How Lands Work?

hey guys.. i really want to know how to buy lands, i have money but i need always to rent or i can buy it? and what's prim? i want a tutorial of lands.. lol

Renato, if you are new to SL, I would recommend taking a tour through the stickied posts at the top of the Resident Answers page. There is a lot of useful information from people who have been there, seen it, done it, which should stand you in perfectly good stead.

prims are basically a geometric shape that people use to build things. they can be cut, hollowed, colored, textured, made physical, phantomed so you can walk through them, animated, pretty infinate. Any item around you will have a prim count, just edit it, you will get a total prim count. don't ever go shopping unless you know items prim counts. you will run out of prims really fast. there are 15,000 prims per sim or simulator, region, what have you, these are usually cut up onto small parcels and sold off, and this is static, you can't make a sim have more prims than it can read, it's pretty imposable.

so land, I would rent if it was me, there are a few land barons i trust, I have used many, gotten burned by most, I am not sure if it cosher to name names in the forums, I am thinking no you can't.

and the only reason I would say renting is better, is because you will constantly be upping your land mass for months, we all do. and you will find a nice average for yourself and your needs for whatever you want the land for. but it will take a while, you will go through a few homes, and some are hugely different in prim counts. that way if you rent, you can walk away any time. if you buy, in this market, well lets just say it took me almost two months to sell off my last parcel. at one point it was days, hey I even had one sell in a few minutes.

but there is so much vacant land right now, tonnes, I have about 4 sims for sale around me and even a few up for auction. so I would not recommend buying land until you figure out how it works. you will most likely lose your investment capitol.

Renato...

You can rent land, and I recommend this until you have more experience and can decide what sort of land you want to own.

All land has two characteristics: size and prims. Size is how many square meters it is. You need to know this so that you can decide how big a parcel you need, to put down the house you want. Prims is how many geometric primitives, the basic building blocks of SL, you can put on the land. In general, the bigger the size, the more prims you can have there.

There are several types of land. The two main categories are mainland and private estates, or islands. You need a premium membership to buy mainland. You don't need it to buy a private island, and you don't need it for renting either kind of land.

You can rent mainland or buy it. If you buy it, from an individual or at an auction, you will then pay a monthly fee called "tier" to Linden Lab directly. If you rent it, you will pay a fee, either weekly or monthly, to the individual who owns it.

Most people can't afford a whole island, so they "buy" a plot from a private estate owner. In this case, you are really renting...you may pay an up-front "purchase" fee, and then pay a monthly fee to the owner, usually in linden dollars.

Some land types allow more prims per square meter than others. Some mainland, such as plots in Bay City or Nautilus, are "double prim". Some private islands are "Open Spaces" that only allow 3750 prims, 1/4 of the standard 15,000 prims per region.

Parcel sizes: a 512 square meter parcel is about the smallest that you can live on. It has enough prims to put up a simple house and some basic furniture. A 1024 parcel gives more elbow room and twice the prim allowance. In my opinion, a 4096 parcel is about the smallest needed for comfortable living, and I prefer twice that. But that is just my personal preference.