Land Prices?

Where's that one person who gets mad and rails about people in SL calling themselves Realtors because it's a registered name for a profession with strict standards in RL?

Seems to me that the only value the SL realtors add to the community is that they're willing to hold and pay tier on the land until someone comes along who wants to buy the land for personal or business use. I guess that's worth a small markup, but not a whole lot.

I bought a small parcel yesterday that the flipper had owned maybe a few hours and marked up slightly - I would have bought it from the original owner for the lower price but I was asleep, which gave this person a chance to come along and throw a particle spewer on it and mark it up. That certainly didn't add any value for me. However, that person bought it not knowing that I wanted that parcel - they could have ended up stuck with it for months.

Back in the day before bots ruled the grid, my original main account was a small time land dealer. When possible, I tried to find premium parcels that were underpriced and advertised them accordingly to people who wouldn't have known they were there because the original land description was so crappy. It was a lot of work, and not really worth the effort generally financially speaking. I'd give away free boxes of houses and trees and stuff, and do a little terrain editing and put in some trees when necessary to make the lot look more appealing. It generally got bought not by end users, but by other land dealers, so I stopped trying to "add value" to the land. I gave it up when the bots took over.

It still seems that most of the land in SL just gets passed around between the various land dealers. There's a lot I know of that's changed hands 5 or 6 times in as many months - when it doesn't sell, the dealer drops the price and another one buys it, marks it up, and repeats the process. The person holding it now actually owned it a few months ago - I wonder if they realize it.

That 'profit' argument really isn't valid for end-users of land.
A rising market only benefits those who are buying in order to sell at a profit.

People selling their land in order to buy much the same area of land at the same general market price don't have to care about market trends. Their focus is not on buying and selling land.

Garbage. Just because you've got the little green devil in your eyes sometimes doesn't mean that anyone who doesn't see it that way is jealous. I am sure that many others are impressed by those who can make a living here, without the concomitant cost to the community. I certainly am. Everyone who is successful here does it with their mind. Some of us have greater skills than others, and I don't mean in just design or building. Good for them! It's easy to say "you're just jealous" when people keep telling you that what you do comes at a cost to the rest of us. It's not a complete positive, and it never will be so long as what you do has the collateral damage to those just looking for a small piece of land to call their own.

Can we please just call this what it is? Land speculation.

Speculation adds no value, drives up prices and distorts the actual market price of the commodity. Speculation is what has driven every bubble market in history, including the one that is in the process of decimating the US economy.

Please don't use the word "decimating". I'm trying to be optimistic that my Enron shares are going to turn around.

While you're being an optimist, make sure any deposits you are holding at the bank are within the limits covered by the FDIC. It is expected that 100-200 banks will fail in the next 12 - 24 months. The FDIC is bringing back in retirees who were around during the S&L crisis of the late 80's/early 90's in preparation. Bank of America has been quietly asking Congress for a 739 BILLION dollar bailout.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/02/27/bank.safety/index.html

I thought you were supposed to use those to start fires in the fireplace with.

Raymond mate, swap them for some Worldcom, its called averaging down.



I do not really envy what you do Joy. You are a market maker, how can I envy that when it’s fairly easy to emulate your SL role given a few thousand real dollars input, of which for me is not an issue if profitable, plus maintaining good market data

Now as to adding value, I would suggest the likes of Desmond Chang of Caledon, Anshe Chung, Azure Islands, and other big private estates add far more value to SL than land flipping. Those folk I respect because it takes more than money alone to achieve what they have done

Holy crap. Good thing I tiered down...

He who Panics early, Panics best

Thanks for that, missed that one today.

If this was real life I would buy you a drink for that, but being SL if you pop in world I have dropped you $L1000 lindens for that post and link.

Enjoy,

Regards John

John, that was totally not necessary.

I'll share another one with you...

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Hi Isablan !
Your right about Bank of America asking for money. They need it because after they devalued Countrywide's stock and bought them.. their auditing of Countrywide found that they were so heavy in "Sub-Prime" mortgages that it was like a harpooned whale sinking to the bottom.
I think it was 60 Minutes that showed people losing their houses to the ARM financing.. The people had no problem stating on camera that they were just gonna walk away and let their house foreclose. Even though they weren't behind on payments. That's the Fast Food Generation we live now!

Yes, I just don't get it. Whatever happened to people having respect for themselves and paying their bills. They want everything right now without having to work for it. Charge, charge, charge. If I can't pay for it, I will just file bankruptcy or let it go back. Let someone else pay for it, because that is exactly what they are doing when they just sluff it off. Then they wonder why in the hell the economy is in the mess it is in now. (my opinion only)

Part of your answer lies in fact that people have been watching corporations do exactly this for years with no repercussions and golden parachutes for the executives. There have been some really great threads discussing exactly this subject of "moral hazard" vs "just a business decision" at the link I posted above. What it comes down to was that people were willing to pay those outrageous mortgages as long as the house was going up in value and they had a chance to refinance or flip it for profit in the future. With prices falling at an alarming rate, they have no equity and no chance of sale or refinance.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/02/moral-obligations-of-walking-away.html
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/02/businesses-advised-to-walk-away.html

An over abundance of cheap easy credit nearly always causes asset bubbles, that follow on to sharp falls, great misery, and social discord.

And as far as the banks are concerned, I am seriously wondering if Linden Labs had a better insight than the UK Government and Northern Rock (A large UK mortgage bank now bankrupt and nationised)

It has created a perception that banks cannot fail - hence will reward bad lending business, bad credit, and massive state intervention, which must lead to higher taxation

Might have been better to do a "Ginko" Let is fail, no compensation except for what the legal deposit system obliges them to do, and ultimately let the markets decide. Good lending would get its own reward and so might the economy

I prefer LAND INVESTING. Speculation has a negative connotation, particularly in that the person doing the speculating has no skill at it, and has done no research and is just diving in blind. Most realtors I know have been at this for over a year (in SL that's no small achievement to be running the same business for a year) and have good instincts based on experience.

Speculation is what the noob who heard about the money to be made in SL real estate, and figured, all it takes is to buy a pretty piece of land. Speculation is more the domain of amateurs following the heard.

As for SL land market speculation, it's virtually impossible now that LL has taken an active role in controling the land market, yet REALTORS still make money. They've been through multiple cycles of speculation and bubble bursts and they hang in there, learn something from each, and improve their business.

yep, but I would still pay my bills. That is jus the way that I am.

Where's this 'damage' you speak of? If a higher price is 'damage', then I've been seriously damaged by the New York Transit Authority over my lifetime, as when I was little, a subway ride was $.75, and now it's $2.00 and rising. The price of a RL home, or even a gallon of milk at the grocery store, forget about it! None of these products and services has had it's quality increase or decrease substantially, but the price has risen over my 33 years of life. By going through a realtor, land doesn't loose its value. Its unusally of no better or worse quality after a realtor sells it, than before the realtor bought it. Seems the only one who is damaged by rising land prices are those who can't afford the higher price. And if they can't all they have to do is wait a while and the market will fall back down to where they can afford it.

As for the jealousy arguement, I didn't say everyone is jealous, only a handful of you that seem to delight in trying to flaut my good mood and my pride in my work, because things aren't working out as nicely for you in your SL as they are for me. If they were, you wouldn't feel the need to insult me and my profession. I defend myself because I wouldn't be doing what I do if I believed it to be wrong or harmful to others. I love SL! I get alot of pleasure from being in SL. Why would I try to harm something that has given me so much fun? I work here to make money, but why not? I haven't taken any vows of poverty. I make money here and spend about 80% of it here (mostly in buying more land to sell, or in purchasing higher value land and renting it out to pay tier, whist holding it for investment purposes). If you're not as contented with your SL I'm sorry. If you want to make more money in SL and find you are struggling, I'm sorry. But don't try to make it my fault, when it's not.

We are talking past each other because we clearly have different values on the subject. You're not going to 'get it' because you're invested.

As for the jealousy thing - hardly. But you won't get that either.

Alright, agree to disagree. You're never going to get my arguement because your mind is too set in its beliefs, it refuses to consider another person's opinion. You have a right to be close minded.

See, I can post passive agressively too.

Just for the record Joy, I am passive about what you do in SL. I regard you as a market maker and it is not logical to have emotion on that issue. If your prices match the market and if your margins cover your costs and deliver a profit, fine. If they don't you will either spend a fortune on your SL hobby or go out of business. Either way your economic presence within SL is not negative because the market will dictate if your business thrives or not.

As it happens I think I broadly agree with your first life views on borrowed money if I am reading your posts correctly. As I said before bad lending practices cause hardship and misery, and social discord.

Finally (and if I wanted to) I do know how to make money within SL. The only thing that stops me is the time commitments vis-à-vis the initial rewards.

seems this topic has de-railed to the ethics track


i think if you in real life see property that has a lower value then your imagination, and you have the guts & money to buy, you would, and sl is no different in this respect.


back to the facts:

feb 5.1million added, total land for sale increased by only 1.5million
land prices did not change, seems to me sl is growing beyond Alt's

Ditto.

Argh, LL's little billing vendor problem kept me out of the forums for a whole day, and now the thread has two whole extra pages? That I don't have time to catch up on before work. *sigh*


Well, yeah, that's the thing -- they're spoils, not earnings. It's the prize they get for playing a game and being good at it, and that's cool -- as long as the prize isn't at other people's expense.


Would have sucked to be me *g*. But the other end user wouldn't have been taking anything from me, wouldn't have been transacting with me, and so I wouldn't have expected anything from them. Also, although it's not impossible, it is extremely unlikely another end user would have bought this particular parcel in the 16 hours between the time he released it and the time I bought it.

In this particular instance, the markup was relatively small and, as I said originally, I still got a good price on it in the end. So yes, they sold it to me for what the market could bear. But far too often the new price is higher than the market will bear and the land sits unsold -- that's when it becomes a problem. I was just lucky that the realtor in this case was reasonable and not using the sort of markup I've seen far too often on other lots.


Precisely. It's _their_ content the realtors are reselling.