Finding my 512

there are lots of lots( i just wanted to say that!) anyways cambell plateau and moa ussually have lots of 512 for under 3000L$ some nearing 2500
they are in the korian contentet so when you look don't get the idea that road is getting finished any time soon it's probly bottom of the list

Oh, and a very useful trick, though I hope I'm not going too fast for you on this one:
1) Create a group for friends, your business, something like that, just make sure to set land permissions within the group pretty tight.
2) Donate your tier to the group
3) Make sure you wear the tag for that group when you buy land
4) Buy your 512 sqm plot, but Buy for Group, not for yourself. The reason comes next
5) Quickly look around the sim, and see if there are any cheap microparcels laying around, especially parcels near your newly aquired land
6) If they're relatively cheap (less than 75L$ for 16sqm be considered cheap), buy 3 of these 16 sqm micoparcels, or 48 sqm worth of them, and buy these for your group as well.

Groups get a 10% land bonus allowance on Mainland. You can't get 51sqm, but 48 sqm is the closest available. It's not much, but still, it's 9-11 extra prims. In addition, you're sure that there won't be appearing an ugly advert on that particular parcel anymore.

If you get along well with your neighbours (just make sure they're really residents), you might also be able to arrange a landswap for these microparcels, so they may attach to your main plot, or to combine your 3 microplots and let your neighbour combine his/her microplots as well.
Some sims even have arrangements where each resident sacrifices 1 or 2 prims from their 3 microplots to plant a tree or do something else nice to improve the neighbourhood.

Depends.

I joined 5/1/07 and for a good year had no interest in purchasing land, thus I never explored this aspect of SL. There are many people who don't own land nor have any interest in doing so.

The things I said when I joined SL was:

*I will never go Premium - didn't see the point
*I will never buy land - great rentals out there
*I will never build anything - no interest
*I will never own a shop

Ermmmmmmm.....

I have now done all of the above. Times/reasons/seasons change

Two things that might serve as indicators of a quieter sim:

1) PG, as opposed to Mature, status. (all mainland sims are one or the other--the designation is right next to the name of the sim). This isn't an absolute guarantee, but people who want to run XXX clubs are certainly going to put them on a Mature sim.

2) Lack of green dots (each indicates the presence of either an avatar or a bot). Pull up the Map when your avatar is in the sim of interest. If you see a lot of green dots, there may be a very active club or mall there. (Of course it's ideal to do this check at various points within 24 hours, as a sim that's very quiet for 20 hours out of a day may routinely be maxed out at 50 avatars or more for 4 hours of each day).

I'd actual suggest making a Basic alt if you do group land. We've all heard horror stories about people losing their land because they dropped below the required two members in their land group...if you have both your main and alt in the group, you can be sure that won't happen.

First post just for this?

Hate to spoil your mockery with some facts, but although I registered a while ago I did not begin playing until this summer.

It could've* also been the case that I only became a premium member this summer, which would've been the impetus to find out more about the free tier 512 plot of land. I've been busy with RL and playing SL, learning to make clothing, learning art programs to make clothing with, and other things not related to land ownership. Also I may have mentioned I've been renting until the constant stream of intruders made me consider owning my own parcel more seriously.

Does that explain it to your satisfaction?

*What I meant was, even if you thought I'd been playing SL since registering (on a whim as the case was), there was still a possibility it was a while before I became a premium member. Enough chance to leave some space for benefit of the doubt at least. Only one snarky post out of all these super friendly and helpful posts though, so that isn't bad.