models being harmful to innovation.

If you want to landscape First Land, do it. Don't depend on the Lindens to give your idea energy.

No. You didn't have a government bestowing extra privileges to you in order to do what you did. You did what anyone else (with the time, energy and talent) could have done. I only object to people being required to having the time, energy, talent and license in order to do the same.

Interestingly enough, I'm fine with land barons and people reselling items at a markup. It is really only the extra privileges that I object to, not the money. I would have objected to it even if you had originally proposed to do it for free. Although I might not haved used the word "fleecing." It should be left up to us alone to create social/political/economic classes, not Linden Labs.

If you really want to show off pre-developed land, why not do what developers often do when they are trying to pre-sell houses, create model homes and little architectural models? No help from Linden Labs required there.

Or, if you really think that Linden Labs has to get involved; a neutral Landless Kiosk or something would be less objectional to me. Allow anyone to register as a realtor/developer and drop off a notecard with landmark or something. The landless could flip through the ads on that and select one to help them. Then at least you don't end up with the Lindens creating a privileged class. Anyone could take advantage of it without Linden intervention.

Lisse, although I understand your fascination with the subject, and I even share it and would wish to become a realtor too if it happened, I think there's a key point missing here.

We are an enclave of creators. Everyone that visits and remains in SL is a creator (unless they're using it merely as a visual chat client), because currently there is very limited scope for anything else in SL. Therefore, what the realtor concept really needs is a non-creative customer base more than a new scheme, otherwise it's just good architects selling to newbie architects. And that's not good for the newbie architects.

Many of us are looking forward to creating massive highly interactive gaming attractions to attract non-creative players from the MMOGs, FPS's and Sims like Philip seems to be planning (and I think the vision and goals are absolutely terrific). However, the current non-scalable systems couldn't cope with it even if we had the means to build such attractions, which we don't yet (but we keep asking).

So, while this proposal scratches a personal itch (and I have it too, so I support it), it's sort of peripheral to what we really need most in SL if LL plans are to succeed. The game-driven players of SL's future wouldn't be seen dead building a house most of the time, so that's where you'll find your real client base. We're not there yet.

Sure, let's do it. I'll enjoy it too, but it won't be particularly useful to SL.