Looking for advice on plan for new island

I'm considering buying my first island. I just sold a house in RL so I have the money to fund and island and carry it indefinitely, if necessary.

I'm fairly new in SL but in RL I'm a web designer/developer with considerable experience in PhotoShop, 3d Studio Max and I do my own coding. I want a lot of land and prims for my house and a furniture store. I plan to section the island into just 4 parts, keeping one for myself and renting out the rest as 1/4 sims each. I have someone lined up to do some serious teraforming for me and I plan to landscape it beautifully before opening the doors.

I'm not concerned with recouping my initial cost. I want to charge $100US a month for tiers on the other 3 lots to cover the tier on the island, I figure they will be approximately 16,000 square meters each. Prim count to be determined.

I have time to work out the details because I will be waiting for the island price drop at the end of the month. There will definitely be a friendly but protective and concise covenant.

What do you think? Is this a viable plan?

Prim count will be expected to be 3750 per quarter otherwise less interest will be shown.

Also if you landscape the other 3 quarters, you will be using some of that prim allotment too.

Did you say $100/month for 1/4 sim? I'm in!!

That will be US dollars of course, but yes a decent price at that.

I'm thinking that I will attract people with the low tier - $100US a month for 1/4 sim. The prim count will be lower than you would normally get on that much land though. The thing is, people who are normally looking at the $100US a month range lands aren't going to get that many prims. On my island they would have the same prims they would normally get for $100US a month but a lot more pre-landscaped land as well.

Do you think there's a market for this?

with or without land purchase costs?
clubs allowed?
bots allowed?
campers allowed?
residential / light commerce?

depending the answers, i *might* be interrested aswell...

Did you see my post?

I'm thinking residential and/or pre-approved light commerce. I'd love to have a club on the island but more of a low-key pub as a place to host entertainment and a gathering place for residents and visitors. I want some light traffic but not a busy place. Each 1/4 sim will come with its own security system that owners can chose to use or not.

I am saying $100 US a month for a quarter sim. I plan to keep the purchase price low as well. The only down side will be the lower than usual prim count.

I'm also looking into buying a low-prim island at the same time, having them attached so that I can put more common space (hills) between the lots and possibly add to the prim count overall.

Still interested?

Considering that tier for 1/4 sim or an open space sim is $75, why is $100 for a quarter such a sweet deal?

Well you can't buy a open space sim unless you own a regular sim already.

I'm currently paying $100/month for about 10,000 sm.

Wow, and here I was trying to rent out a 1/4 sim with full prims for $75.00 US a month.

Ouch!

With my old account, I was on the LL 40$ tier and had just over 10km. (I think. It may be that this was with an additional 'free' 512 from a second account)

100$ seems very steep to me, but maybe I'm prejudiced

I don't know how many times I've posted that I'm looking for 1/4 sim and no one IM's me. I have to pay tier on Friday so if anyone is interested let me know now before I do because the refund rate is only 50% of your money back so I'll be stuck.

I suppose I could just buy the real sim and then order the open-space sim right away. I'm not sure what the prim count is on an open-space sim. I'm considering:

16,384 sq meters
$100US a month tier
2,500 prims

I'll use the open-space between the sims so there would be complete privacy and lots of landscaped common space.

I need to find out more about the open-space low-prim islands.

once you sell land you have no control over it what so ever untill reclaiming
security system people will have to buy
less prims, not possible as they own 1/4th the island wich is fixed prim count
clubs, yuk, standard 40x40x40 prefab club invite with huge walls next door (been there, done that & moved away from that)
for $100usd a month, better be a symbolic purchase price of a couple K, as said, there are places where you can rent for $75 a month but with purchase price, with the new purchase prices for island, you would recoup in 10 months (4 x $100 = 400 - $295 * 10 = $1050 = island purchase) wich on the old prices would have been from 12 months up to 18 months

Just sent you a IM....I have a 1/4 sim mainland for rent

Thanks for the input guys, this is just the kind of realism I was looking for.

I was planning on a very low symbolic purchase price but I can see I definitely need to revise my plan and do a bit more research. I didn't realize that prim-count was fixed, I thought with an island I could alot prims to the parcels however I wanted.

I'm not interested in 2500 prims. I think a normal 1/4 sim has 3,700

Just don't expect to recoup tier right off the bat. Do it for fun, not profit. But since you stated money is not the key here, you should have no issues.

Agreed. I need a revised plan. I'd like to just break even eventually but if I'm planning to keep 25% or more of the land for myself I suspect I will need to consider paying in myself forever. I'm currently paying $89US a month for 9200 square meters and 2798 prims. This is why I thought my offering was such a good one. Apparently I'm overpaying.

That said, I definitely still want to do this Just with a better plan.

I think the problem lies in the fact that the renter wont be getting a 1/4 sims worth of prims. Usually when someone is to take control of that size parcel every prim is needed.. I just dont think it would be viable without the expected prims for that size.

Ok, I think I see where I went wrong now. Before deciding to buy an island I was looking for a quarter sim to put my house and a furniture store on. I was only looking at land that allowed commercial. All those I found are over $100US a month tier and have little to no landscaping.

I think this just might be the niche where I can fit. I could offer 1/4 sim, full prims, $100US/month pre-landscaped for pre-approved commercial.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of 1/4 island land that allows commercial (on the land, not just in the sky) and costs $100US a month or less for tiers.

no idea as i haven`t looked, but look at it this way
your making enough from day 1 with $100 per 1/4th sim for tier while keeping 1/4th of the sim for your self

once people take the land, they can return all objects, pre-landscaping only works with group land rental

Should have been saying teraforming, not landscaping.

How do some people offer lands with 20% or 40% more prims if prims are set to land? Are there high-prim islands available?

Its not terraforming if you use prims - its landscaping and the previous comment stands, if the plot is purchased they can return the prims.

EDIT: Just realised "prims set to land" may not mean you are using them as part of the landscape but might be referring to the prim bonus system for allocating prims to land. If you meant the latter then please ignore this post.