Guidence in setting up Appartment rentals.

Well, for certain sweatshop-wielding parties who specialize in L$10 furniture, I don't have a waffle. But I do have a li'l snackie...

LOL.

I will add something constructive to this thread, to answer the actual question, or one of them. HippoRent, and any other system, can only do so much to count prims.

As far as HippoRent goes, there is a means to count prims more effectively on a parcel that is shared vertically, as Andy has provided a networked prim counter that will count objects accurately. Unfortunately, it is 1 extra prim per box per parcel because the counter has to be deeded to group in order to work. I spend far less time counting prims having installed that. And it will count both the tenant and their partner's prims.

I do not use it on parcels with only one tenant. Instead I have the box count all prims on the parcel and then subtract mine. That way it will account for prims left behind by the tenant's friends.

HippoRent is very simple to set up if you don't want to use any of the advanced features. But if you are not inclined to read, then don't buy it and then come inworld asking the rest of us to teach you how to parse the English language.

There you go with insinuating undercutting again. Any wonder why your tone and statements were offensive? No matter, based on guidance provided in good faith by others prices have been discussed and will be raised to market values +/- what we feel the units are worth based on desirability. They have positives and negatives, so as we develop the units and appraise desirability closer to completion we will adjust them as we feel is appropriate.

I would like to reiterate my thanks to Tegg and Lindel for there informative posts without the attitudes others seem to wish to give out.

For those others, I am sorry our project is such a threat to raise your hair so. Perhaps it's time for a vacation?

I am sorry that you are so offended, and so determined to be so, when I am not even trying to! If you don't lighten up, you won't get any waffles.

I am not trying to insult you with the term undercutting. It's something that happens in SL because 1) Some people don't need to and don't try to make a profit, or 2) Some people don't make a plan or don't know what they're doing.

As I said in my first response, people in category 1 are entitled to do so!

People in category 2 need to fix it or they will fail, disappoint themselves, disappoint their tenants, and bring the whole market down while trying. I tried to convey this information to you before that happened to you, and apparently did it poorly. If so, I'm sorry. Stop taking it so personally, and feel glad that seasoned, established, successful competitors are actually trying to help you.

--Avion

Then I do apologise Avion, I took your wording and your apparent tone of your statements the wrong way. I am sure you have noticed I do react to better to clearer and more concise responses. Guess it is just the way I read, and trust me I try to read as throughly as possible.

I do still have outstanding questions about the HippoDoor Plugin and if multiple doors can be linked to one rental boxes, but I assume I will find that out hopefully though any documentation they came with is or though trial and error.

Hmm, I found the webpage a heap better for prim checks it doesn't seem to suffer the rental boxes zero prim count problem, and I'm hoping the rental boxes will be fixed in the next upgrade.
And really when I first set up I had silly notions of just handling it all in Excel and IM's, so glad I brought a system instead

Hi guys, Im quite a newbie to rentals too, but i have 4 houses, all furnished with fireplces moving pics , couches,a small kitchen etc... hot tub upstairs , menu bed and one of sara loks litle vanity unit, that u can brush your hair, theres a free poser to dress, and a retextured tread mill for those girls who like a workout, but unfortunetly, no one has taken any of them in the last 3 months.

One person said charge 500 a week, but i said, this is a new sim, theres not a lot of traffic here yet, so started it off at 399 with discount for more weeks...but with the down turn in money folk have got available may have to reduce it to 299 a week. I dont advertize them, there actually lesbo friendly ones, but thought passing people would take them up, seems I was wrong about them, but is advertizing just 4 lezzied friendly houses worth setting up a group and getting it on search worth it, its cost 1000s to furnish them all, surprising how it mounts up in a short time!

I dont understand yet the principles of prim allowances with rentals, there seems little turorials on how to let/rent property, and the media part of it, seems quite complicated, seems each aprartment will have to be set up sep, when some one rents it...yes u need lockable doors ans a securtiy system, to keep unwanted out, hippo do a security package that ties in with the hippo box, but if your new to SL, u might find the copying of the scripts and how to use it together, will take u a time to work out. My houses were bought with a keypad entry/admin window tint package already installed, makes life a little easier for newbies!!

Any way best of luck with the apartments, its a fast learning curve, and patience is whats need here now, as for undercutting, well, everybody is undercutting in all sorts of business in SL, cos theres just not the amount of disposal income for many people to spend, compared to like 13 months ago, when RL bills and fuel were managable!

regards mike

Certainly not a newbie to SL, I have a door system I spent months coding that I designed for a stand alone application that is 99% complete and only needs testing. Needless to say if the HippoDoor Plugin and rental boxes will not allow for more than one door controlled per box I may have to revisit the project and add my own SDK to interface it with the HippoRent box, and make other alterations. My hope though is that the HippoDoor Plugin will allow for what I need and will not have to immediately look at recoding the system from the other build to work.

You can link multiple doors to a single HippoRent box. What you have to be careful of is to use a different chat channel for each of your residences. Otherwise, Suzie Avatar will set her door to allow Max Ballzack access...and all her neighbors' doors will follow suit.

And, just in passing..."99% complete" and "only needs testing" are incompatible statements. Any untested script is, at most, 50% complete. Trust me.

Of course you can link multiple doors to a single hippo box. Depending what version of the plugin you are using, you may need to modify llSay to llShout or llRegionSay so that all the doors receive the command from the box. They all have to be on the same channel. Otherwise your back doors may not hear the command from the box upon reset if they are not in chat distance from the box. And as Lindal said, make sure that you distinguish channels between boxes otherwise you will have one person controlling multiple people's doors.

And I will back up Avion here, who was far more gracious than I - we expect you to do your own feasibility analysis in coming up with your pricing scheme. A scheme that low with a high level of obvious thought already in place appears to be undercutting, unless you were someone not looking to make a profit. You already know how much land you own and how much it costs you, why should we assume that you can't do your own math?

I was gonna make a big long post about the hippo door system, but yeah...what Lindall Kidd said....rofl...saves me typing

A lot of people don't, though.

When I was trying to set prices at Lebettu, I asked much the same question. I was going about it the wrong way, you see...trying to determine the "going rate", and then price accordingly. I should have known better, having discovered that pricing to the market is a mistake in RL business.

Somebody pointed me at one of Desmond Shang's classic posts and set me straight. What you have to do is determine your COSTS. Figure how many prims you have to rent out. Figure your monthly tier, your advertising costs, a probable vacancy rate. Figure your fixed costs (land purchase, any textures/animations/rental systems/prefab structures, etc.) and how long you want to take to pay those off.

Once you have those numbers, a cost-per-prim falls out very easily.

You can price it to market first, but only if you double-check that versus your costs and then adjust accordingly (e.g., tier up). Really, what good is pricing to market if it leaves you insolvent? I would think a solvency check would be common sense.

When I started, I already knew fairly enough how much the going rate was and a decent price/prim ratio. I priced to market but I doubled back to make sure it would work. And I started with a 1280 lot on a (probably underpriced) private island, not a half or a full sim. I had expanded to 5-6 of those before I went and bought Vyacheslav.

This is a dangerous business to be in if you don't have a basic business sense, because you stand to lose a LOT of money. It's not something that should be entered into lightly. I definitely feel like I've aged in the last 18 months of doing this, and not because my math was impaired. I can't imagine what I'd feel like if it was.

Thanks Lindal, I sort of assumed some modification would have been needed so that doors/boxes would not talk to all the others. Though I was not sure how the boxes talk to the doors and vice versa, and if it would allow for more than one door per rental box. Once we unpack it all I will look at the nitty gritty details.

And you are right, I am being too optimistic, though it has been though several nonfunctional iteration's and I am confident that the more simplistic solution will be the right one.