Stuck with land we've outgrown

My friend and I own a parcel on an island estate that we've been trying to sell on and off for 8 months. We need more space and additional prims. It is incredibly frustrating that the only offer we've recently had was for 3L/sqm after we paid 9L/sqm for the parcel. The real estate company we bought from originally offered 4L/sqm to buy back our land, but we refused thinking we could get a better price. We recently contacted the company again to sell since we noticed the price of their other parcels has gone up considerably, and now they will not buy back our land. So we are stuck. Has this happened to anyone else? Or is this a trend common in SL? Thanks for your responses.

Unfortunately, this is the risk you take when you buy any land - real life or SL, mainland or not - that the market will shift and it will not be worth what you paid. The company is not obligated to buy the land back... but what is worse is that they will still be able to rent (yes I said rent) it out for as much or more as the surrounding properties if you decide to abandon it. Maybe you should get in touch with one of the big land brokers to help you sell the lot. If it's worth anything near what you paid for it, you should get a decent deal.

Do you have any ads up anywhere?

Do you have a titler on putting the words "Land for sale" over your head?

Maybe a T-Shirt that says "Land for Sale X dollars Y sqm" ?

I did a search today for real estate companies and contacted one of them. I'm still waiting for a response to see if they will buy the parcel, (which I doubt since most say they will only buy mainland), or help us sell it, (and I'm afraid they will want a large portion of whatever we sell it for). Are there any well known brokers with a good reputation? Or should I just use the Search like I was doing today? Thanks!

I posted on the "land sale" section of this forum, placed two signs on the parcel, and I had not thought of ads, but won't the space cost?

Lion, you can not "own" land on a private estate unless you own the entire sim. All you are buying is the right to rent. You might want to just forget it and go buy some mainland land.

The Problem with estate land now as opposed to when you bought your land is the shyster tactics going on right now on the estate land sales search, certain sim owners are "gaming" the system by listing land for sale at L$1 but when prospective buyers tp there they find that its a 5 minute reserve price. Now after tp'ing to 15 od so places like this the buyer decideds that estate land in general is full of scam artists and decide to either take a offer for xxx amount from the guy who misrepresented himself in the first place, or find a quiet mainland sim, which is hard enough

These shysters are killing the value of estate land, to compete with them you have to drop your prices down to nothing to get into the search rankings. Though it wont help you to sell a plot of land, I get some satisfaction from AR'ing these people and telling LL they are gaming the system which is a TOS Violation, eventually LL will do something about it...eventually

You could check for places on the web such as sluniverse and slexchange to put classifieds up at.

Put an ad in your forum signature here, find some unanswered questions, and answer them.

Drop by clubs Friday and Saturday night with your Land for Sale titler and Land for Sale shirt .
Try to slip the subject of "Land for Sale" into the chat unobtrusively.

If you have a blog, blog about your land for sale.

You can not and do not "own" any land, period. Not renting, not the so called buying and not even getting an entire sim, partial sim or the smallest which would be the 512m or any size you get. No one owns anything. This is just a saying, a representation of those words, thats it.

Agreed. I expect the day that LL is sued for false advertising for using the term "purchase". It does not matter whether you "own" mainland or estate land. You don't "own" a thing. In either situation you're only paying for the right to rent some server space. It might be more secure doing so from LL directly is all.

for the poster somewhere above me.... "Owning Land" in SL is different from real life, but I would imagine alot that you do in SL you cant in real life also. Land ownership in SL is just that, in SL...afterall, you cant surgically implant wings in your back and fly around like a butterfly can you, but yet in SL you do. There are no Furries in real life, but yet in SL we are even compeled to give Furries Capitalization... so argueing the point of whether you actually "own land" or not is a tired drumbeat, that has been marched to death.

Im figuring since the OP has been around SL long enough you shouldnt have to raise that debate, that is unless its just trolling. The OP was asking why it was hard for them to sell thier estate land, your point of view had nothing whatsoever to do with that topic, but it did serve to raise that age old debate.

Another avenue the OP might try is asking around on the sim if any owners there might like to increase thier land holdings

for the poster somewhere above me... you smell like cat pee.

Thats really is a help to the OP's question 2k...just had to get your post in the thread huh

Yes, I understand that. When I say "own" I mean that we purchased land that we have the right to sell to someone else, which is a right that renters do not have. And we would walk away (abandon the parcel) except we would lose out on approximately $73,000L we paid for the parcel.

Yeah, I've done that several times, and no one wants to increase their tier fees, which is understandable.

Thank you to the HELPFUL posters who offered suggestions. My reason for posting was to ask if this is a common problem with estate land parcels in SL. From the brief searches I've done, real estate companies do not want to buy estate parcels, only mainland.

If there are any realtors reading this thread, I am curious as to whether you have anything to add, or can offer explanations as to why real estate companies will not buy parcels on estates that are owned by other companies. Thank you.

I'm not a realtor but I know why they wont buy island land. Its because the landlord, the real owner, can take it away at any time, with no notice or compensation. "Buying" land on an island is no more secure than renting - either way you are completely at the mercy of the island owner.

I've never understood why people "buy" island land, pure rental is just as secure and doesn't have the initial outlay.

In the event it wasn't clear, the reason to go around to clubs on Friday and Saturday nights is that I figure there's a bit of drinking go on in the real world. Alcohol helps the pocketbooks open.

This points to how much land brokers boost the real estate economy. When you take brokers out of the equation, like in this case, you aren't left with a lot of prospects willing to "buy" your land. Estate land is notoriously hard to "resell" especially at mainland prices.

I was one of the two that commented on the land "ownership" issue. Someone did bring it up before me. I still consider it an issue despite the fact that you think it has been talked to death. If you want to start making comments about everyone who brings up things that have been talked about before, or does not speak directly at the specific issue at hand then you'll be very busy and we'll see who we're calling a troll.

If you read the thread you will see how the topic went from the Op's initial question onto the topic of ownership right from the second post. It's rare that you ever see any thread that sticks with one topic and stays there in any forum.

Any post in RA is for everyone. A question posted by one individual will be read by many others including many, as we frequently see, are spending their first month on SL. Therefore, even if an OP is knowledgeable, it's sometimes a good idea to give a little more information.

Yes this is a problem, however once one person does it others will because as you point out, it grabs all the early plots in search.

There should be an option on estates for a rental option, or a rental search. I set my parcels for sale for one week's rent because if someone "buys" the plot for a week, they have control of deeding it to their group, they don't have to wait around for group invites and they can get on with using the land straight away. They can't resell these plots, so it's clearly a rental agreement. However by doing this my parcels end up in the land sales search along with those parcels that are available for resell. There should be a means of differentiating between the two models.

I could of course set my land for sale for L$1 and put my rental box next to the plot with instructions to pay it, but if people buy the land for L$1 they might not pay the rental box which may lead to confusion.

To the OP, all I can advise you to do is advertise your plot in the forums here. Do you have the right to rent the land out to someone else? Some places allow it, others don't. I think if you've paid an upfront fee you should be able to rent the plot out, although you yourself should be responsible for tier payments.

Estate land doesn't require any land tier donations, so it won't hamper you on that front.

Because far from all private estate owners are criminals who take money and then steal the land they sold. A very small percentage is destroying the good reputation of all the other ones. And because renting is more expensive in the monthly cost than buying and paying tier, so if you plan to stay longer, buying is cheaper. At my land after 13 months owning the land is cheaper than renting - and you still have the land you can sell if you want to leave (and find a buyer).

OK, here's what I don't get in this terminology.

First, from a LL perspective, the only people that truly "own" land are people who have bought a chunk of mainland or who own a private estate (that means a whole sim). Those that own mainland must be Premium (with a few very small exceptions), and those that own private estates need not be. Mainland owners pay "tier" to LL depending on how much mainland they own.

Anybody else, from a LL perspective doesn't own any land at all. All they are doing is renting it from the real (in LL's eyes) owners. Anybody doing this and paying a monthly sum of money isn't paying "tier" they are paying RENT. They have no standing as far as LL is concerned in terms of rights that go with that land. The true owner can do whatever they choose with that land, whenever they want, and you have no recourse. If you get a good, responsible private sim owner then you can do ok, but you can just as easily get one that takes your money and disappears tomorrow.

Sooo, let's see about the OP. You paid up-front money for the privilege to rent some land from a private estate owner, and you pay rent (which you call "tier" to that owner every month. The owner has chosen to give you the rights to transfer that right-to-rent to another resident, and you can ask whatever you want for it.

So, you are wondering why people won't pay the same price for this right-to-rent as they would from a regular mainland purchase? I hope you can see that they are very, very different things.

I really do wish you luck in getting rid of your land but it seems that right now the amount people are prepared to pay for this right-to-rent has dropped - so either wait it out and see if it improves, or cut your losses and take whatever the market can bear.

The old real estate adage of "it's worth what someone will pay for it" applies in SL as much as it does in RL.

Have you gone around and talked to your neighbors in the sim (especially those adjacent to you?) They might be interested, and it would give them extra prims as well as extra space. They don't even have to be adjacent to you to benefit from the extra prims as long as it is in same sim, and owned by same person or group.

You often come out ahead making a private deal with a neighbor, rather than trying to sell on the open market. They already live there, and know the place, so they would be more likely to buy more land in the same place. And even if you end up selling it low to one of them, you will get out from under that monthly rent/tier payment, which can get expensive, especially if you are trying to get out because you want to go somewhere else.

Have you not bothered to read the thread?

Up from L$9/sq.m.? Really?? And it sells???

Before I rant on about that price (realizing I have no idea what land goes for in, say, Caledon, so maybe, maybe...), if that realty company is actually selling the land for that price, what the heck are *they* doing to make it sell? (Please, god, let it not be a network of roadside ads. )

Have you not bothered to learn any manners? There was one one single sentence reference to the neighbors prior to my post.

I was hoping that by elaborating on the reasons why this might be a good idea, I would be helping the OP.

Isn't that why we are here? To help each other? Don't flame someone for trying to help, even if you think their help is repetitive. It is STILL an offer of help.

To the OP, good luck. Maybe shiney Sprocket can solve all of your problems for you.

Tier is terminology that LL use, we all rent if we follow your line of thinking. You're correct that LL doesn't recognise someone who is renting as being the owner, the same as an estate owner doesn't recognise someone who is renting from the person with whom they have an agreement. If I rent an island from someone, it's my responsibility to pay the fees, not any tenants I might attract.

However I'm not having it that it's just as easy to find an estate owner who is likely to take the money and disappear tomorrow. Estate land accounts for something like 80% of SL, there's no way it would be that size if estate scams were as common as you suggest. Mainland on the other hand, would be thriving.