How high will it go?

Those two sims were exceptions...having the most coveted type of terra and protected water. Most sims will sell for under US$3000.

I'm trying to figure out what this has to do with greed. People are plopping down a lot of money and high monthly tier to own these virtual properties. If they choose to keep the sim, then it's not greed. And there will not be much profit if they choose to divide and resell. When I think of greed, I think of the actions of ad cutters or folks that sell plots with extortion donuts in the middle.

Buying a sim for a high price is not greed, IMO. It's just a very risky investment. Every day the competition gets a little further along with their metaverses, the riskier it gets.

Ricardo, the source is the one I provided in my original post. This is my second character (the first one is no longer active) and yes, I have bought Lindens and my experiences line up with the numbers I see on the chart I gave a reference to.

So I'm not sure where you have been buying your Lindens, but for me (and others I have spoken to) the exchange rate has been pretty flat for about the past year and a half - not sure quite where it started to get stable, based on that graph, but LL started talking much more control of the rate, since before then it had spiked really badly.

its also funny, that since the last sim releases, the total number of land for sale has only grown, still land prices rised from L$6 to 8 , now they are releasing another bunch of sims, and the base land price has rissen from 8.1 to 8.7 in the last weeks ?

even without new sims, the price should have dropped or kept stable, still wonder how long the mayor bot operating landbrokers, who buy land just to keep the base price, can trade at profit, i also wonder how much land is sold between them ?
i think another factor is a large number of new land-traders joined the market, they most likely have bought at the top of the market price, and will face a loss on the next price drop.

* i wouldnt buy any large properties atm, i think LL has only just begun releasing new sims, and i wouldnt be suprised if they didnt stop before it hits L$6 again ?, imo ?

The last time they sold new sims, they were selling around 10 a day for a while. It caused a large drop in the general price of land, and prices haven't yet got back to where they were before those sales. This time, they are selling only 2 a day, so not much cheap land is being created, and I don't see it having much of an effect on overall prices, unless they keep on and on and on selling them, but I don't think that's likely.

There is a lot of land for sale... a LOT... and sadly, most of it is awful or in an unappealing environment. I believe that LL will keep auctioning sims as long as they get their minimum per auction (whatever that magic dollar value is).

The reality is that to LL it doesn't matter how much land is for sale because they make their money on tier. As far as LL is concerned, any land not owned by LL is money for them.

Again... it's a business. At least that's my take on it, although I could be wrong.

Greed? I see this as someone making a calculated risk on getting a ROI. That's not greed that's entrepreneurialism. From my fading memory I recall sim's selling for more than that several months ago and being re-sold with NP. I used to go out and buy half-sim's from several 'bulk-buyers' then re-sell them. Is that greed? I think not. Fun yes, Stupid yes, but not greed.

Starnbrough sim.
Someone buys the SW corner of 4352 metres for L$98500 - L$22.6/m
I'm not sure what the auction price was.
It's immediately flipped and on sale for L$128500 - L$29.5/m

Perhaps the markup of over US$110 on an investment of about US$375 reflects an expectation of having to pay tier on an unsold plot for a long time.
Maybe it's just opportunism.

I can't see that there is any good for SL in general in this sort of flipping.

Sim buyers and those who habitually buy in bulk from them serve a purpose as LL will not cut and sell sims.
The small-time flippers are a curse however. These are the ones who put upward pressure on prices to end-users.

I don't understand why you focus your frustration at land prices solely on those that buy and resell land. I don't see the problem with people who buy land and set it for sale at a higher price--even a much higher price. It is their property(or license, or service--whatever LL is calling it these days) and they are the ones paying tier on it.

LL is really the entity that has complete control over what land prices are--you should direct your ire at them really. Land prices are almost *completely* artificial and everyone is playing the game. Tomorrow they could release 100 waterfront sims devastating the land "market". I believe that is exactly what they will do someday.

Landbot operators can operate at a profit forever because they get to any cheap parcels set below market value and buy them faster than a human. The trick for bot operators is deciding what price will trigger their bot to purchase land. As long as it's below market and people are selling land, they will profit. It's the human land brokers who buy manually and have to get the sloppy seconds at the market rate who have to worry and work their asses off to make a profit.

BTW, bot operators don't buy land to keep the base price at a certain level. They can set their parcels for sale at whatever they want. The market itself still dictates the base price.

IMO, prices won't get back to L$6 a meter. If there is a correction over the next month, it will be a gradual one down to L$7.5.

I think the next land crash will occur when some stiff competition causes a decent sized exodus of tier paying residents. Hopefully LL has learned their lesson about flooding the market with too many sims.

Let's be clear. I wasn't taking a swipe at the big guns who business is sims and big chunks of sims. Most of them take a small margin on a high volume. They exist mainly because LL won't cut and sell sims. They are an essential part of the process of breaking sims down into plots for end-users.

It's the relatively small-time flippers that I have a distaste for.
Flippers - buy to sell immediately.
Their only function is to increase prices. There is a problem for others in that.

It's not illegal. It just sucks big time. They contribute nothing to SL. They just take.


LL could release a bunch of waterfront. The last bit of Corsica will have a lot of that - and they could do some last minute changes to the terrain in order to increase it.
Whatever they do, and however the market goes, we'll have land-flipping dung beetles crawling all over it doing nothing except making it more expensive for others.

Both sims have been claimed by the winners. I actually talked to the owner of Permutate. He was very nice, and it sounds like he simply bought it for personal use. The winner of Exomorogun has no Picks or Classifieds, but based on the new land description, it sounds like he might be doing a culturally-themed build. Whether he's going to use it for rentals or not is unclear.

I am really confused by the underlying implication. I have never understood why it should be in LL's interest to maintain a minimum base mainland price. What do they lose when it falls, given that the profit from tier must far exceed that from new sim sales? Why would they not profit from a lower price increasing purchases and increasing tier (especially from lucrative smallholders). Is it just to placate existing landowners who don't want to lose perceived value? Or just to keep the land dealers happy? Or ...............? I think I need a course in economics.

Flooding the market does generally decrease the price for buyers, but it makes existing landholders nervous AND reduces their bottom line intake per sim. There is a natural balance, around 9-10L/m2, that will not frighten people that their land has lost value, and is not too intimidating to the average buyer.

Right. If it benefitted LL to keep prices way down, they would have continued the flood. Instead they did not release a single full sim for over four months.

Greedy bastards!

ok, let me see... I think that landbots most definitely affect land prices.

Let's say that landbots are set to buy anything at 7.5 - anything for sale at that or below will be sold instantly - us mere mortals won't be able to find any. In order for me to buy land, I am going to have to pay more than 7.5 for it. Otherwise I can't buy. I look at the available land and see nothing for sale below 7.5, so assume that is the price of land.

Now they crank up the bots to 8.5. All land being sold below that price disappears and, if I look at the sales available, I see that the lowest price is 8.5

Then they turn it up to 11 - and so on. Any land that LL make available below that price will get swooped up by the bots as soon as it is on the market, and the minimum "going price" for land will be whatever the bots are currently set at.

Can someone point out the flaw in my mathematically-challenged logic?

They most certainly do - the "Profit" the landbot owners get are directly added into the inputs that drive land prices.

Yep. The flaw IMO is that bot runners don't hold enough tier to buy every plot for sale between 7.5 and 8.5. Also there is no incentive for them to start buying land at higher prices when they get every plot that is set below market. Those plots fetch them more profit.

The goal is not to buy up every plot at the bottom of the list. The goal is to find the plots being sold WAY below the base price. This is land that never makes it to the list because they buy it before most of us ever see it listed. Those are the ones that fetch nice profit margins.

It does not matter to them where the base price is. What matters is how many people are selling land cheap on any given day. At least that's how I understand their business model.

There is a limit that they can safely crank it up to.
If it's too high the risk for the landbots is that the land that they buy won't sell.
The risk for SL and the bot runners is that if the base price is "too high" then people won't be willing to become premium and buy at the price.

LL could try to break the landbots by flooding the market with sims.
Presumably, landbots are set to stop buying once the budget runs out.


Edit:
Maybe if I concentrated on typing instead of chatting, sipping brandy and nibbling goodies, Raymond would not get in while I was composing an explanation of the meaning of life, and stuff.

At least you get to nibble goodies... oh the price I pay for wanting to talk land 24/7...

Talking about it is possible right now.
Looking at it is a problem. Map is coming up all grey for me again, and others I've talked to.
It's been happening a lot lately - again.

"Show on Map" from search is the only rational way to select land to TP to - unless you're a bot buying square metres.
It's a bot's world is SL.

Edit to add: "only rational way" if you are not starting from Map of your stamping grounds and are just idly looking for what Search might throw up in some unknown distant galaxies/sims.



Only 54,000 online.
But then, LL are starting to throttle back on Group payments and Stipends during peak concurrency, so I suppose stuff like Map goes way down the list of priorities.
Whatever happened to the promises of throttling logins?

Prices are always driven up based on how many hands are in the till.

Landbots are included as are Land Brokers etc.

The more each middleman takes on the journey land takes from LL to the end user is a upward price pressure.

Since Landbots are big players in this; they will have a net upward pressure affect on prices.


Of course demand will ultimately control the high end prices can reach, but the more upward pressures, the higher land will cost relative to that threshold.

Basically there is no way a middleman LOWERS overall prices on anything.

I think that most landbots operate mainly at the bargain end of the market - your flat green/granite. They maintain a bottom level for crap land.

I think that it's the manual land-flippers that drive up prices for better land.


For instance:
I was selling an isolated (as in 'far from my base') 1536 in order to get cash and tier to buy equivalent land in a more suitable (differing from "better" location.
It was basically a 1024 on the Southern edge of Corsica with a 16m-wide Linden channel and then void water to the South. The 1536 was made up by a 512 stuck on the north of the 1024 , but offset so that the 1526 was not rectangular.

I notice a pair of green dots lingering on the map over the plot, so I TPd over to check.
When I got there, the couple had bought a 512 slightly to the East along the canal.
I noticed later that they were having a few "oh shit/dear" realisation experiences as they tried to slot in a 512 Archer house beside a high build-to-the-boundary beside them. That 512 was *definitely* bigger when they bought it.

So, I cut the 1046 into a 1024 and a 512.
They bought the 1024 for 20,000 - which was a very good price for that sort of protected water access and view.
I put the internal (as in no boundary on Linden water) on sale for 6000. That's a highish price for a 512, but fairly good for a plot where a lowish skybuild gets a great view of an expanse of water. I see many similar plots on offer for 1000 to 15000

And so.. somebody bought it (for 6000) and immediately flipped for sale at 10000.

If I'm annoyed by that, it's not because "I should" have put a price of 10000 on it. It's because somebody could have bought that for 6000 and had enjoyment out of it. Now some soulless gobshite has taken away that opportunity.

A landbot would not have bought it at that 6000 price I think.

However if the bottom level for "crap" land is raised, then by default the level for "better" land will also rise.

Since land sellers base the value of any land on the going rates.

For example if "Crap" land is 8$/M then "better" land is 10$/M

If Crap land dropped to 7$/M, better land would also dip.

It's against all logic, that land prices go up, on a "satisfied" market, 3.2million sqm has been added in this year, i cant see it not comming down ?

*As some others already suggested, LL might want lower land prices, so more people have a chance to build their "dream", and go premium.




Aslong as they sell it, but asfar i have witnessed the total number sqm for sale only has grown these last months (?), so something has to give at some point ?



I think you mean that their price is still low enough to sell ?, but as said statistics contradict ?, it might be selling to another smaller broker, but he only acts on the prices he sees in the land-sales, which have been set by the bot-owners, so imo there is no self regulating market.