I want to own and rent out apartments ...so now what

Yeah, I'm a total noob. I've read through a bunch of stuff and I still need every question answered. Sooooo.....

I can find an apartment building to buy, but who sets them up to rent?
How do I rent?
How do I collect $L?
If I have to buy land what is a 'teir' and why do I have to pay it?
How do I rent/setup skyboxes?
What else do I need to know about being a slumlord... oh I mean a landlord?
Any good tips and tricks?

I REALLY appreciate your help on this. Im sooooo confused!

Danka
Jenni

Jennifer,

I don't want to sound rude, but those are a lot of very basic questions (and pretty much everything that's required to rent) for someone who is stating they have read up on this. This is just your first month. Why don't you try getting a little more experience and knowledge under your belt first.

Hey Jen, welcome to SL!

I know there are several threads on this subject...if you do a general search in resident answers you should gain some insight. Perhaps you need to dig a bit deeper as the questions you are asking have been addressed here, I'm sure of it.

But I have to ask, what's your hurry? If you just came into SL this month, maybe it would be better to get to know the lay of the land first before you attempt business ownership? Especially a landlord situation? From chatting with "oldbie" friends and who have been doing it awhile it's a business that is time consuming and often irritating. Just like RL I guess.

Not trying to discourage you but SL's learning curve is kinda steep at first. Trying to start any kind of business before you have all the basics down and learn all the subtle nuances of our interesting world could ultimately turn you off from SL entirely.

Do you rent a place of your own yet? Maybe you could survey your own landlord for info...

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Probably not the answer you wanted but... *shrugs* See ya on the grid.

Buy the cheapest mainland 512 you can find. That's normally very easy. But sometimes you might have to get down to number 3 or 4 in the Search list to get a rectangular plot.

Stick any old house on it. (A small one that fits! That's why a rectangular plot would be good).
Buy a rental system - like HippoRent
Make an alt
Have your alt rent the house and land

Then you can sort out
- what it is you want to do
- why you want to do it
- how you do it

Whatever way it turns out, dump the 512 at the lowest price you find in Search.

I'm sorry, but for buying any old 512 she does not need HippoRent.

I am going to sound like a bitch, but I am sick of having to tell people who barely know what land is how to use HippoRent.

I don't see what the rush is. Learn more about SL, learn more about land, learn more about the market you are choosing to enter first.

Do your own market research and shop around. Join a landlord group.

But for the love of God, do not buy HippoRent or any other system until you are more knowledgeable of SL and the land market.

Put out a classified ad in the forums and inworld.

Of course she doesn't *need* any rental system - even if she ends up with a few sims.
But if her current goal is to buy and rent out an apartment building, then she may as well find out about the common tools.

I forgive you for being sorry

why hippo rent? why not some other rental system?

Being a landlord is tough. Doing it well is extremely tough. My best advice to you is actually to rent from various landlords for awhile. See how they handle the logistics of it. Ask yourself how can I do this better?

In order to be a landlord you will have to own land. Tier is a fee you pay to Linden Labs that allows you to own a certain number of square meters of land in world. The larger your total land are the higher the monthly cost of tier. BUT the lower the cost per meter owned.

I know that is confusing so take the following example

512 square meters of land carrys a $5 US monthly charge but if you instead own 1024 square meters of land (twice as much land) the monthly charge is only $8 US. So the second 512 is only costing $3US more money not $5. The savings per meter get MUCH better the larger the land area.

I have done the landlord thing and not terribly successfully. It takes alot of time, effort and money to really make it work well. Above all of it you have to have the patience of a saint and excellent dispute resolution skills. Tenants are people too and have a right to get what they pay for but alot of things can go wrong in the process. SL issues can make rental boxes not credit time properly. or they pay and it never shows in your transaction history. or they dont pay and get pissed off when you evict them. Or they cant get along with you or other tenants. there are hundreds of things that YOU as a landlord will have to mediate and cope with.

The other posters have I think given some good advice. You need some time under you to figure out the personality dynamics in SL. You need time to figure out how much you can reasonably expect to charge for rent. You need time to figure out how land and land settings work. Alot of these things you just need to dive in and do. Go rent an apartment, find out how it works. Then rent from a few other people. See how they do things. THen buy a small 512 and play with settings. Get a friend to help you so you know EXACTLY what rights you are granting with each setting.

NO business can be successful without first doing the homework and working out a decent plan of action (with alternatives should things go wrong). Take the time now to make that plan and do it right from the start

As a former SL "Landlord" myself, I agree %100 with Cristalle. Being a Landlord in SL CAN be fun, but it can also be a big pain in the butt. What makes it a big pain in the butt is normally lack of knowledge. This can usually be fixed by renting a decent lil apartment (preferrably a condo), and seeing how it works first-hand.

That way you'll notice little things you would have missed (that your renters would complain about) beforehand... things like cross-talk between units that are too close together, how to resolve lil tenant spats... enforcing prim-limits easily, etc.

It doesn't take a "GENIUS", but it always goes better when you pretty much eliminate the initial redundant head-aches right at the beggining. Get an apartment for 2 weeks is my suggestion, and keep researching when you feel like it. Ask friends about any problems they have had with thier homes.

...this way when you go into business, your tenants will be a lot more satisfied, cooperative, pay on time, AND be willing to pay a higher amount from the start! Hope this was helpful. Good luck in SL

Very few answers to the actual questions here, so...

You do. You need to own the land that you put it on, of course. Renting them out is fairly simple. You advertise in Classifieds, have people TP to a show apartment or office, and have signs there that explain it all and that ask people to IM you if they want to rent. Hippo-type systems can be better, if you prefer not to do the personal appraoch. I'm running down my skybox rental business now (I had 60 rented out), but I found that I rented more out when I installed a system that IMed me when someone entered the showbox, because I would go straight over to answer any questions that they had.

Just answered that. I never used an auto-rent system like Hippo.

If you use an auto-system, tenants pay that, and you receive the money. If not, then you contact tenants each time their rent is due, and they pay it to you personally.

Tier is the monthly maintenance fee that Linden charge. Look on the website for actual figures.

In the same way as apartments. The advantage of skyboxes is privacy. There is no privacy in apartment buildings for either chat or those intimate times. Skyboxes are much more private, but they do need to be spaced far enough apart.

You need to do your sums. A piece of land has a fixed number of prims that it can hold. 234 prims on a 1024 m2 piece of land, 117 on a 512, and so on. When you rent out, you rent prims out, and you need to work out how many prims each tenant can have - including the accommodation itself. Then you work out how much you can charge for each accommodation, and compare it with the tier fee. I.e. how much do you need to take to cover the tier and make a profit, and how many rentals do you need on the land to do that.

You need plenty of land. You can put an apartment block on a 1024 cheaply enough, but a 1024 only holds 234 prims, including the apartment block itself. Tenants need a prim allowance so they can rez their own things, which means that you can't rent many apartments out on a 1024, however big the building is.

The prims on land parcels in the same sim, and owned by the same person/group, add together and can all be used on one parcel.

You need to give it a lot of thought, and you must understand that, unless you go into it in a BIG way, there's no money in it for you - it'll be just a hobby.

I wouldn't advise her to get any system right now... as I did say later on. I just feel that if you cannot comprehend land right now, you are not ready to comprehend any rental system that is as sophisticated as HippoRent.

She'd have to be blind deaf and dumb to not see what the common tools are.

This is great if you have the luxury of being inworld all day and all night.

If you're a noob as you say then the best bet would be not to rush into anything. Spend some time learning your way around sl before venturing and spending money. You're sure to mess up and lose out if you jump in head first.

As can be seen this isn't the place to learn. Learn in sl itself from people you know, from people you'll meet and from the system itself.

That's true, although I did it by just being in all day

Setting up rentals is not a get rich quick scheme, if that's your modus operandi. In fact, most people use rentals to support their beautiful lands. I think Raymond does this (his lands are gorgeous and he has rentals, so I presume that helps offset tier if not fully supports his land ).

I am also part of a 1.3 sim community (Necros) with residential rentals. The rentals offset the tier and in exchange, we share 1.3 sims of fun and beauty with other like minded people. We play, build, and have a lot of fun together, but there are also renters who are very private and keep to themselves, which is also fine. They just love living somewhere aesthetically pleasing.

As others have said, it IS work. We love it, but it is work. We like to attract long term renters, and try and provide a lot of service and attention. We're always tweaking the lands. We offer a fully furnished home (but people can return those items they don't wish to use) with extra prims -- so that does cost us money (but I confess we all enjoy shopping in our group so it's fun). There are notecards to write to explain the security systems etc.

I have done a little research and one thing I find massively disappointing are people who do buy small lots, throw up a freebie home or skyhome, set up a rental box, advertise and expect it to rent. Maybe it does rent. But most of these lands are in the middle of ad farm hell or a really nasty environment (both sky and land). I wonder who the heck would rent those things, but... perhaps... I remind myself, there is something for everyone.

I'm not trying dissuade you, but as others have said, definitely research, learn about SL some more and think hard about WHY you want to offer up rentals? If it's quick cash -- I don't know if that's possible -- you'd have to ask other landlords who just throw up any old rental if that works for them. But if you love creating a certain type of environment, have fun with it, and you'll attract the people who reflect what you're doing.

Now if only LL hadn't eaten my latest ad rental in the search!!!! LOL

In order to make renting out a profitable endeavour instead of a frustrating ordeal, you need to know your way around SL. Usually renters are less knowledgeable and come to you with questions ... sometimes clueless, sometimes tricky.

I strongly urge the OP to gain more experience by spending some months in SL owning land and learning everything about land options, media settings, groups and group permissions (very important!), ... before contemplating renting out.

I used to be a landlord (before VAT made that unprofitable for me). Before everything else, you need knowledge and patience! It's not a get-rich-quick scheme at all.

I have to disagree with all those who advised finding her way around SL, and getting used to things, first. I'd only been in SL a few weeks when I started in skybox rentals. I did have a business partner at the time, who had been in longer, but she didn't know anything about it either, or about buying land, groups, and all the things you need to know, but we worked things out for ourselves through trial and error. I remember us being amazed at how few skyboxes we could rent out on the piece of land we started with - AFTER we'd rented 6 or 7 out. We learned that landlords primarily rent prims out, rather than accommodations AFTER we were well into it.

She left the business not long after we started it, and I built it up slowly until I was renting out 60 skyboxes that were rarely not full. It was that process that gave me the understanding that, tthe more land you have, and the more accommodations you rent out, the more you earn pro-rata, because more land means lower pro-rata tier fees.

One thing led to another, and I started a shop to sell what I make. The shop now earns me a decent RL livelihood, and I'm allowing the skybox rentals to fade away naturally. But if I hadn't started into renting skyboxes 'blind', I wouldn't be making what I make now. The shop is a direct result of the skybox rentals. I started a selling area for tenants, where they could sell their items freely. I put some of my creations in it, and I just kept on making things and putting them in it. The store grew that way.

So I see no reason to wait before starting a business. After all, the best learning is personal experience, and a small start can lead to bigger and better things. I would encourage anyone to take the plunge, provided that, if it turns out to be wasted money, it doesn't matter to them.

Consider yourself lucky.

And the exception rather than the rule, no?

Is the OP still with us? What do you think of the comments so far?

I think she may have been put off by all the advice to wait.

I honestly don't think it's an exception - or it needn't be. The skybox rentals was successful slowly. At it's peak (before I decided to let it fade away), it could pay the tier for a sim and have some pocket money left over - I only had half a sim in total, spread in smaller parcels over 5 sims. While I was doing it I learned to build and script (tho I'm a long time rl programmer, which helped a lot), and I got better at them so that people like my stuff enough to buy it. I think the only reason it may be an exception is because I stuck at it like a real hobby. Certainly, rentals can grow successfully from small beginnings.

It shouldn't be an exception, but it is. And the statement above (sorry, can't remember who said it) that new people will be coming to ask for help is very true. I spend a lot of time teaching the same things: wear your group tag, why an object needs deeding, how to invite people into group... no, your bed has a separate permission system that has nothing to do with the land... read the instructions that came with X gadget.... YES, it came with instructions... edit the contents.....

If you cannot help people with these things, many of them will blame you because they can't do X, Y or Z on "your land" when half the time, your land has nothing to do with it.

This is why it is better to get inworld, to learn how to help others and not just make a quick buck off them. Because the better able you are to help people, the more likely it is that you will retain tenants for a long term period.

I can only hope so. Not to disillusion anyone, it's just damn good advice.

Amen to that! As a landlord I will want to build up a core of long-term tenants. By creating dissatisfaction through simple ignorance (e.g. "I don't know why your radio is not working on the parcel." or "No clue where your prims have disappeared to." I would lose tenants and also build a bad rep ... both things I can ill afford if I want to be a successful landlord.

The OP was looking for a formula.
There isn't one.
There are some who would sell her a skyscraper with a "License to print money" floating text.

I advised her to get her hands dirty - *using an alt*.
Without a bit of land and 'a separate person' to be the guinea pig, she won't be in a position to try out all the good/bad advice that she gets.
I did hint that she might end up not wanting to 'do what she wants to do'.

To the OP:
Get stuck in. Get the hands dirty as soon as you can. It's the best way to learn.

I can see why it is tempting to say to the OP "My advice on becoming a landlord is the same advice I would give on hitch-hiking on a Vogon ship..... don't."

But if the OP *wants* to get involved, has maybe 100 USD to spare to experiment and learn, then the OP should just go for it, in the knowledge that it might not work out. Doing is the best way to learn.

~Snowman~