How low can you go.........

*gives Des a kiss on the cheek for being so cute and funny*

/me runs to get away from Count Noob of Primwood

A lot of land flippers clean up any junk that's been left there; Probably more importantly to LL, they also perform the role of paying TIER for that land that they are flipping.

Land flippers (if they are successful) also usually have a customer base of people who want a particular sort of land, and can easily bring the right person for the land, rather than just mark it up a bit and sit on it while paying tier.

They don't make the land business "dirty", IMO some people just say that because they themselves aren't willing to go to the risk or expense or trouble to do it themselves.

The "dirty" ones are the ones that cut plots up into 16m squares and then sell them for 20/sqm or more, while leaving rotating ads on them to "enhance" the chance of a successful sale.

Well whoever it is buying them it just doesn't make sense. But what do i know? I don't get the Eskimo thing.

I agree it has everything to do with new sims being released. Look at it from a Linden Labs hardware buying perspective.. they project a growth over the next year, they enter into a deal with a major server hardware vendor (HP/IBM/DELL whatever), say 2000 servers for the year.

LL has probably already paid for the servers so they must try to recoup their investment. A volatile and cheap land market is in LL's best interest because they get their tier no matter what the sim is sold for.

If you think about it every time a parcel changes hands LL gets double the tier for that month, the original owner's and the new owners as we pay for the highest amount of land held during the month.

so if the land is sold originally for dirt cheap, then the next month it changes hand maybe at a profit for the owner, then the next week it gets split up and half gets sold.. on and on.. each time land changed hands LL gets twice the tier!!!

If the land prices are higher than chances are it will not change hands as people tend to only sell their land for profit.. if you paid 30l/sqm for some protected waterfront a few months ago than you very unlikely to sell unless leaving SL.

Low prices mean a more active market.

What I would love to see is more new servers going in to replace some of the aging class 3 and 4 mainland servers (old mainland), they should support the loyal customers who have been quietly paying tier all along with a piece of the cake.



-whyroc

Well, he's gonna sell at the maximum price the market will bear, no matter how much sunk cost he has in tier. Not that this in any way diminishes the risks involved with Mainland being "closely held." (Not so sure they really want to be member of such an exclusive club, though.)

The thing is, though, the risks go both ways: If just one of the really big landholders decides the time has come to cut losses and liquidate at any price, the drop could be precipitous and sustained. That may not be in anyone's plan, but RL has a habit of changing SL plans without warning.

The gravest downside risk, though, is a tier increase. Depending on the particulars--and the timing--this could both destroy demand and flood supply, as everyone holding more than 512sq.m. thinks of tiering down. But to *really* tank the market, all LL needs to do is announce a tier increase a month in advance and push a botched update on the grid in the interim.

The Real ("Real" Estate business in RL is all about location, location.....(well, you know the rest) and it's Finite.

The Real Estate business in SL (or should it be called the Sim business ???) is all about an infinite supply and an eventual finite demand.

hey i dont disagree with jist of this post. but its not 2004 anymore. ll have decided they will only sell sims and islands, and by your own admission this was a decision made out of greed on the part of ll. renting mainland, or renting on an island are not 'owning'* land. 'private party' land sales arent so popular right now because many sellers arent willing to take a loss, so dodgy 1024s are still listing for 15k. the ones that arent are off the market quickly. realistically, the typical av does indeed have to buy from either a wholesaler or a flipper because nearly every competitively priced parcel is being sold by them.
again i dont understand why 'the risks of landsharking' keep coming up. op is not a landbaron by _any_ definition.

*owning as best you can in the digital sl sense.

overall this is true, but there is definitely a finite supply of desirable mainland. so location location is just as true in sl as irl.

I'm missing the Eskimo reference, but as to your other point, let's not lose sight of the fact that to many people with RL incomes, SL "money" is trivial. They are huge fish in a tiny pond.

I agree. No matter how much land LL releases, the amount of really desirable land is very limited. I *still* see land of this type sell for $15L a meter or more--even during this current slump. If you're careful about what kind of land you buy, your resale price wont suffer *as much* as standard green land.

On the other hand, I do think LL aims to keep prices low and if the huge land investor who has bought a zillion sims lately finally gives up and starts a fire sale prices could dip well below the water line created by a $1250 U.S. starting price.

"They are huge fish in a tiny pond."

oh cod.....

sorry, an eskimo thing..

with ref to /327/60/206367/1.html

A new business? Behave! A new business isn't going to buy an island or a sim and risk between USD$195 and $295 a month on their venture. LL don't sell small parcels anymore, that option isn't there.

And without that monkey with some cash a hell of a lot of businesses wouldn't get off the ground. LL do not perform that function. It's all well saying they could, but they don't.



There's nothing dirty about it, they buy they sell and eventually I get the land and I rent it out. I'm renting out several plots now, I have one or two available, people want to rent land. All the time I don't own the land the flippers and barons are paying tier to LL which benefits us all.

Just a dolphin, ma'm. You can call me "flipper"

*rimshot*

I don't have an issue with the people who buy whole new sims.
I only mentioned monied monkeys as a counter to a suggestion that sim-buyers were performing "a vital service" of the shining armour variety.



It's the flippers that I disdain.

Yes, they pay the tier until you buy, but they take it back and more in an increased price.
I've seen plots change hands a number of times in a few days, all done by flippers and their price uplifts being way above the costs of any tier they were exposed to.
At the end, it can be a bit Ponzi-like for the flipper who buys too high, but their activities serve to drive up the costs to the eventual owner who wants the plot for a purpose other than immediate resale.
Flippers really do no service. They add no value to anything. They only add cost.

This anti-flipper thing gets wearisome.

Do you think, now that land prices have declined so much, and in such close correlation with the release of new sims, people will recognize that land prices are a factor of supply-and-demand? Nope, they're still acting as though flippers can just set any price their evil hearts desire on land and be in business.

What are the flippers doing now, to allow prices to drop so low? On vacation? Turning philanthropists? Under the influence? Depressed about losing gambling?

Here's an experiment for people who hate flippers and think flipping is just some sick greedy way of exploiting the common man: Go out and buy up a half sim's worth of cheap land, and mark it up a couple of L$/m2. See what happens.

I'll tell you what services flippers perform: (1) They assume the obligation of paying tier until an end-user buys the land; (2) They assist in maintaining SL's economic liquidity, allowing landowners to quickly cash-out of their landholdings; and (3) They help keep higher-value land available for those to whom it has higher value. IOW, if all land cost the same, everyone would be competing for the same prime lots: waterfront, flat, green, whatever. But by raising prices on some land, some people still go for prime lots, while others go for less expensive.

The real reason flippers have such a bad reputation is that people only think like end-user land-buyers. None of the services flippers perform help the end-user, except the buyer of prime land, and they have to pay more per m2 in exchange for that service. Because of this, in comes the Busybody Committee to object to people doing what they wish with their own land (in this case, selling it at a higher price). Do they put the time and effort into finding land to buy the flippers put in? Not this crew, no. Do they rent from a private sim, where there are no land flippers? Not the ones complaining on these forums, no. Much better to agitate for yet another way to remove a property right from landowners.

I will say this, though. Until recently I found it ironic that the Busybodies always smugly spoke of land barons whining when the prices fell and they lost money--even though no land barons whined when the prices fell and they lost money. Lately we have seen a few flippers complaining (though they tend to describe themselves as "investors" in land).

The OP may be suffering as much at the hand of this thread as from the "invisible hand" of the land market. (And think of poor Flipper!)

(Incidentally, "Busybody Committee" may be intended as pejorative, but it's really kinda lost effectiveness now that it's been used to label anybody and everybody who actually gives a damn about anything. Not sure I've heard the term applied yet to those who protest perceived abridgment of property rights, but it's only a matter of time.)

Anyway... the "middlemen" in any market serve an economic purpose, or they could not exist. Even a pure, "no value added" reseller of land is at least assuming risk. Sometimes that's profitable, sometimes not; the more risk, the more potential reward the market will provide.

But the SL land market is relatively small, and completely subject to all kinds of "externalities", the most important being that the entire market exists at the whim of LL and entirely for the benefit of its balance sheet. That being the case, I don't envy the land middleman at all, since LL has a real incentive to keep prices from getting too high, but what seems only a passing interest in the consequences of those prices falling... and falling...

When the upside is more constrained than the downside, that business is best suited to someone with short-term goals.

Now with my advice you have to read the spam in my sig. It's my self imposed spam tax.

Here is a scenario I thought of today:
-JB divides and releases 40-60 of the sims he has bought at once below market value.
-Land brokers and end users buy a few of the better plots but most sit on the list.
-Brokers see their listings go to page 40 where no one sees them.
-To get their land seen, brokers slash prices. A correction takes place.
-JB buys up all this cheap land and then removes his remaining plots from the list.
-JB now has a ton more land that he got below market and a monopoly.
-He waits a few months and sells when market goes up again.

Just something I thought of today...

/Me sings: "Print me land, lot's o' land, under WindLight skies above..."

If the market starts to go up significantly, and there's a near monopoly setting the price:
- LL dump yet another continent. Sort of "Here's one I prepared earlier" as they will be well aware of who is stockpiling the tons of empty sims.
- Rinse and repeat.

Eventually JB is paying tier on a few continents of empty sims.
How high can he go (tier-wise)? and for how long? Does it actually matter? He's free to blow his money any way he wants.

In a virtual world the potential supply of "land" is (virtually) limitless.
If a monster is gobbling land, then feed it land for as long as it is willing to pay for it.


The monopoly would be faced in the end with the choice of dumping all or most sims on the market at giveaway prices, or abandoning.
If a very significant number of sims were abandoned, then LL would indeed be faced with racks of servers for which they are bearing the costs.
If the monopoly were trying to strongarm LL, they would be wise to sell a single 512 from each sim at 0L$ to an innocent human shield (who could be their Alts).
"See LL. We are about to abandon 5000 sims (unless you allow us to use our monopoly) , but if you just pull the servers to save costs you'll be taking the land of these poor innocents."
If LL couldn't think of an obvious counter to that, then they would be sadly lacking in clue.

Not half as wearisome as the over-generalisation thing.


a) It doesn't (all) sell immediately - tough
or
b) It sells - and the flipper(s) have made a few bucks without adding any value.

I've seen both happen with flipped land, both in the old market and the current market.
I've seen plots flipping a number of times in a single day.
So?




/Me has this picture of a knight in shining amour riding a (less than 30-prim) white steed.
"Citizens of Second life. Do not be afraid! I, Sir Sculptyhead of Barrenland, will assume the obligation."


The activities of flippers serves only to keep upward pressure on prices.
I find the idea of flippers valiantly preserving good plots for high-spenders risible.
They are opportunists, out to make a fast buck

I had to come back on that one! Hilarious!!!
Keep the peasants off the good land.


The best that could be said for land flippers is that they are part of the ecosystem.
- like dungbeetles.
But then, a dungbeetle has no choice other than to be a dungbeetle, and a dungbeetle is the end-user of the dung. In that, there is a certain nobility. So I'm maybe being unkind to dungbeetles.

Unless he had insider info and knew exactly how many sims were coming to market and when. But that would be illegal.

Thank you for pointing out the pitfalls of this plan. I was about to sell my RL house to buy 200 sims. And a hermit crab avatar.

Still fascinated by how many sims JB is snagging. It's a true gamble of large yellow rectangular proportions...

well, i know if i were spending that much money i'd expect the red carpet treatment.
id full well expect my own private 1300 number.
id seriously expect phillip to take my calls answer my goddamned questions.

and i bet something like that goes on too.