Land Prices?

Unrealtors!

This post replies to both Rhianna and Cristalle's prior comments. I haven't been sleeping well recently and couldn't post for most of the day, as I was finally able to get some uninterupted sleep. Now I'm refreshed!

Anyhow, while I certainly agree that most people who come to SL have first life jobs, some come with the intent of making SL their first life job.

However, your insistance that those that do better, that those that make real money at this are 'top notch content creators' is questionable. Indeed, some top notch content creators do make a living at this, but many are merely average, or below average, content creators with luck or better PR instincts. Other SL money makers are well-heeled enough to begin with, as to jump into SL with enough money to purchase several private islands, in order to rent out, or hire adequate content creators already here or outside SL.
SL Mainland Realty, including the part of that profession which you call 'land flipping', is no more or less worthy of profit and success. One does not need to spend hours and hours on content creation to contribute or be deserving of success.

Your assumptions that SL Realtors tend to overinflate prices is ridiculous. What you mean is they are inflated to the point where YOU can not afford them, or are unwilling to pay for them at that level. If they were truly overinflated, they would sit so long on the market, and drain so much tier, that the prices would have to come down eventually. If certain lots prices are extremely high and are being sold by a professional realtor, then those lots are not on the market to be sold at the moment. Placing them on the market is merely a ploy to turn the land search into an advertisement for the business currently on the land, or a means of holding land while still showing it off for future sale, like an informal open house of sorts. Occassionally, people who did absolutely no reasearch into the land market buy them anyway, but you can't blame the realtor for someone elses bad decision. Only amateurs price land exceedingly high above it's value because they don't know what it's really worth, or they made a mistake when purchasing the land, overpaid, and now need to recoup their losses and the tier they must run through in order to recoup their losses.

SL Realtors are investors/service providers, and that may make them less sympathetic to those who don't succeed as well as they do, but that doesn't mean they don't contribute. I know in my heart I do. I know many of my friends who are mostly realtors do. They start sideline businesses (I'm currently starting 2, myself), they buy clothes and skins and houses, pay landscapers to decorate their homes, pay scripters to assist them in creating businesses they can't create without technical expertise, etc. Some realtors are in it for the money alone, but most of my aquaintance are not, and work hard for the SL community, as well as our own pocketbooks.

Finally, Rhianna's statement that her not being able to enter the market was her own fault or LL's for not putting out a Mac client in time is, IMHO, only partially true. Before bots, you only needed to start with a single piece of undervalued land, then reinvest and reinvest, etc. That is how I did, I got a 512 at 3k from someone who got the 512 as first land and then decided builing a home was too hard, and she was gonna downgrade as soon as possible. I sold it for L$3,250. Now a days, there are no undervalued lots available for sale. Bots get them all. That is how a bot works; it finds undervalued land and buys it, then reprices it before a human has any chance. Not only could realtors, new to the market and experienced, compete on an even playing field for land, but a person who had done their homework and decided on what they wanted, could try their luck as well, so an end user could come in, buy their land cheaply, and start using it for their new home or business. This does not mean that experience didn't give advantage, but I started my own work, competing against more experienced realtors, and I made mistakes that cost me a few hundred L$, when a few hundred L$ was a lot to me. In short, getting into the market wasn't falling-off-a-log easy, but it didn't take more than the money to get a single 512 sq. m. parcel, a few weeks of observation and questioning people who were already trading successfully, and a dose of patience to get the land you needed. Bots altered that, making entry into the market much more expensive and risky. This is not to say Rhianna had no choices in the matter, but if the number of younger realtors who existed pre-bot are any indication, she would have had far better odds of success in making an SL Realty career before bots, than after. That is what I meant by making it difficult to enter the market, but she was correct in that she had a choice to enter it at all or not.

I'm not going to get into a tit-for-tat but Rihanna showed a classic case where an end user had their purchase price jacked up by some "realtor" who added zero value to the land. That is all that middlemen do. You can Clintonize that all you like, but the end result is the same. No, it will not price everyone out of the market, naturally, because people's patience and pain thresholds are different. But between the auction winner and the end user, the only way the price has gone is UP, with no corresponding increase in actual value, and that has deprived many a person of the opportunity to own and be productive with land because their pain thresholds were lower than the flippers may desire, prompting Linden Lab to drop the "Sword of Damocles" and crash the market. This is especially true when the main demand is among resellers trying not to get caught with the bag when the crash comes.

You reap what you sow.

I feel for Rhianna, but how long did she expect Holy to hang on to the land and incur tier on a plot that was frozen by her timing needs? Sometimes you pay a price for not being able to act quickly. Realtor C provided a service to Holy that Rhianna could not: He bought the land when it was needing to be sold.

Realtor C took the time and gambled his own money to get this bargain. Seems fair that he reap some profit for his legwork and quick action.

Oh, Cristalle, I never Clintonize. Just because you don't question things that seem complex on first glance, or try to look at many points of view, please don't assume I'm the same way.

Also, I never said realtors added value to the LAND, only the SL COMMUNITY, through their use of the Lindens they make and the fact that they create economic and social diversity in a virtual world which doesn't inherently lend itself to such diversity, or least doesn't lend itself to becoming successful in it.

SL's economy isn't completely disconnected from RL economic reality. There is definite elasticity. Price and quality still determine whether or not a parcel of land will have a buyer at any given rate. Yes, some people have more money and as you put it higher 'pain thresholds'. However, there are many things we don't buy in RL and SL that we could technically afford, but our pain threshold is too low. That is not the realtors fault. I have a terribly low pain threshold in SL and rarely take risks. I knowingly loose money by not taking risks which seem strongly in my favor, but are not near guarantees. I know this and accept this and do not whine about it or try to blame other realtors who do take these risks and get the rewards from them. I'm not saying I don't get jealous of them from time to time, I do, but I don't go around blaming them for the courage they have that I lack, when it comes to taking risks.

Also, I've stated before, again and again, I don't think LL should play price protector with the land market, either to help or hinder Mainland Realtors. They need to make firm policy and practices, and stick with them, letting the market do as it will. However, since they do absolutely and inherently control a part of the market, that is the creation of new land, they do have a duty to give fair warning about what the policies and practices are and when they are altered. Ideally they should pump out land at a consistant rate, determined by SL's population metrics from previous quarters and the affects of LL's plans for the future (not an exact science, but almost certainly enough to make a reasonable estimate), and which would only be altered once per quarter, with fair notice given when these alterations are made. It's a given LL wants to keep markets stable, but micromanaging isn't the answer.

As for established SL Realtors pulling out, or cutting back on new land purchases, when we percieve the market is soon to take a downtuirn, ofcourse we do. Anyone who does a job long enough gets instincts on certain aspects of their profession. They see patterns where amateurs and newcomers don't. That's only reasonable. Why should realtors hold land when they believe it's value is going down. It's not like they have special insider information to give unfair advantage. All they have is a hunch and experience. Same as RL investment is supposed to be.

If realtors are not cashing out their profits and are using the profits instead to fund great builds that are open to all, then they could be said to be helping to "create economic and social diversity".
If they are *continually* using the profits to buy products from creators, then ditto.

If they are cashing out, then they are taking from SL.
I've got no arguments with those who might make some RL cash from SL. Don't get me wrong.

However, there are various ways of earning in SL.
The best ways in my view are those creative ways that follow the line "Your World, Your Imagination".
Land flipping is far from imaginative/creative behaviour.
The outcome of systematic land flipping is increased costs for others.
As such it creates a braking effect on creativity. The higher the cost of land, the less likely it is that someone will take the plunge, buy a piece and start to play with building or rezzing products they would buy from creators.

Land in SL is an enabler for creativity.
It really should not be viewed as an end in itself. Land-flipper vision ends at the sale point.

What have you people done to my thread???

I'd tell you, but I can't spell Pownd(?) P0wnd (?)

We've increased its value and have relisted it at L$12.5 per square meter.

/me buys the thread at that bargain price and relists it at L$15/m


Edit:
I did it not to line my own pockets but to generate economic and social diversity

/me buys the thread next to yours, chops it up into little posts, rezzes quotes from poorly written porn films and prices them at $L999 each.

/me creates a forum bot.
It hangs near your thread, and waits for a Resmod to lock your thread and relist your posts at L$1/m

/me is pwned.

Actually, I didn't expect him to hold it at all and was surprised when he did, grateful of course but surprised. The fact that he did and was willing to take the risk involved is why I'll class him as a good realtor and not just a landflipper. And I don't bear him any ill will at all for releasing the land when he did.

Thing is, Realtor C may have provided a service to Holy, but sie wasn't providing any service to me, and I'm the one who paid the markup. If I'm the one paying, I should be the one getting the value. Why should sie be getting profit simply for being quick? Quick at what? I type quickly, but that isn't going to reap me any profit unless I'm typing something that has value to other people (and if I'm typing something that I didn't create myself, I'm going to get no credit and very little money for it).


Then they shouldn't have any hesitation to put in the RL hours required -- and not the 40 hours of a stable job, but the 80+ hours a week, sweat, uncertainty, and financial risk that comes with starting your own business. If they're not willing to do that, then they shouldn't expect to be making RL money. But your arguments seem to boil down to "landflippers shouldn't have to add value to the land sale because doing so takes time and effort". Yes, if I'm paying you a markup, I expect you to have put in time and effort to earn it.


I don't think anyone here is denigrating mainland realtors in general, only the "land flippers". Cristalle and I have both given examples of how realtors can contribute to the land sale in a way that's beneficial for everyone. However, you still haven't shown any way that land flippers (who by definition mark up the land without providing any service to the buyer to justify the markup) benefit their customers or the land market as a whole. Yes, if they spend the lindens in-world instead of cashing them out, they're contributing to the economy that way, but you also haven't shown why that should outweigh the damage they do other ways. The amount of a markup spent shopping is worth the same to the greater community regardless of whether it's spent by a landflipper or by the land buyer who picked a parcel that wasn't marked up.


What service are land flippers providing? The lack of service is what makes them less sympathetic, not anyone's sour grapes. And earlier you were saying they couldn't be expected to provide service or content because they already had to spend too much time and effort for too little profit margin. Which is it? They can be successful enough to generate envy or they can be poor working drudges barely scraping by, but not both. And if they have time to start a sideline business, they have time to do something for the land market other than just flipping it. If they choose to do something non-land-related with their time, they have the chance to earn my respect with that endeavor. And then they'll lose it when I find out they're also a land flipper.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned commodities trading. Land flippers are, ultimately, commodities traders and not realtors. However, commodities traders in the RL world don't directly control the price of my bacon or bread the way land flippers do, and few people are going to have to put their dreams on hold because they can't afford a gold bar.

I doubt this discussion is going to resolve into anything productive, so I was going to let it fade -- but now the thread flippers have made it interesting again! It's your fault now, guys!

They were quick to act and quick to get to the parcel and buy it before anyone else did. To the victor goes the spoils.

I understand they can be seen as being a poacher, but they bought the land on the open market and sold it to you for what the market would bear. Would it have been better if they were not in the equation? Perhaps not. What if an end user bought the land, leaving you with nothing?

I guess the only service they provided for you was offering it back for sale. They could have kept the land or divided it and sold it to several people and then you would have been out of luck. Sorry the timing was such that you could not buy the land sooner at a better price from Holy but I'm glad you got it in the end.

And now the reality sets in, that who you are also paying your money to is LL every month. But at least they add value with their servers and Linden terraforming and trees.

Spare me the condescension, Joy. It's not rocket science. I am not discussing the ins and outs of this particular business, and could easily pick it up if I wanted to. In fact, I'd go one better and be the auction WINNER instead. But I'm not discussing that with you.

Yes, but you continually discount the negative effect that this particular line of business has on the community. The fact that it makes a higher barrier for entry for other businesses to own land and be productive is something you continually fail to address. Your romantic view of land flipping is there only because you're doing it. If you stood in Rihanna's shoes, or the scads of others who felt that land prices are too high in general, your perspective would be different. It is not a complete positive. At best, it is a wash. It is not as if one or two people feel that the prices are too high. If the prices were more reasonable to a greater amount of people, we would see a lot less yellow on the map and a lot less shrinking of the mainland due to abandonment.

It's not a matter of jealousy. I don't envy people's profits. Good on those who can make it, but if it comes at a significant cost to the community, I am concerned. I am not jealous of anyone who can create something of value to the community and profit from it.

LL plays price protector because quite candidly, they are a business, and they want more people holding smaller tier instead of a few realtors holding tier. They make more money that way. End of story. It's not about helping or hindering anyone except themselves, and when they find that the conditions are not right for doing that, then I would expect a crash.

The inflationary forces of flippers providing the "service" of relieving each other of tier are precisely why LL periodically crashes the market. Because there is a finite number of people doing this and they can't afford to carry it all, LL will break your backs to get the prices to what they believe is attainable for the masses. And that is generally a good thing, although it hurts us in other ways.

A year ago this time, LL was about to release the unnamed eastern continent. Land prices were sitting well above where they are now. Much land had been sold back and forth between recognizable realtors, to the point where a flat green nondescript 512 was 15L/m2. We're not far off from those times, but the bots scared a lot of people out of the business. But for the bots, we would see prices even higher than they are now because of the proliferation of speculative resellers.

I would agree that I would prefer to have fair warning, but making a big ado about the existence of 80 visible sims isn't necessarily a sign that they are going to crash the market again. I mean, they held off on new auctions for four months. It doesn't mean that they didn't have plans or are not estimating the right rate of release like you said.

If LL really cared about the high barrier of entry, they could also lower the price of monthly tier. Personally that's a bigger barrier than the upfront cost of the land.

The fact that not everybody can afford to buy land in SL is just the way it is. If there were no flippers, many people would still see prices and tier as being too high for virtual land in an unstable game. I don't see what villifying flippers does to change that fact.

A lot of people would like to afford to own RL real estate, but the prices dictated by the market mean not everybody can.

Land bots killed the margins for land flipping. Anyone who does it now without a bot has to put a ton of hours into it and be really smart about what they hold, how they price it and how they juggle tier. I don't envy those trying to do it these days. But I don't condemn them either.

Generally this is the case, but not when you're talking about holding $5 or 8 worth of tier. For most people in SL, that is chump change. And this is who LL makes the most money off of per m2. It often doesn't set in that tier is the larger barrier until you're holding a significant amount of land and buying a small amount means that you're doubling your tier by a significant amount.

No, it doesn't, but it lets off some steam. In my mind, those that add zero value to the land purchase are not far removed from ad farmers. Add some value, and I'd be appeased.

I see a huge difference between flippers and ad farmers: Flippers don't spoil the view for everyone on the sim.

And that's my last word in defense of land brokers.

Trying to keep this post a little on track. You're right, Love, the land search tool is lacking. I find it's much better to use the map and tp to the areas that appear for sale. Land prices are funny things lately. My husband and I decided that between us we wanted a 1/4 sim, and we would each take 8192 of that for our stores.

I owned a 4608 plot in Trasimeno and a 1024 in Assiettes. Neither was a bad area, in fact Trasimeno was really nice. Our land was the first land to go up for sale in that sim in quite a while, actually. I searched around for pricing to see what comparable plots in other sims were going for, and ended up setting my pricing to about 11.5/M, after cutting my 4608 up into 1024's and one 512. Other than a couple of deals I made with neighbors who wanted the prims, I had no problem getting the asking price and the land all sold in about 12 hours.

Let me add, I paid about half that for the land about 9 months ago. I liked the area, never had a problem there, simply needed more land and nothing on the sim was going up for sale.

I now have an 8192 plot on one of the new sims as does my husband, which was purchased at a little over L9/M. Effectively, I increased my land holdings by 2560 sm and only spent L$8000 out of pocket to do that.

While we were looking for land, the thing that amazed me the most was the huge difference in pricing. Most of the new sims seem to be largely granite, thank goodness we found some with grass because I detest granite, but one 16384 in one sim was green and going for a little under L$160,000. In the next sim over a completely granite 16384 parcel was going for L$240,000. A huge difference for somethig which, in my eyes, was far less desirable due to the land texture. I just couldn't believe some of the extreme differences in pricing.

Well I have 7500ish that's going to be sold very very soon ...

Shortly followed by a full 8096 worth ...

ROFL!

You're obviously not an SL Realtor. I find my work very imaginative.

Also, as I've said before the more directly creative occupations in SL require a limited skill set. In RL you don't need animations to dance. You don't need careful mouse finger to design clothing. SL is designed so that all the content creation jobs require extensive computer and visual skills. There are very few professions in SL for the moderately technically skilled. Then there is the land market and the currency traders, and all of a sudden, people who don't understand scripting or get nausiated futzing with the camera controls (I literally get headaches from the camera movement on screen, when I do alot of it), when trying to build, etc, have professions to go into. They get to work, really work, and make money comperable to the technically gifted among us.

As for how people 'should' view things, I think they should view things as I do. There is no right or wrong in viewpoint to this. Yes, SL realtors do drive prices up over time, but then LL puts out new land and prices fall. Wash. Rince. Repeat.

Your assumption of where an SL REALTOR's vision begins or ends is not based on experience. I have visions for alot of land. To me, land is a great canvas, which is why I don't landscape, even with a few trees. I cut it up inot lots of 512 sq. meters or multiples there of, flatten each lot as best I can, make it look clear and ready for building, then set it for sale. I have vision, just not the same vision you have. I know most of my realtor friends have vision here too, homes and such, and spend lots of money on their own SL lifestyles. One botrunner I know doesn't care about SL, and it's sad, but another has a nice home, and a second business.

Dont paint all SL Mainland Realtors the same. We're not. I'd say most care and try to build LL's community. SL, as a whole, would be alot poorer without it's Realtors.

Pardon me for being blunt but you are not adding any value to Second Life by the above procedures. All you are really doing is land bundling and resale. Unless in the plots you buy you also take out the odd 16 square meters of ad farms and other ugly builds designed to force folk to buy by unbelievable pricing.

Don't get me wrong; I totally understand there is little if no scope for added value on blank mainland UNLESS you are able to gain a concession from Linden Labs on mainland land texture and height re landscaping. Of which I have never heard of.

In fact there is little or no resale market within Second Life for mainland builds in themselves, that is based on the observable fact that the majority of all land for sale does not include content, and in most cases the first actions of any new land owner is to clear the plot of prims before building.

The only time I ever heard a build being sold for worthwhile first life cash (EBay) failed on copy write issues. As I understand it the builder used standard off the shelf textures (full permission), BUT as many of us know Second Life texture stores sell you the right to use the textures within Second Life, NOT to take the textures outside SL or sell the textures on as textures.

Be honest with yourself. By your own admission, you are a second line land baron

I am honest with myself. I and the Realtors I know DO add value to the community, maybe not to the land itself, but to the SL community by creating jobs that pay well and allow us to live our SL dreams without having to be rich outside SL or have extensive computer skills.

Grant it, I'm no Asche Chung, but I do pretty well by my own standards and I'm proud of what I do, and feel I contribute to the SL community. I'll admit I'm a smaller land barron, but not second line. That implies I don't know what I'm doing or that I'm not very good at what I do. I am. I just see my work as a SL, part time career, not a full time job. I could do more, I choose not to. I'm contented being smaller than most. Less risk.

Be honest with YOURself. You envy those of us who make a steady income in SL. The general public doesn't and will never approve of people who make money with their minds, rather than the sweat of their brow. It's as old as the ancient Greeks disliking the moneylenders who assumed much of the financial risks for merchant ventures but also turned a profit from Athenian trade. Realtors take risk in holding tier, we put the land up for sale, in my case, we try to show it at its best terraform, but most importantly we invest and disinvest based on market predictions. We use our minds to do what we do in short timeframes, not spending hours and hours of photoshopping, typing code, or twisting prims. These are ALL legitimate forms of SL work. No one profession is more deserving than another. All contribute to the SL Social and Financial tapestry equally.

And before you go poo pooing SL land prices, think of it from the back end of your transaction, as expensive as it might be to BUY the Mainland you want or need for your business, if someday you decide to SELL, Realtors pushing up prices will be good for you. While the market may be expensive to some, if they go through with a mainland purchase, their property values will eveually rebound, even if they fall temporarily, and will sometimes turn them a profit on resell. How did those people who used the land 'add value to the land' if they sell it off unlandscaped when they're done with it? Nobody who is selling land complains when the market is at 5.9 and the realtors start buying and pushing prices up, its only when our work doesn't benefit YOU, that you condemn us.