A Land Thread

Agreed, I held off buying more land because of the impending tier changes but having people bug me about renting more parcels tempted me to purchase more land and I'm still looking but I am certainly concerned that the pricing system changes will hit me hard.

possibly the activity has moved onto the nicer parcels, meaning those priced at 10+. those cheap parcels are pretty rough. i know i wouldnt want to buy one when i could get something so much better for an additional $5usd.

We need a distributed grid to resolve the land problem.

Land in a SL should be valued in some ways like RL land and other ways like modern web hosting, with those key metrics being location, quantity and performance. When you break it down, land is just a remote storage area, with objects on it, similar to web hosting. It is also directly tied to other land though like RL land is (bad neighbors anybody?), which makes location of the land affect it's value as well. This is the cross over between it's relationship to RL land and web hosting. With web hosting each webpage is it's own unique instance, where land is directly affected by what is beside it (Unless you have an island).

With a distributed grid, land availability will become unlimited. Somebody eventually will create a 'geocities' of SL and offer free land in exchange for advertising rights or something similar. Only then will LL's current artificial land availability and price fixing disappear and valuation will purely be on location, quantity and performance as it should be.

Personally I think it's LL micromanaging the land market. I think they have a set price they feel mainland should be, based on their own image for SL long term (not saying they care much about mainland sales between residents, but land prices tie into the perception of SL's health as a whole), and right now, we're still under that. As soon as we hit whatever LL magic number is, they'll wait a few days to make sure things remain stable, then start dumping sims again.

/me crosses his fingers

i have about 9K of land up for sale. most bought in the heady days of last winter. anyone remember the days of L$10-15K for a 512 plot?

i KNOW i'm gonna take a big bath on this.

any increase of prices on larger plots is welcome in MY eyes.

Yes, those are exactly my thoughts too. I get the feeling they always had to balance mutually exclusive demands on their land output (getting a decent price per sim vs not making land too prohibitive for the general populous), which is why they experimented with land with much more waterfront, to capitalise on the perceived worth of waterfront.

Then, as Ray said, the casino ban, the slowdown in population growth (especially compared to the early part of this year), and later on the VAT imposition have all helped crush demand for land. If LL weren't trying to micromanage the market, they wouldn't have completely shut down auction sim output in response to collapsing land prices in the way they have done.

Now however, they probably need to think about releasing some, once prices drift back up to where they want them, but not release too much that prices fall too far again.

It seems SL has hit a rut. I've noticed more concurrent users lately than ever before but it needs a "new thing" to get people interested and to re-ignite the concept that a virtual economy can be viable and that a person could potentially make a living there. I have no idea what that would be--but some type of tie-in with the real world. As ugly as casinos were--they were an example of a natural RL tie in. I think breaking even on tier(very rare) or even making a small profit of $10 a week while working 20 hours in that week to achieve it keeps SL squarely in the "hobby" category for most.

Unlike other hobbies however, the land you buy in SL has a financial commitment to it--the high monthly cost means you can't just ignore it for a month or two until you become interested again or have time. You are *required* to either figure out a way to recover tier from some type of business activity(which you'll probably have to spend a lot of time at perfecting) or sell. Once you sell, the "buy in" you have in SL vanishes and I think a lot of people just leave and spend a few hours on facebook.

I think a lot of people are asking what makes land in SL valuable right now?

If I get enough business in-world after a bit, I'm going to be running a shop out of my home as well, advertising as creating their dream worlds in a virtual reality

That is..if that's legal lol

Land in SL definitely has value, but LL has inflated that value far beyond what is fair to us customers. They probably realize how competitive and difficult the infrastructure business is, so they're milking the cow while they still can. Once there's an actual simulator infrastructure market the prices will drop for sure.

Maybe, but then again, maybe not. A simulator infrastructure market could become synonymous with private sims. All the same risks of loosing land, having no recourse if your sim owner ups and leaves SL, etc. I'm not saying a more open grid won't alter land prices, it surely will, particularly if those running the servers started offering private sim real estate at lower prices than LL does, or creating protected environments where LL prohibited activity is fine and dandy, but outside of that, I don't see the mainland market being too hard hit, at least not for the first year or two or even three that these new owner-controlled sims and minigrids are out.

As for LL inflating value, there really isn't such a thing as inflated value. The market will bare what it will bare, and SL is a place of dreams. People are willing to give up alot before they sacrefice their dreams, so even if tier rates went up somewhat, I doubt the market would suffer to the point of collapse. Perhaps land might go down to 5 or so, but not completely loose value.

However, the open sim could be the next big thing, if they dropped private sim prices or created niche sims or minigrids. That could bring back alot of what was lost to gambling ban or VAT, IF it was handled correctly.

When you're looking at the land auctions, is that land that belongs to LL? Or does it belong to private parties and you're essentially "buying" the land but could lose it if the "seller" flakes out?

LL does not allow private auctions through their system. What you see in the land listings are avatars that have abandoned their land to Gov Linden. After so much time has passed, LL will set them up for resell and the money goes to LL's account. This is why its never good to abandon land, you can always low ball the land someone will pick it up. Its better to get a little bit for the land instead of zero.

Thanks Xplorer

I think Abandon used to make more sense, back when First Land was around...

Boy, I'm suddenly feeling ignorant!

If you purchase 12,288m of water, what could you do with it? Can you build a beach? A platform city?

Probably the goldrush syndrome, that was still prevalent when I came to SL in Sept 2006, is on the wane now. There must be a lot of people who came to SL thinking they'd become millionaires overnight but gave up after a week or two.

There are quite a few 16m plots of land near where I live that have been on sale for ridiculously high prices for nearly a year. One wonders how many of them belong to people who paid a year's subscription but have now given up coming into SL.

THere are about.. hmm... 8 16m plots right by my land for good prices.. all next to each other too.. different sellers though lol. Prices from like 200 L$ to 400 L$ And then right in the middle is a 128m or so for 9999 L$ rofl

there are a few 512s near me similar. what surprises me is that the owners' rezz dates have just come around again ... and passed.

the 512s are still there and have not been returned to LL. so i assume the annual premium has been paid again.

i'm sure these ppl are trying to contact LL as we speak trying to get a refund on the $72 annual payment they forgot would be re-charged.

Not really off topic, as the topic is "A Land Thread"

A neighbour of mine in Eldfell decided to tier down a bit today.
He cut off a 8192, set it for sale, and....... the classic story .......

BANG!!!!
Sky full of avatars!
Ka-Ching!!!!!

Gone ....... at L$1.22 per metre.
Oops!
And still the avatars came. Some were acrobats, standing on the heads of others.

The bot owners set it for sale back to him at the same price.

/me hoists an acknowledgement flag right up the staff into the skye.

i'm tempted to cut of a small piece and sell it for L$1 ... just to see this!