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

Because HippoRent is the dog's danglies!!

It is by far the easiest to set up in a basic configuration, the help and support is second to none (instructions are on the notecards and on the internet, and there is the very firendly support group inworld, and if all else fails Andy Enfield will answer your IMs quickly and help you out as best he can!), it is future proof as it has free updates for life, it also has features that will allow you to maintain control as the business grows. I cannot recommend HippoRent enough. I use it to manage my rentals at my mall and never have an issue.

It is also one of the cheaper systems on the market if you discount the commisson rentboxes so will soon pay for itself.

Yes, that will happen - of course it will happen. That's why I stuck at half a sim. To pay the tier for a whole sim would have meant renting twice as many places out, and I really didn't want to be doing that amount of work. But I still say it's good to "get stuck in", as someone else put it a few posts back. We learn by experience - by doing things. As a landlord, people need to ask us questions, and we learn by finding the answers. We don't learn as much just by hanging round SL for a while. We learn what we need to know when it comes up. If we make a mess of something the first time, we'll learn by it so that we don't make a mess of it again. It sounds like you're a landlady, so let me ask you something. Did you know all the answers before you started? I certainly didn't. I didn't even know how to make a TV work in the skyboxes.

That's true, but it's no reason not to get started. So you don't get many long-term tenants from the start because some of them think you don't know much. So what? You can know everything there is to know and still people leave - for a variety of reasons.

The people who succeed the best are those who take the plunge - not those who hang back.

Here's a nice story of success - by someone who had no experience at all. She'd been an escort, and fancied a change. I met her in one of my skybox showboxes, back when I used go straight over there when someone entered. But she wasn't looking the rent one; she was looking because she was thinking about going into the same business, as she was fed up of being an escort.

We talked about it, and soon afterwards she bought 20 skyboxes from me. Within a few days, she had them all rented out. It was so impressive. She kept buying more skyboxes from me, and she bought houses to put on the ground, and built up a real community. She created a very impressive business, and she started doing it when she didn't know the answers to the things that Cristalle mentioned. She just got stuck in - she took the plunge, and went for it - and it was a great success.

It doesn't need to be an exception. People who fall by the wayside must be those who are half-hearted and don't treat it like a real business - a hobby business, but nevertheless real. Maybe many of those who don't succeed think that all they have to do is get a bit of land, put an apartment block on it, and the money will just roll in almost automatically. Whatever the reason for not succeeding, it is inside the person (or a lack of finances), but it is not a shortage of knowledge from the start. Knowledge is gained as and when it is needed. There is nothing lucky about creating a successful business in SL. If it's an exception, then it's because of the person (or finances).

Reason apartments don't work in SL is because sound and text chat goes through walls so you'll hear everything that goes on in next apartment or one above unless it's in IM
Also land ownership is by 2D foot print till we get 3D land ownership anyway

Here's an example: Person X buys an entire sim. Person X spends a huge amount of time and effort making the sim look neat, and have a decent atmosphere. Person X then decides to go into the rental market, and rent out spaces on his sim. Person X has no idea how to assign/appropriate prims to his tenants, and ends up short-primming his tenants. Tenants are angry. Tenants leave. Person X can no longer pay for sim. Person X goes out of business and is out big bucks.

It's not all about getting the right place/time/build. It's about research. Research the market, research the prices, research the builds. Most importantly, research HOW TO MAKE YOUR RENTERS HAPPY. Like Cristalle said, if you can't tell your renters how to set their music URLs, their object group settings, or their land settings, you need to study up. Be a renter before you become a landlord.

How many of us, in RL, bought our first houses the first 2 weeks that we got a checking account? Same thing. Learn how to manage your own money before worrying about someone else's....

You could stagger skyboxes in adjacent parcels far away from each other (i.e. >20m) so that there is no interference. Thus apartment rental would be possible, even if it does not resemble the way we would do it in RL.

Well this has definitely been my experience. I didn't find a "Landlord book of how to do this" lying around, people came to me with questions and I found the answers. Deeding objects to a group for them to work springs to mind. Sure it's in the instructions of any decent device but plenty of people aren't sure how to do it.

well about rushing ahead since you jsut started..I dont agree with that! Ive been playing for 6 days and Already own a 4602 plot land (or close to that size) Buitl a house from scratch and have already learned how to make scripts with sounds and on screen messages...If you can learn fast why not jsut go for it!
I was thinking about putting a 4 story aprt complex that i saw for sale at a house lot but decided it WOULD be too much hassle..do teneants have edit rights? do you have to move thier furniture around for them? seems a hassle as some people said, but if your up to it GO FOR IT! enjoy the game I say

I agree with everyone who's advised the OP to wait a bit before jumping in.

But I also have to applaud Sling's excellent suggestions on how to train yourself to rent out property. That's ingenious...buy a bit of land, set up a house and a rental system, and rent to yourself, as an alt, for a few weeks or months. It gives you practice with the whole rental business in miniature, from both sides.

Also, while the OP is learning, I advise running around the grid and looking at some other rental operations. You'll find everything from people renting out a single plot of unimproved land, to folks with whole multi-sim themed communities. Decide where you fit in this spectrum, and how much money and time you care to invest.