do i or dont i own land i bought & paid for from Anshe Chung

Hi peeps -)
I purchased an Island from Anshe, last week...I had a security system installed which bled over into my neighbours land as far as the 15 second warning were concerned, thustly & quite rightly so annoying my neighbours... I Immediatley turned the system off, But at that point i realised just what power Anshe has over me as far as her rules & regulations are concerned...so i decided to sell the island & move on, when i tried to right click the land to add for sale there i found i could not do this Apparantley if i sell the island it all has to go via Anshe, Also the group that i was told to form for the land i also find there is a name in there as an officer a japanese or chinese name which is someone i have never heard of, & i am not allowed to remove this person from my group, so this person has the right to sell my land just as much as i do.. Rather than being able to place a sign on my land (or i assume it`s my land or at least i thought once i had paid Anshe 60K for it it would be my land) so that anyone can right click the land & simply buy it, i now find that everything concerning the land i`m supposed to own has to go through Anshe!!! it seems to me that i have the land on loan & i do not actually own it at all if i`m mistaken then i apologise... I do not intend paying the tier fees to Anshe until such time as this can be resolved... after all whats the point in paying for something that doesnt appear to be mine... or am i wrong ? is this normal practice ? when i have purchased linden land when i have wanted to move on i`ve set the land for sale placed an add in the land for sale section & it has beenn sold quite quickly, but in this case it seems i do not have the power to do this... as a side not Anshe was away when i purchased the land & Master Quatro was dealing with my purchase i paid him the monies for the land & as such did not receive one of Anshe`s cards explaining anything about her zoned propperty, so all this has come as a big shock to me... also i`m not sure if i`m posting this in the right place as i have never posted in this forum before so again my apologies if this post should have been placed elswhere
i would appreciate any feed back regarding this matter as Anshe seems to be permanantley unavailable to answer any im`s i have sent her even though she shows as being on line

thank you for listening to my witterings smiles
Kismet Gupte

Hi, Kismet! While I can't answer your questions I just wanted to give a friendly, "Hi!." and offer my best wishes that your situation is resolved in a way pleasing to you.

If your land is on the mainland grid (which I'm assuming it isn't) you can set it for sale. If it's on someone's private grid, then yes you'll have to go out and find someone to buy the land on your own, without the benefit of the land for sale list. Perhaps you could place an ad in the land for sale forum.

Or, if nobody is willing to buy it from you, (for the reasons you've listed above yourself) it's possible that you could maybe just find someone to take over the tier?

If you "buy" land that is on a private island (not the mainland), then you are only renting from the owner, not actually buying. The use of a group to take control of the rented land gives you some of the powers of a land owner on the mainland, but not all.

Each landlord that rents out private sims has different ways that they give out this control, and different policies. I am not an expert in how it's done, never having been a private sim owner or renter myself, so my advice would be to talk to Anshe or someone else from her company and get the situation clarified there.

Renting on a private Sim is very different from purchasing mainland land.

Kismet, I replied in your other post, but here's what I said:

You bought land on one of Anshe's private "Dreamland" sims, not on the Second Life "mainland." She is selling you a deed to the land, and because of private sim mechanics, the Lindens, not Anshe, required you to create that group to buy the land. You could probably sell it, but the sell would have to be facilitated through Anshe, since its a private, deed-restricted island that she owns.

It's a LOT like buying into many of the homeowners associations out there. You can sell, IF you go through them first. Buddy of mine had to wait two months before being "allowed" to put his REAL house up for sale because the homeowner's association said too many houses were for sale in the neighborhood and it looked like people were deserting.

To add what others in this thread have said, it's kind of like renting and its kind of not. In a way, you DO own the land, or at least a virtual deed to it. You just pay your land tier fees to someone else, not Linden Labs. In your case, you bought the land, but pay Anshe your land tier, or "maintenance" fees, like a timeshare or something.

Contact Anshe and tell her you'd like to put the land up for sale, since you bought it. She should be professional enough to allow you to do so.

Kismet

I rent land from Hiro Queso on one of his islands. There is no upfront 'purchase' fee - I simply pay Hiro an amount monthly. If you are looking to rent, I strongly suggest you contact him. When you want to move on, just give him notice and then leave. Hiro is helpful and a great landlord

Alexa

In Anshe's defense, I feel I have to add that on the main grid you would also get heat with the Lindens for installing an overzealous "security system".

Seconded!

As for the land, although people who do this call it buying, its renting, the only difference from Hiro's seems to be that you make a downpayment for the land in the first place.

You can't set the land for sale because its on a private island, you can't even transfer it. This is why private sim owners can deed a private sim parcel to your group of choice, because even if you wanted to, you couldn't sell it like that.

I think what you have to do is find a buyer and agree a price, and ask "Your Landlord" to transfer it. But for all I know the landlords bussiness may have an internal selling system of some kind..

If you have any further questions don't hessitate to IM or PM me

Zap

Hi Kismet! Saw your post...

Just one thing needs claifiying... everyone is mentioning a private Sim Island - off the mainland, but Kismet says she paid 60K for it... is that cheap for a Sim Island?

I think its an island of land, surrounded by water, could be any size, but in one of Anshes private sims.

I would suggest that anyone leasing private sim-space to other players describe it as a "lease" rather than a "sale" as this would be more in line with conventional use of the words and would certainly be more accurate and less likely to cause misperceptions by renters (with the attendant support issues).

In more accurate terms, every player - including land brokers - "lease" land from Linden Lab whereby lesees have more control (e.g. "right" of "resale" than their sublessees.

Gah! terminological nightmare.

As I logged on to teach Land Ownership 101 last night, I received an IM from someone who leases out private Sim land to others - they had obviously read what I had written here, and were "berating" me for calling it renting when they describe it to their customers as ownership.

Coincidentally, several of the students in my class yesterday were confused by the same issue - when I talked about Find/Land Sales, one long-time player added "...oh, and land for sale on private Sims is not included in that list". We spent almost the whole hour talking about the difference between land on the mainland and private Sims, and how groups work with land (both setting, and deeding).

One thing I am still not clear about, and I hope someone can clarify for me - if you buy/lease/rent land on a private Sim and use a group to hold it, do you give up your First Land priviledge to do so (i.e. do you actually donate tier to that deeded land)? I would think not, as most people doing so are still Basic Accounts, and thus have no tier! Yet I've heard of the landlord leaving the group after the initial setup, so is the land deeded but not supported by any tier?

*pulls hair out in frustrated confusion*

I'm still going to refer to it as renting/leasing though!

Yes, when a premium account donates their tier to a group, they sacrifice their group land priviledge. Or more correctly, that is registered as their first land ownership.

You are correct to refer to private island land use as rental. You would also be correct to refer to continental land use as rental. Estate owners "sell" land to their patrons with as much dedication and contractual obligation as LL "sells" land to their residents. There are four fundamental differences: the buyer must pay the estate owner directly because LL will not allow them to use the for sale interface; the buyer must pay tier to the directly to the estate owner because LL will not clear the billing for them; the buyer must provide a group to "own" the land because LL will not allow an estate owner to grant land rights to an individual; and the buyer must notify the estate owner when they wish to "resell" the land because LL will not allow them to use the for sale interface and the parcel will have to be deeded to a new group because LL will not allow well this just goes on and on doesn't it.

If you donate tier into the group; then you will give up first-land, however you dont need to do this for most leasing arrangements (unless you also have land on the mainland), so generally speaking, no you dont lose first-land.

As for the terminology nightmare, it's been a bit of a problem for the whole 'industry'; LL has yet to state one way or another on the topic. 'Leasing' is probably the right word to settle on, but there's a whole load of associated meanings which may or may not be valid (depending on the circumstances)

-Adam

Not owning a private sim (I wish), I can't know for sure but as I see it...

You can't transfer private islands without paying a $100 fee, so no matter what you do with the land (deed it to group, set it to group, lease it out) the tier will continued to be charged to whoever purchased the island... Its very different from mainland..

This is also why they can deed to it group without having to worry that the group will sell it...

one of the problems i see with the dreamland grid presently is that it doesn't provide "land owners" an open market to connect buyers with sellers the way that LL provides for the main grid. hopefully as the dreamland grid grows, anshe will develop a such a market to support the value of the land. until then, in my opinion the "purchase" of land in dreamland is more of an entrance fee into the community for a tier level. one may ask why should dreamland community have an entrance fee and another community not have one? i think that what the dreamland rental community is able to offer that other rental communities might not is a multiude of customer support personel that such fees allow anshe to employ.

so i would say what you are paying for is not land, but for the right to rent this land like in other grids, but with much more customer support and dispute resolution from grid managers.

When you have land deeded to your group in a private sim, it does not take your first land priviledge, as it takes no tier at all. I leave the groups that I deed land to in my sims, it makes no difference. Officer of that group or not, LL will come to me for the land fees on the whole sim, as in their eyes, I am the owner.

In Dreamland you have 3 options:

1. Buy land for L$, pay monthly tier in US$ to ANSHECHUNG.COM
2. Rent land for L$
3. Rent land for US$

For example if you rent, you can use up to 2048sqm for 15 US$ monthly rental fee. This is pretty much same deal as what you can find in other rental sims.

However, almost everybody in Dreamland prefers to buy the land. There are several reasons. Firstly, if you buy you only pay tier fee, which is usually lower than tier on the mainland or rental fees in rental sims. For example with 15 US$ monthly you can own up to 3072sqm in Dreamland. Another reason is, that you really buy into the sim. For example you can sell your land to other people at whatever price you agree with them. If you buy land in Dreamland, then currently for same price you get more land and better land and in better protected neighbourhood than on the mainland. On the downside it is true that you don't have access to the automated sales interface by Linden Lab, which requires now that sales in Dreamland be executed manually. However, land owners can transfer land themselves by transfering control of the land ownership group to the buyer. Most people just call one of our Dreamland angels though and get walked through the whole process, including the adjustment of tier and communicating our terms and conditions to the new buyer.

The Dreamland continent started in March this year. By now it has grown to 60 sims and more than 300 land owners. And it keep growing at about 2 sims per week, mostly through word of mouth from happy land owners

Do you not see that this is a confusing use of the word "buy" and that it might cause you disgruntled customers and public relations problems?

Put another way, when you say "buy" and "tier" and Linden Lab says "buy" and "tier" you really mean quite functionally different things. I'm not surprised customers are confused (nor am I saying you are trying to confuse them, just that it can).

I would like to ask Anshe if she makes it perfectly clear to people 'buying' land on one of her islands, the rules about selling that land when they want to move on. It would appear from the originator of this thread that this is not the case.

I can only reiterate, if you rent from Hiro there is no 'purchase' fee, just a monthly rent paid. I personally would not rent from anyone except him.

Alexa

I "rent" - i.e., pay "tier to - Nexus Nash in order to live on Azure Islands. I "bought" my lands there. It would be trickier to sell them than it would be if I had bought them directly from the Lindens.

I feel Anshe, Nexus, Prokofy, and anyone else who offers these sort of purchase, rental, rent-to-buy, and other options, offer a terrific service to residents. That they are so successful kinda confirms my feeling for me.

coco

Anshe is a professional and communicates her land ownership, rental information and property / zoning rules on her website, and provides residents with notecards outlining the details and rules as well, asking you to read them over so you know what you're getting into. Of course, she cannot force the resident to read the rules, but she does ask you if you've read and understand them -- if someone doesn't read, understand, or suddenly finds issue with a clause that's not her responsibility.

I'll not comment on Kismet's ranting. However, since my name has been taken in vain, I will state categorically that everyone that discusses land purchase on Dreamland with me gets several notecards describig the buying process, building restrictions, and in the case of "Themed" sims a card describing the features and limitations of the sim. Kismet knew all the conditions of the purchase. I spent numerous hours with her the week that Anshe was in NYC for the SLCC. It's disingenuous to say that she didn't know this was a zoned community with rules and guidelines for residents to follow. If perhaps I didn't give her notecards (anything is possible) then I apologize. However I do remember disticntly disussing the advantages of having zoning rules. I got to know Kismet during the many hours we spent disussing land and practices on SL and Dreamland. She's a fine individual and certainly has my respect. I did not want to leave the impression that buyers are not told of rules on Dreamland. I wish you well Kismet in whatever you choose and wherever you go.

MQ

Oops, you just sorta did.

"do i or dont i own land i bought & paid for from Anshe Chung"

I am afraid Gupte that all your fears are correct.

You don't own it - you didn't buy it. All the land in her private sim belongs to Anshe, and she can do anything she likes with it at any time, including confiscating it from you with no notice and no compensation.

You cannot appeal to the Lindens. They have publically announced that these arrangements are rentals, not sales, and are unenforceable private agreements between residents, with which they decline to become involved.

There is no "deed" to purchase - this is simply a misinterpretation of the word "deed". Where it appears on the button to be clicked it is a verb, not a noun, and simply describes the action of giving a group some temporary, reclaimable control options over a piece of land.

What happened was that in fact your rental landlord took from you a non-returnable cash deposit at the commencement of your informal unenforceable tenancy. This money cannot be recovered from your landlord. The only way you can get it, or part of it, back is to persuade another tenant to take your place, and pay you a substantial sum for the privilege.

Just as it seems this was presented to you as a "land purchase" so you are likely to try to present it to your successor the same way. But in the eyes of the Lindens - it most definitely is not. Private island owners are prohibited from selling off parts of their islands, and prevented by the software. That is why no-one can set up a clickable land sale in the normal way.

I suggest that if you feel you have been misled you should inform the Lindens, who might take an interest purely on the basis of checking to see if these "pseudo-sales" are in fact being misrepresented.

The majority of private-island landlords do not take these big upfront deposits, and do not describe their rentals as "land sales". I personally have regularly taken issue with those that do, because I do not believe that all their clients understand what is going on, or understand how in fact they have no rights at all.