Cap Real Estate 'Usury'

An awful lot of people have complained about the griefers who buy a small parcel of land, build something totally obnoxious on it, and then set the price of their land to something usuriously huge and out of proportion with reality, in hopes people will pay their artificially high price to buy the land and remove the eyesore. Such real-estate trickery is extortion, plain and simple. And it appears to be far too common. The Lindens have refused to do anything about several of these extortionists, claiming 'free speech' rights and the like.

I offer a simple solution. Place a cap on the price one can offer land for, based on a percentage of the value of the surrounding real-estate. Set a fixed limit for 'land inflation' of perhaps 200% of the average price for the surrounding land that is available for sale, or has been sold in the last 30 days. Set a similar cap in the negative direction, so someone can't set their land to an insanely low amount just to drag down values of nearby property.

If land in an area is going for L$5 per square meter, is it at all rational for someone to set a price of L$10,000 per square meter, or even more, for their tiny parcel? Can there be any real reason for doing so, other than to rip someone off? If they really don't wish to sell it, they can simply indicate that it is not for sale, can't they?

With this proposal, if you do something to the land itself that makes it more beautiful, you can still gain a reasonable profit from it's sale. If several land owners all improve an area, or an entire sim, everyone's land values can slowly but steadily rise. But if what you do on your property is such an eyesore that no one anywhere near it can get a reasonable price for their land, then your land value drops as well.

Comments?

This makes sense, and I do agree. Privately owned sims should still be able to have any value for their land, as they may have every reason to other some large price for their land. But if someone in that sim wishes to sell their land on then the price cap would take effect.

I think if someone sets their land price too high, it should just set it automatically to not for sale, as that's what they want really anyway =)