What happens to the buildings when land ownership ceases?

I'm thinking of buying a small lot of virtual land. I've been wandering around the FAQs for about an hour and I still have a few questions. Can you please help?

Firstly, what if you buy land, then decide you no longer want to be a premium member? I understand that the land reverts to Linden Labs, but what about all your buildings and stuff - can you take them with you?

Secondly, what if you buy land from someone other than Linden Labs then decide you want out? How does payment work for non-mainland plots - through the SL Paypal system, or some other way? Can you stop payment or can they just keep sucking money out indefinitely?

Also, re: mainland plots:
* How much terraforming can you do on them? (I understand for private plots it varies from place to place).
* Are they all zoned for residential AND commercial, or does it vary? If it varies, how do you tell?

Thanks.

If you revert back to basic you revoke the right to hold land - I think you have to get rid of it before you CAN tier down - sell it tho, don't abandon.

Same applies to Estate, though if you don't pay your tier/rental they can and often do seize control - you never really OWN Estate land unless you bought the region.

Most mainland plots are not zones at all beyond PG and Mature, though that is changing. You can terraform +/- 4 metres.

If you relinquish a piece of land then your objects will be returned to you - it's far better that you pick them up yourself.

If you buy mainland land and then decide you want out, you can set the land for sale and sell it to another resident. You can take all your buildings with you - just right click and 'take' from the menu. This puts them in your inventory.

Note you can buy mainland from other residents, this is the most common way to get it actually. Linden Lab only typically sells mainland at auctions, while resident-to-resident sales happen all over the place, all the time.

If you buy or rent land on a private estate, then it is only slightly different. If the private estate allows land resale then you maybe buy it from the estate owner or maybe buy it fro another resident. And when you leave, you try and sell it, like mainland. Renting is perhaps a better option since you have less upfront expense, but then when you decide to leave, you can't sell it off. I won't go too far into pros and cons of this because I am biased.

In any case though you can take your buildings and objects with you, just 'take' them as I said.

Most mainland terraforming is limited to + or - 4 meters from their original height. Unfortunately you have no way of knowing if they are at their original height when you buy - a former owner mayhave raised or lowered the land.

Private estate land all have different terraforming abilities, you really need to read their covenants to know what you can and can't do. Ditto for zoning - some are zoned one way or the other, some aren't. The best advice I can give you about private estates, is to talk to other people already there and ask how they like it. Ask what they think of the estate owner, ask if they're happy.

-Atashi

** Firstly, what if you buy land, then decide you no longer want to be a premium member? I understand that the land reverts to Linden Labs, but what about all your buildings and stuff - can you take them with you?

You can take the buildings and your other stuff with you, yes. Just take your things back into inventory before you leave the parcel. DO NOT just use the "Return" feature to return all your stuff at once, as this returns the prims in a jumbled up mess. Take the items back individually, so you can find them for re-use. For example, take up your furniture and decorations one at a time first, then select the now empty house, and take it back into inventory. Try not to include any Linden Plants (the one-prim plants from the Library) in these selections, as it makes it harder to rez the items in a sandbox later to examine them. Generally Linden plants need to be placed as needed for the articular parcel anyway, so it's best to just delete them before moving.

If you fail to remove your things before abandoning or selling your parcel, the next owner will most likely use the Return feature to clear all your stuff out as a single blob. Makes a mess for the former land owner, so clean up before you go. You'll thank yourself later.

** Secondly, what if you buy land from someone other than Linden Labs then decide you want out? How does payment work for non-mainland plots - through the SL Paypal system, or some other way? Can you stop payment or can they just keep sucking money out indefinitely?

Most private sim owners either use a PayPal subscription (which either side can cancel as needed), or they will have you manually pay an ATM or rental box in-world on a scheduled basis. If you pre-paid more than a month in advance (foolish in most cases), it is up to the individual land owner if they will give you any sort of refund for unused pre-paid rent. Most will not do so. (Neither will Linden Lab, if you just paid tier and then sell your land. You still pay for that month of unused time...)

** Also, re: mainland plots:
* How much terraforming can you do on them? (I understand for private plots it varies from place to place).

Varies depending on the sim. Typical is only +/- 4 M from the Linden design of the sim. Some Mainland parcels have larger ranges, and the best way to tell is to go to the parcel and check the Estate settings there. Note that there is no way to look at the land and tell if it has already been raised or lowered to its maximum distance from the original design.

* Are they all zoned for residential AND commercial, or does it vary? If it varies, how do you tell?

Private sims usually will have "Covenants" that spell out any restrictions or zoning. The more experienced landlords have very detailed covenants that explain such things quite clearly. There is a field in the "About Land" info on every parcel where you can read the covenant info. If you are looking at a private sim and the covenant is hard to understand or seems incomplete, talk to the landlord and be sure you both agree on the terms, or find a more experienced landlord.

Just a tiny bit of tweaking:
... and you bought that region through Linden Lab. (The reason for this distinction is that, with OpenSpace sims, it's possible someone may think they're buying one of those regions directly from an Estate (not an actual sim transfer), when in fact the Estate still owns it.)
Right, but with a very few exceptions. The casual buyer is unlikely to encounter them (unless they sort for *highest* L$/m2) but a few such sims exist--AFAIK, all on the Sansara continent.

For that matter, there are a tiny handful of Linden-zoned sims--again on Sansara. Brown and Boardman and one or two others--I forget. And again, rarely anything for sale there, and always at an astronomical price--well above Bay City, even. And of course the Bay City sims have a kind of "zoning" in the form of parcel join/divide restrictions.

None of which is a first-time Mainland buyer likely to encounter--but it sure could be confusing if they did.

What do you mean "though that is changing"?


Can anyone conclusively confirm or deny this, please?

Thank you very much for your help, everybody!

** What do you mean "though that is changing"?

LL is experimeting with more zoning restrictions on the Mainland. Bay City is an example of that, as are the recent changes severely restrcting or eliminating "Ad Farms".

** Can anyone conclusively confirm or deny this, please?

If you own Mainland parcels (or if you donated tier to a group for their parcels on the mainland), and you tier down to Basic, you can lose those parcels (or the group loses your tier donation, and must make it up elsewhere). You do NOT have any right to own a Mainland parcel if you are not a Premium member, so I believe if you tier down to Basic while you still own any mainland parcels, those parcels are "abandoned" back to Linden Lab. The loss may not be immediate, but you effectively no longer own them as soon as you cears being a Premium member.

Technically anyone can own mainland through groups, it's just that the tier has to come from a premium account.

As far as owning land in your own name: you can't "downgrade" back to basic in this case, you need to get rid of the land first. You can obviously just stop paying and then you do forfeit the land (although it'll be resold on your behalf in this case, not reclaimed/abandoned), but then your account is going to be suspended as well if the land sale doesn't cover the bill (plus "administrative expenses".

I got a bit surprised by this one, when I found that the land we'd bought wouldn't terraform as I'd originally intended. We got around it OK, with some minor re-thinking of our layout. But it's a good idea to ask the seller to pick a spot near the high point of the parcel and lower and raise it temporarily, and the same with a spot near the low point of the parcel. This will give you an idea of what you can do, terraforming-wise.

Yeah. I had a client once with a lovely large parcel on one of the first expandion areas of Mainland beyond the first two continents. +/- 4M limits. We wanted to level out an area for her new house... But there was a ditch and a hump of land that were within 20 Meters of each other, and that simply could NOT get leveled with the rest! The lowest the hump would go, and the highest the ditch would go, there was still about a 3M variation between them.

We settled for placing a prim garden and a patio over the ditch, and placing decorative plantings on top of the hump.

Thanks to all for tweaking my reply (whilst I went to deal with an embarassing cock up I made at work ... I want to go home!!)