Land market in these uncertain times

Hey folks! Has anyone tried to sell mainland lately? Is everyone adopting a wait and see policy until the adult move has taken effect?

I'd like to offload a smallish parcel and then buy a bigger one within my tier level. Seems to be a buyer's market right now though. I'm not sure how low to go on my suare meter price, but thought I have it set pretty low already.

I've noticed a slight increase at the bottom end of the market.

I decided that if I can buy a sim at a fair enough price, I might just invest. I am hoping there is someone who wants to unload their sim just to stop paying tier, rather than abandon their land.

It might be a way to help someone out while investing a bit in the game i.e. investing in staying a bit longer. I want to do something positive but for that I need space. I would give at least part of it for some positive purpose or maybe even begin by doing something like "Far and Away" - for charity, for art, just so someone can go there and take a deep breath. Who knows...

if the demand for estate land is a reverse indication of the demand for mainland then I have a feeling mainland is doing rather poorly at the moment, I'm starting to think about adding another sim, my currents ones are nearly maxed out.

I have to admit I always tend to want to go for a quick sale whenever I offload any mainland parcels in order to tier down/expand within existing tier. I look to see what the bottom L$/sqm price is on the land search and then offer it at that or just below..... it has always gone in seconds.

Mainland is a buyer's market...Estates sims seem to be doing ok to pretty good.
In June ...a ton of Homesteads will be offloaded or converted into Full sims (3 for 1)

Minimum prices were down to L$ 3.0 per sq m or less a week or two ago.
When I last looked yesterday the cheapest land was L$ 3.4 per sq m. Anyway, in historic terms, land can be bought pretty cheap at the moment.

I wonder what affect the Bot policy will do when they start really cracking down in the next week or so.. I would imagine a lot of land going up for sale and businesses closing. With the combination of Adult Policies and Bot policies there is fixing to be a lot of land for sale.

Mainland is being held up at the bottom end at 3L per m by the larger land agents. Most landbots appear to set to 2.99L at the moment. Should a few of the larger land agents decide there is not a lot of reward vs effort left in shoring up mainland prices and bail out then is going to a whole lot harder for everyone.

Week before last I sold one 9008sqm parcel for L$15/sqm and one 8192sqm parcel for L$15/sqm. Both parcels were for sale for less than a week.

A month or so before that I sold nearly 1/4sim in ~4096sqm parcels for the same price/sqm.

What I think about the upcoming future is this:

Lots of people are panicking, this will have an effect on mainland prices as a lot of people dump land. Bargains will definitely be possible to snag. This is going to be short term though.

Most of the panicking is being fostered by the business community who want to sell things and are (quite rightly) worried that their existing mainland will be disadvantaged in the up coming changes.

However, a lot of people are not thinking straight, if they were they would see that many people are going to want the regular mainland more for residential purposes in the future and they are not going to want it on Ursula for a few reasons:

Ursula does not have the size or as much interesting terrain for those wanting to enjoy their land for aesthetic value. Sure it looks pretty enough but more in a managed Bay City or Nautilus way, not in the same wild and exciting way that terrain exists today in many areas of the older continents.

As adult clubs and other adult oriented business ventures move out of the regular mainland, it will become a more desirable area to live because people will no longer have to be afraid that Gorean, BDSM or any other adult content will be parked just next to their luxury condo/apartment/house/castle etc. This is going to be more likely to turn average "nothing special" land in to something that can be made attractive to people wanting a space to live.

In short the adult oriented policy and Ursula is going to have a positive effect on residential land and its prices, even if it has a detrimental effect on commercial land. I see mainland becoming more residential oriented (obviously) because of this.

So this works a lot like the stock market. Lately we've been loosing funds in stock value, but on the other hand the value we're putting into it (in mutual funds say) is going to go a lot farther in the long run.

So if I can offload my parcel at L$3 per square meter and get a bigger parcel for a little more than that, but closer to what I need, it's not really a huge loss in the long run -- especially as this is entertainment budget anyway.

/me shakes his head and wonders what happened that he is talking about finance in what is supposed to be about the fantastic and the imagination . . .

I have absolutely no idea about the stock market but your analysis of selling the plot and buying something nearer to what you want but paying a little more sounds about right to me if you want your land to be for residential/enjoyment uses rather than commercial

That's my attitude too.
The ongoing tier is the real cost. Tier per metre with Linden oceans on the boundaries is the same as for a hell-hole in a desert of abandoned plywood.
If you trade land only once in a blue moon, then the occasional notional profit/loss on a trade is relatively peanuts.

Although the last week or two has seen the bottom of the market move from L$3.2/sqm to L$3.4/sqm I can't see any decent reason for it and I'm still predicting a big collapse in prices over the next month or so. Past attempts to clean up mainland have not significantly affected land prices. i.e. the market is still about the same place it was before ad farms and land cutting were banned and projects like Nautilus and Bay City haven't significantly affected the rest of the mainland.

The problem will become, I think, that people behave in weird ways when dealing with nearly worthless things. So if land hits L$1/sqm or so then all of a sudden mainland becomes like estate land and has absolutely no "investment" value.

I don't know who it is that is holding prices at L$3/sqm but I think it's a huge mistake to try to hold back the market unless you are backed by several hundred thousand dollars. It's such a stupid idea that I'm pretty sure no-one is doing it. The only sensible way to trade land is to see where the market is and try to buy low and sell high.

On the other hand despite everything I've written here I've actually been increasing the amount of mainland I own from about 900,000sqm to 1,300,000sqm over the last couple of weeks. It's probably a huge error but I can well see myself hitting 2,000,000sqm sometime this year. Maybe at that point I'll be big enough to make the market instead of reacting to it.

"When there is blood on the streets, buy property."