Finding my 512

I've looked all over the site and read into at least a few pages of this part of the forum.

What I need is simple: I get a 512 parcel of land with my premium account. But I don't know how to find one. Or, how to claim it once I do. (Do I click 'buy' even though it's supposedly 'free'?)

I did look in the 'land' section here of course, as well as searched in the game search engine (classifieds). The only parcels I see on the map on this site are huge ones. No tiny plots of land come up in SL search either. I may be missing something but have tried to figure out how to claim that prepaid piece of land. I'd rather ask here, anyway, to make sure I went about this correctly.

Ideally I'd like a regular-shaped piece of land, in a residential, quiet area. (I don't want to be near shops, since that's the trouble with my rental now, and people are always TP'ing themselves in.) Low lag. Water nearby would be nice but I realise that's asking a lot.

Any help is appreciated. You can IM me here if you want or in SL. Or post here of course.

You do not get a free 512m parcel of land. What you get is the ability to own one without paying monthly tier. You still have to find and buy your own land.

You don't get a 512 s.m. parcel with a premium account, premium accounts include the tier (the rent, so to speak) on up to 512 meters of land. You have to buy the land.

The land search system that comes up when you use the Search button, Land Sales tab, does list all the parcels for sale, regardless of size.

For getting the 512 parcel for which you are already paying for by being premium, you should set the Land Sales tab to show "For Sale - Mainland", so that you are seeing only land set for sale by Linden Lab, which land is all on the so-called "Mainland".

Oh.

Lol.

Well, I still need help finding a 512, I guess...

Not sure I'd have sprung for the premium if I realised I was only saving $5 a month...by paying whatever the premium is (more). Sigh.

ETA: Cross posted the above, before I saw the 2nd reply. Any tips are still welcome, though.

ETA again: Okay, I revisited the 'land' section on the SL website. There is all of one parcel of land for auction and it's bigger than 512 and nestled between some shops. I had looked at it earlier. Does this mean LL has only one parcel available right now, for all its users?

Still feel like I'm missing something. I know it seems obvious to those more experienced in this. Do they not simply have a list of parcels this size, that I can access? Thanks.

Use the Search button in the Second Life viewer, the program you use to enter the Second Life virtual world. It's a button at the bottom of the screen.

Then pick the "Land Sales" tab in the search dialog.

Then click the triangle next to All Types, and select "For Sale - Mainland".

Check the checkbox next to Area and fill 512 in the box to the right of "Area >= sq. m."

Click the Search button.

You could also select"Auction " in the land types dropdown if you want to bid for a 512 parcel, I suppose, but the common thing to do is to use the For Sale - Mainland option.

When you select on the parcels in the list, you can go to it by clicking the Teleport button near the bottom center of the dialog.


I can't believe this isn't illustrated in the Knowledge Base, but I didn't find it to give a link or paste the pictures from it.

You also get a weekly L$ stipend which has a value of around $60 per year...$60 of stipend plus $60 of yearly tier pays for or exceeds the cost of your Premium membership, no matter which plan you chose.

Thank you all so much. I really appreciate this!

I've been paying all this time and had no idea how to correctly go about doing this. I didn't want to mistakenly buy it off someone else and then end up paying twice, or who knows what. So thanks

It's also good to hear it is 'virtually' free. (hee)



Seems a puzzling omission to me, too. Should be a link from the account page or something, I think. Or at least detailed info as listed here. I wonder how many parcels go unclaimed cos people are afraid to ask.

There is a KB article on it at https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=4061 but it doesn't have illustrations.

There are a number of good KB articles with nice illustrations. This should have some.

It's also ridiculously hard to link to a KB article. I had to look up how in the KB.

You don't really need to be in rush to buy the land. Where it is makes a big difference in how much you enjoy it.

You can pick from Mature or PG parcels, for one basic choice.

You can get a parcel in a new place where the surroundings are extremely likely to change dramatically in short order, or look for an older place that has a better chance of staying like it is, though that is not at all guaranteed.

There is a sticky at the top of this forum with some good advice in it.

There is also a wiki I made that has some of the parts of the Knowledge Base and a few changes and additions from users at land-answers.wiki.zoho.com.

The Second Life Wiki, at wiki.secondlife.com, will also have some information in it.

There's also a group called SL Land Answers Unlimited that you can join and ask questions at, and you can get lessons on land buying and lots of other stuff at NCI, the New Citizens Inc. group, among other user operated help groups. Also you can ask a mentor for help with questions like this.

The SL Land Answers group has a lot of land sellers in it, so don't let that take you by surprise.

Also there are some videos on land listed at http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/05/02/curious-confused-about-land-watch-11-land-video-tutorials/ in a blog post by Torley.

Everyone here has made excellent suggestions, but I'd like to add:


When you're inworld, click on "Map" at the bottom of your screen. When the Map come up, make sure there's a check in the "Land For Sale" box (top right of the Map). You will see numerous yellow rectangles (and some purple ones too, which are the Auction parcels you had mentioned having looked over).

At largest magnification, the Map shows only 15 or so sims at a time, which is a tiny fraction of all that are available to you. As you fly or teleport around, you can keep pulling up the Map and seeing the parcels up for sale in that particular area.

It definitely pays to fly around and teleport around as much as you can, before deciding. (It's fun, too!). The Search function that others have described in this thread can aid you in zeroing in on the price range you're interested in.

Might as well throw in that you can do View, Land Owners, and the colors of parcels will tell you if land is for sale or not. It's funny looking but it works for its purpose.

Thanks again for all the excellent suggestions. I will look into all of them.

I'm in SL looking at 512 parcels; how do I tell which ones are Linden offerings? All of the ones I've seen so far have someone else's name on them. Would I be buying these from another SL member or from LL?

It's too bad a link from a new account couldn't take a person directly to a list of lots available.

A lot of other sized parcels come up when I search on 512 but I guess that's just the way it is.

I get intimidated teleporting and clicking randomly but yes that's another way. Wish there were some way to narrow in on a good parcel but if not, I will have to just explore and hope for the best. I want a quiet residential area ideally. I agree it's better to buy next to people who've been there a while; I wouldn't want a tiny lot that ended up being between two XXX clubs for example. LOL

There is stacks of land around, so don't rush into a decision, try and get in a sim with as few neighbours as possible and long term ones at that, if the rest of the sim is for sale there could be nearly anything move next door to you.
Also if you want to buy more land later then try to avoid buying a plot on the edge of a sim because you can't join plots across sim boundries.
Also be sure to look carefully from the land that it really is 512m and doesn't have a donut hole hidden in the middle, or a narrow strip of land between you and the view , water or road. There are people called Adfarmers who will put things on these narrow strips the offer to sell the land to you at extortionate prices to buy your view back.
Also if you ever put land for sale beaware there are Landbots that will grab it within a second if you price it under the market value. So no selling it to a friend for $1L unless you name them specifically in the sale process or "anyone" can buy it.
Also make sure the land has no covenment otherwise it's probably island estate land in which case you really are just paying a lump sum for renting off a private owner who could delete the whole island at anytime they liked with your money. There are many good estate owners, just check their reputation and that they have been around for a year or 2. You don't need to be a premium to rent land, you can also rent your tier: or rent more tier from other residents. Forming a group with a trusted friend or alt character gives you a 10% extra land bonus too,
Also if you attempt to buy more land than 512m (unless you have the 10% group bonus)by even a meter you will jump up to the next tier charge bracket as if you owned 1024m so might aswell get a 1024m. From what I hear 1024 is the most popular size to own for residential use.
Another good idea is to try renting land for a couple of weeks to find how it works and work out how much land you will need, rather than buy a small plot then run out.
Furniture often uses way more prims than the house itself too, so 117 prims doesn't go far if your sofa may use 20 of them plus the house maybe 30 prims.

You'll pretty much always be buying small plots from other Residents.

so as to not confuse anyone who might be reading it, don't think of tier as paying rent (that gets confusing as some folks do rent land)

think of tier paid to linden labs, like a land tax kind of thing....
tier paid to a private sim owner, is rent to that sim owner (they pay the tier to linden lab, or the "tax"

if you rent from someone on mainland, that person pays the tier, you rent from them

if you buy the land on mainland, you pay the tier (tax) to linden lab and there is only a one time purchase price and the land will show owned by you (or a group if you deed it to a group)

If you buy land on a private estate, even though the land will say you "own" it, technically you are still renting it, as you are paying the money to another player, who in turn pay their tier to LL (or the tax)

ok I hoped that would avoid confusion, sadly I think I added to it

No I appreciate every reply, it's like a puzzle slowly coming together piece by piece.

So how do I avoid just paying 'rent' to the sim owner on top of the land purchase as opposed to paying a tier to LL?

By the way some of the parcels are logging me out of SL when I go to see them. Weird.

Using the Land search at the bottom of your viewer, there's a drop down which will let you filter for Mainland parcels.

Ok, so Mainland are the only ones that are still LL, even if it says someone else's name. The pieces begin to fall into place.

Soo slowly, but they do. LOL.

When you use the land search, if you select "For Sale - Mainland", then all the places in the list will be places on "Mainland". When you buy a mainland parcel you pay the current owner the purchase price and if there is tier due you pay it to Linden Lab. If your are a premium member and after buying the parcel you own 512 sq. m. or less then no tier is due, since your premium fees have already covered it.

If you select "For Sale - Estate", then all the places in the list will be on "Private Estates", sims operated by users, not directly from Linden Lab. In the case of a premium member looking to find the 512 sq.m. parcel which their premium fee will cover, you don't want to be using "For Sale - Estate" or at "All Types".

You can also learn to recognize the continents on the map so you can tell what is mainland just by looking at them map.

You can tell by the covenant in the About Land dialog whether it is Linden operated mainland or user operated land. There's no covenant for Linden operated land.

The About Land dialog also shows the estate as mainland on the Covenant tab.

I'm not sure there is anything stopping someone from running a private estate called mainland, though, and a private sim owner might have his covenant say "There is no Covenant provided for this Estate", so that might might not be totally reliable.

There's a map around somewhere showing the mainland continents. Someone will most likely be along shortly to post it.

The search thingy can be ordered too, by using the headers, so do order it by size, so the 512 sqm parcels show on top.

In the View menu at the top of your screen, you can make the borderlines of the lands visible. I suggest doing so: View -> Property Lines. Or ctrl-alt-shift-P.
These are a BIG help in identifying the doughnut-scam, since you can't miss the propertylines in the centre of a parcel. It also helps you identify those narrow rectangles along your land as well, or where the prim parcels are located.
Prim parcels aren't problematic on their own, it's the extortion by "adfarms" that sometimes happens with them that's bad. Ideally, a sim has 16-32 of those miniparcels, and ideally, you're not the one living next to them (though it doesn't matter if you live in a skybox).

I HIGHLY recommend this class! I took it before I purchased my first 512 parcel of land not too long ago and it was very helpful!

Good luck on finding your new home

There are currently 3 plots for sale on the sim where I live (a water sim - Warbluster) but they are all 1024's.

and be aware, that on the mainland, things can and often do change overnight. You might purchase a lot in a quiet 'residential' area, and the next day you might find a shop has sprung up next to you. There really is no mainland zoning <yet>.

Terrific advice in this thread!

Take your time in choosing your lot. I spent about a month exploring the 512 lots before finding one that was a good fit for me.

And enjoy the exploration while you look around. If it is for sale, you have a right to be on the land . Of course, you can land on some weird areas. One lot was so steep I nearly tumbled off. And another time I ended up in someone's living room. And of course you wil TP into some water lots too. Oh well!

The land prices still puzzle me. The 512 lots I looked at back in August ranged from about 1800 to over 5000 Lindens. I expected the lower priced lots to have some flaws, but not the more expensive ones. I don't know how land prices are set.

June

LOL??... not at all, joindate is in 2006 and still no knowledge of SL??... big tears instead of LOL

To add to what Tegg said.... Turn on View|Property lines so that you can see the edges of the prospective plot and make sure there are no tiny plots adjacent to it or inside it. If there are, you run the risk of seeing horrible things placed on them to force you either (a) to pay huge prices to buy and clear them, which would also put you in the next tier bracket; or (b) to sell your land for a loss. Unfortunately this kind of thing can spoil the first land purchases of those who are not forwarned. Neighbours are very important in SL. Good luck.