Curious Curious

Last night I was talking to an aquaintance who is becoming a good friend.....and he mentioned his sim......I hadn't known he owned one. So....blablabla.....apparently he has a homestead island.....same size, less prims then a regular island.
From what he was telling me.......his tier is going up.....but......he's still not paying as much per month as I am for my three 4096 plots!!! Huh!?

He said I could probably grab one without "buying" it because a lot of folks are trying to unload them........hmmmmm......

So this begs the question.......what do I need to know about these homesteads.....their stability.....and so on......how does one go about aquiring one.

For my purposes.....I don't want a commercial thing...I don't want to try and rent parcels and make L's......I'm not looking to build some monstrous playground......I truly would just want a private parcel to create something I've had in my head for a while. Part of it would also be the base location/meeting place for a business group I'm in. But that's it....

so what advice can you guys give.....and does anyone happen know of someone needing to unload one of these?

A Homestead region has lower performance than a Full region and is intended for low-density rentals, quiet residential or light commercial use. It is limited to 3750 prims and no more than 20 concurrent avatars. A Homestead is available only to Residents who own at least one Full Region.

That is directly from this Knowledge base article
https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=5721

A Homestead is available only to Residents who own at least one Full Region so unless you already own a full region you would not be able to "Buy" one where your Tier would be paid to LL. If may be possible to rent one from an Estate. Check the Land Classified forum
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First thing you need to know is that LL are planning on putting the price of tier upto USD$125 a month in July. Second thing you need to know is that LL don't know how to manage these sims.

To "own" one you need to "own" a full sim already, you can rent them off another estate owner. Pricewise the rental of a homestead should be around the same price as the rental of a quarter of a private estate, a quarter of a mainland sim should cost you less whether you pay tier to LL or rent.

They have limitations, such as only 20 avatars at any one time and the new script limits they're planning will probably be rolled out on Homesteads and Openspaces first. They also share a core with three other homesteads, whereas a full sim has a core of its own. LL might change this to three to a core in the future.