More filters in Land Sales Search popup

Hi. It would be very useful if there was a way to filter out covenant properties when doing a search for land sales. Some of us prefer to buy land rather than rent it, and having the private island parcels all mixed in with the mainland parcels makes it almost impossible to find anything. Thanks.

You mean "private estate properties". Not all private estate properties have covenants, and filtering by covenant would just invite unscrupulous renters to game the system.

This is a great idea. There's no reason why covenant sales, which are actually nothing more than rentals, should be listed under land sales.

Why don't you try explaining your stance instead of just saying that won't work, Argent. Then it might be possible to take you more seriously. What exactly is "gaming" the system, and how would preventing rentals from fraudulently masquerading as sales be a bad thing? It seems to me it would be just the opposite, especially where new players are concerned. As it is now they see what looks like a good deal for purchase, put down their hard earned Lindens for it, and then find they've just paid a lot of money for the privilege of renting.

I didn't say it wouldn't work.

I said that the filter needs to be on "is this an estate" not "is there a covenant".

Otherwise someone would just set up parcels on their island for rental and not put a covenant on the property, to make it look like a sale.

Argh, this is such a horrible issue.

On the one hand, island owners simply should not be able to list their land for trivial prices like L$1 in the land sales tab, simply as a form of advertising. It cheapens the listings, it's false advertising, and its bad for the reputation for the many honest island owners out there.

On the other hand, island owners should be able to list land SOMEWHERE that is searchable. Otherwise mainland sales have an unfair advantage. It's very unfair if land sales has a listing tab to make it easily searchable, but land rentals don't.

I guess the best solution would be the inclusion of an entirely new "land rental" system that works alongside the "land sales" system. By this I mean a new tab in search... and the ability to grant TEMPORARY ownership of a parcel to a resident or group - and billing the resident/group a fixed fee for this. You could search for parcels "between X and Y rent per week" or "parcels of at least X sqm but with a maximum rent of Y".

That'd be a lot of work for the Lindens though.

In the meantime... personally I'd suggest a new field or two added to land sales... split "price" to "price at start" and "price per month". Make it so mainland sales have to set price at start but not price per month, and island "sales" have to set price per month but not price at start. Then provide options in search/land sales to filter on these. This would effectively let you search land sales (which would now also include land rentals) for mainland only (by excluding any parcels that have a 'per month' fee listed), or island only (by excluding 'price at start' parcels. I know this isn't a perfect idea, but still, I do feel that the system right now is based on lumping estate land in with mainland land, and that this is the root of the problem.

Seperate them. Give each its own tab. Then the people who refuse to touch covenants (yet are quite happy to abide by the SL ToS, which contain far more rules) can search mainland listings only, and the people who want to rent or to seek out managed PI sims can find that information too.

I know it's a lot of work - but it would make the SL land system so much better, IMHO.

I fail to see why a simple item in the dropdown is not at least a good start... I can search for First Land, or Auction, why not Rental or Estate?

Seems stupid-simple to me, and should not be at all hard to implement unless the back-end system is absolutely horribly fragile.

That's absolutely the best "easy" solution. Perhaps they can call it Lease rather than Rental?

A separate tab for Rent and Lease that allows people to also advertise mainland rentals would be better, but much more work.

The owners of the private islands (who dump bunches of USD into LL) do not want you to have the ability to distinguish between mainland sales and island (non) sales. And since they have the influence (read $$$) with LL, it's not going to happen.

Yes, for us mainlanders, it would be a benefit. And it makes sense. But just like in politics, the people with the money rule.

I'm not cerncerned about "mainlanders", or the impact on mainland prices or sales. They're stable, within quite a small band.

It's the safety of the customers I'm worried about. And they are, when it comes down to it, the ones who are actually paying all the money that LL is getting from the estate owners.

They don't?
So why do many of them use covenants, which are such a dead giveaway?
So why do some of them state in the parcel name/desc, things like "THIS IS NOT MAINLAND" and "private estate land"?




If you have any examples of how island owners have special influence with LL, I would love to hear about them

Just do something to make it a bit easier. It's a freakin hassle

Having more ways of filtering land sales search results would be a good thing.
Examples :
* searching for land in a certain price range
* searching for land in a certain L$/sqm range
* searching for land to buy, land to rent, or both (this helps with the mainland vs islands thing)
* searching for land with a certain terrain (flat, hilly, whatever)
* searching for land with a certain climate (grass, snow, water, etc)

Putting parcels into these categories could be done automatically based on server-side calculations. Example : "hillyness" could be calculated based on the difference between highest point and lowest point on the parcel, and climate could be calculated based on the water level vs the land level and what textures are being used on the ground.

Wouldn't be perfect but it sure would help people avoid having to wade through lots of listings they are not interested in. LL seem snowed under with work atm, so it'll probably be awhile before we see these, and when we do they will probably work on the easiest ones first.

On the covenant issue, I completely agree that it is a hassle to read the land for sale list, when "covenant non-linden tier" properties are in the list.

All that has to be done is to show the non-Linden covenant versus Linden covenant info as an additional field column in the land search return (Non-Linden Tier? y/n). That way we can just sort the island renters out, or at least see when its an island renter before considering the property for resale.

This info certainly exists in the database - right? So lets all say "pleeease" and get our friends in Linden Land to add this column

I know you understand this, but please ... let's avoid the confusion: it's not the presence of a "covenant" that is the problem, it's that the land is on an estate.