Bay City Land Auctions

No you don't understand!

I said initially do a 6mth lock-out.......no where did i say every 6 mths!

A person that wants a plot for personal uses and not wanting to make profits from it's sale, has a different mentality. If you're spending 70k-100 k or whatever and place your shop or building on it , I doubt you'd be the type to try and flip it 6mths later for a profit, but more about being part of a unique community!


My argument is flawed anyway, as those sort of tiers are easily be absorbed by land traders.......but at least a few hundred or thousands dollars end up being tied up doing nothing......money that could be earning them income elsewhere.......plus whose to say what the market will be like in 6mths time, especially if LL over supply with SIMs in the Bay Region at a later date! Personally i think it would deter many land flippers.


it's obvious people prefer to pay 120k inflated auction prices instead of something nearer 70k if land flippers were taken out of the equation.

When I did a Fly though of Bay city, I would have to say that a clear Majority of the new owners are resellers, although I did see some very creative and stylish builds.

Not to be too catty but it was also clear that some people blew all their money in the auction and could not afford a good builder.

Finally got around to taking a look at Bay City. Looks really cool, tramway actually works, even across sims. 165 lindens per meter land prices? Save the money for the payments you'll be making to a shrink, you must be out of your (expletive deleted) mind. Bwahahaha.

Yes, but...

Did Misses Gynoid win last night?

I dont really care for prices generally, but when I see the effort LL went to to make this new release known and marketed, I am livid they allowed the auction levels to go to the heights they did. At our blog, dumisani.wordpress.com, I felt compelled to write about this after 1024 sq meters closed at over L$130k! It drives me nuts that people buy at these prices, land barons in my view or corporates of course, in land areas where very soon lag will overtake everything and it will become like all other mainland regions. (Ps, don't feel compelled to turn to our blog, I'm not making a plug for it, just not interested in retyping my issues all over again )

You can't really put a cap on auction bids, because who do you let win the plot?

It would have been nice if they could have coded the plots so that they could be resold only for the purchase price or less. That would have been like a massive Bay City asshole barrier, leaving it filled only with enthusiastic end-users.

I won an auction last night and am overall pretty happy. I wasnt able to get the plot I wanted but the one I ended up with little gem hopefully. The sims are great, my parcel although not the best is far from the worst, and I picked up the content package which is very good, I'm planning my build along the suggested themelines.

I have 2 for sale signs (or as some read 'for sell') that i can see from my parcel other wise a decent view in all directions. As a little side note to my rambling, I have noticed several very tastefull 'for sale' signs. I would encourage anyone who is thinking of buying from a reseller to buy one the of ones with a nice tastefull sign then maybe the rest will see the parcels with the nice signs selling and change thier rotationg neon glowing changing color ones to something that doesn't burn out the neighbors retinas..

The work the moles have done is impressive and suprizingly detailed, and the themed resident builds instantly add something special to the mix.

The inflated prices suck yes, but what can you do? You have to pay for quality things and from my perspective I saved money by buying it..how can that be you ask?

My tier was killing me ...closing in on 1/2 sim, and I wasn't using all the cheap mainland I had bought very recently with hopes of expanding my business. So i took a hit and sold off what I could of my unused mainland at 4.3 l/sqm or something ridiculous, drained my SLX account and made a pot of coffee to wait up for the auctions (wee hours for europe).

I ended up having to buy another 20k linden to make sure I got something as the bids were really jumping in the last 30 seconds, but in the end didn't have to use all of it.

Essentially I have cut my tier in half, and have the parcel in SL that I always wanted. If this parcel does absolutely nothing in terms of presence and exposure for my business as I am hoping it will, I can recover the purchase cost from my gained tier in a few or three months.

Worst case scenario I have a really nice plot where I can do some of the things I have always liked to do in SL, but was often very frustrated by not being able to do it ...explore, drive vehicles, boating, stroll common areas,experience nice open beaches and lots of other neat stuff I haven't even checked out yet.

I have lived on and done business on mainland plots for over 2 years in several quadrants of the world map now so I am used to the land griefing, for sale signs, impossible price swings, and all the rest of it, so Bay City is actually very refreshing.

This whole concept of 'one bad build spoils it' is complete hogwash IMO. Lindens have done enough with the infrastucture, public buildings etc to keep it a desirable place.

Pros of bay City:

tangible:
-professionally designed sims
-no divide/join parcels
-ALOT of cool content
-Stability for the long term
-double prims
hopeful:
-Community
-visibility
-high value retention


Cons of Bay City:
-initial land cost
-????




-whyroc

Some speculate that at least the cool content, community and high value retention bits depend on what happens in the area.

It could well turn into just-more-mainland. This is part of the reason so many people are annoyed that there wasn't any covenant (or some rules to protect the theme) that went with Bay City.

Depends who you are dealing with, of course.

It's a subjective thing, and no way can anyone say they are 'right' or 'wrong' - we can only say it's right or wrong for ourselves.

I personally still believe one bad build can be devastating, in economic and other ways. Just one spinny, mainlandy for-sale sign tolerated in Caledon would empty more than one region in short order - I doubt this would even be disputed.

This is true for many on the mainland, too - as this is where most people came from to escape that stuff in the first place. Over 80% of the grid is private - people deciding that they would rather pay 100 USD/mo more per region than tolerate mainland conditions. From private residents to educators to corporations, so many have just said "no way" to anarchic rules.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with tolerance and just saying: hey, I am in a great place and what others do isn't that big a deal - that kind of attitude should be admired.

I'd love to be wrong. If we had a whole bunch of people like whyroc in Bay City, the grid would be a much better place.

The cool content is already there in terms of great roadwork, canals, secret little places, parks, statues...

The community, cmon lets give it a chance... what can be expected 1-2 days after auction?

I have a concern about this whole 'ugly build' idea ... you absolutely can't fault anyone for anything they build in SL if it is an expression of thier creativity. Even if there are some new or tacky builders on the block it adds to the ecclecticism that is SL for me. This is something that is lacking in alot of PI themed sims IMO. I dont think the visuals will get any worse than for sale signs..like they are now

Is it really neccesary to have a themed build to have a good community feel to the place?
I have had some great community experiences in the mainland sims I have lived in..not that often but believe me there was nothing even close to pretty builds around but the people still come together. This layout and planning I think will help facilitate easy movement around the sims.

It will not ever be just more mainland because I can always walk out my front door into my little plaza, and onto the street. Or drop my boat in the water and burn around. This is simply not the case with other mainland, even protected land always goes for a premium and you get so much less actual exporable terrain because you get cut off from bad parcel splitting and management. My problem with mainland has never been with the guy beside me, its always the guy in front who blocks your only access to Linden water for example.

Im not trying to justify myself.. or prop up the place for my own sake. I think that if a bunch of average people start hammering the auctions you can snap up a parcel for a not astronomical rate and in a short time it will be on its way.

The land-flippers or resellers know how to play the auctions thats all. They aren't inherently bad and totally within thier rights to be buying and selling this property. I haven't seen any blatant AR able land griefing to speak of other than some very vivid signs. There are regular people too who are bidding at these parcels so its not thier fault they are going so high. I haven't used the auctions before this.. what I found out after losing a bunch is that I could have won them for the lower amounts with a better bidding strategy.

-whyroc

aww shucks!

ty!

The only proper use for those regions is renting skyboxes and building sky-cities up to 4000m high.
I will not stop anyone from an investment that may pay of in 10 years compared to another investment while assuming constant rates. Your payment ensures my enjoyment by keeping up some service that leaves enough free capacity for other content.
Location only matters as far as your view range. Beyond view distance the content may change faster than you may be able to notice.
There is lots of existing and barely used land in sl, more than you will be able to count, so just make a sensor for it to find some once in a while.
Mainland is always what you make of it, and when you can build up to 4000m high, ground level and neighbors becomes nearly irrelevant after some size because z-distance is so much larger than xy-distances.
Private regions will switch over to lowprim regions when mono comes to the main grid and more megaprim issues may be solved. here you have your xy-distance.

The IT-sector has deflation like no other, for the same investment you may get twice as much technology and speed in the next year, yet investments keep increasing.
Anyone check this statement: If you payd your premium account yearly in EUR by mid 2007 you payd more EUR as if you would have payd quarterly (with interest), due to the most recent USD inflation.

I am still hoping to get a nice, smallish parcel for a shop in Bay City. The prices are totally wack. But - there is a lot of value there, so maybe they aren't so bad as they seem. Roads, beaches, canals, public space, good urban design - those are the things that make a parcel very desirable elsewhere in the mainland, and Bay City has them out the ying-yang.

It is very frustrating to see the prices being driven SO high by speculators, but that is what can happen in a (more or less) free economy. My guess is that prices will drop some over the next few months, and the people who thought they could pay those crazy prices then flip the parcels for even more will end up losing. We can at least hope.

There is alot more land to be auctionned in Bay City.. if you want it I would suggest that there's no better time than now to get a reasonable price at auction (is under 100k reasonable in this stupid land rush?). Dont be picky what parcel you get go in with a budget.. they are all pretty good if anything pick some parcels you want to avoid.

Find an auction that has a low number of bids.. the price even 1 minute before close is irrelevant. There are a relatively few number of resellers bidding on a large number of parcels.. even with bidding bots if those exist and work .. some will slip through and if you can snap them up with a big bid right at the end. count 30,29,28,27...1 click submit!

-whyroc

So I actually won one of these -- a bigger one than I had originally planned on. And for my original max price. This is good, even if I have to wait for expansion in order to have a proper road access.

So, after one wins one of these auctions... now what? When will my money be taken, an when do I get access to my land?

Congrats on getting one, Mari! May it bring you much satisfaction!

I wonder if, in the sim that first was auctioned, one person is trying to buy up most of the land. Many plots seem to have the same owner now, and most seem to have out-of-theme (even wildly so) builds on them. No sure what the "angle" is.

Mari

Usually in few hours: they will take the money from your account (you will not listen the "dling" ), and the parcel will be assigned to you (you'll receive an email also).
Welcome to Bay City Marianne!

Wow - and I thought I was insane when I bought land in Sistiana for $28k years ago... Thinking I need to sell of my plot in Miramare!

Thankoo! I've set up my plot in Imaginario... temporarily. Makes for a good construction site.

I believe imaginario is one of the preferrable candidate for an expansion.. so you would get som luck there.

Grats Mari! This will hopefully work out even better than the original plot.

Congrats Mari!

I managed to win a plot last night as well

There were a bunch of plots for sale all with the same ending time. So I reasoned that the Land Flippers couldn't put a last-minute bid to beat mine on *all* of them, picked the plot i *most* wanted, and put my max bid on a few seconds before the end. It won - and for less than my max

I think some (many?) of those plots went for less than 100k, so if anyone else is looking to buy in Bay City, this may be the way to go (lots of auctions finishing at the same time).

I'm wondering if LL did it deliberately to try and counteract the Land Flippers, who seemed to be pushing up the prices of all the earlier auctions...?

I think the land flippers are realizing that the lots are not going to move soon and they are going to take a hurting as is on the ones they got.

So more and more of them are not going to bid on the rest of the lots, because they have so much tied up in the current ones.

Someone on SLU observed that all the auctions that ended yesterday ended at the exact same time, which makes it very tough for any one person to bid up all the auctions at the last minute. I take it as an intentional move to make things hard for speculators, but speaking as someone who lost 4 or 5 auctions before finally winning something, I think that really sucks for individuals with more than one parcel in mind. It was bad enough with them only 5 mins apart, because sometimes you didn't know whether you won or lost before the next auction expired.

And, as I noted on the other board, many of the reseller lots HAVE sold to other residents... and unfortunately, well... I'm almost wishing my view consisted mostly of spinning "For Sale" cubes again.