So I'm new and thinking of buying land/an island ...

What advice would you offer a newbie to SL in preparation for purchasing some land/island?

Lotus

That may be the best start for some or all of your questions. Also the forum search feature can be a lot of help.

It all really matters on what you plan to do with the land.

Only advice I could offer as of now, make sure to look into the land tier fee's. You find them on the 'my account page' menu on the right under "land" and "land use fees". If im not mistaken, a private sim/island(65,536 sq m) is $295 per month.

I all I know is there are new members who have but they had the money to do so.
I wouldn't have it.
I would suggest that you have close to 6k to spend first year and 4k year after.
If you want to customize your island shape,etc you need to know how how to do raw files or get raw file image made but there is standard one I think.
If you want to spend lot of money you could always hire someone who does that you may be looking up to 15k in usd depending on who you hire.

Thanks for the responses guys! I appreciate your thoughts. I get now, after a little more research, that I prob don't need an island, just a small plot (only the min. you can have without extra monthly fees) to play with and experiment on.

How would I know where the land boundaries are? I've TP'd to a few places that are for sale that I found via the search function but I'm at a bit of a loss to know where they start and stop. Some seem to have the invisible boundaries that you run right into (if you miss the red writing) but others don't seem to have them at all.

Lotus

Turn on view property lines under the view menu.

right click land and select about land then a pop up should show up if you minimize the box that pops up you should see colored line around the land

Ahhhh excellent ... thanks Cristalle and FD Spark

Hi Lotus

My bit of advice is simple and will be the best advice you will hear when it comes to buying land of any type ...

1, DON'T Rush .

People rush into buying land and end up making all kinds of mistakes , The fact you have come here and asked tells me your smart and dont want to jump right in and buy .. Try and stick to that till you have all the facts and you have thought hard about it all first

You really need to start by asking YOURSELF a few questions like , How much land do i want ? , what do i want it for ? , Where do i want it ? , How much am i willing to spend on buying land ? , Can i manage to pay the mothley fees on a plot of land ? .

Start off small , As a premium member you can buy a small plot of land ( 512 sqm2 ) in size and it costs you nothing in land fees per month , True you dont get a lot of prims to play with , But you get a chance to see how the land system works and it will give you an idea of how you want to go forward in the future .

Think agout renting for a while , This allso gives you a chance to see how things work and will give you an insight as to how much land you want to own later on , Renting is good as you can decide to just pick up and walk away when you like and not be left holding a monthly land fee to pay till you find a buyer for your land .

I have some great notecards that go into detail about all the aspects of buying land that you need to think about befor you take the leap .

Finaly i would like to tell you this , As a land owner myself in SL i love having a little place to call home ( ok not so little but hey ) but i did it the slow way and found it saved me a lot of stress and saved me a lot of cash in the longrun .

Look out for a few notecards in your mailbox later tonight

Lost

Agreed with Lost. Take your time to see what's out there and what you like. Do you want snowy, beachy, rocky, etc? I would DEFINITELY join the "Land Answers" group. Usually someone is online, and you can just IM the group to ask questions.

Thanks to those who are mentioning the SL Land Answers Unlimited group and the wiki. It's been a very successful community venture so far. And a very deep thanks to all the land expert volunteers who joined the group and are answering all the questions.

Good as any a place to mention that the latest notice in the SL Land Answers Unlimited group info (dated 12/1) has the latest updated notecard giver sign you can take to inventory and then place inworld to get the word out about the live land answers service we provide. It's a much simpler sign and notecard than our first attempts.

Buying land will need you to face the SL realities..like being
1. attack by griefiers
2. neighbors taken over your plot for playground
3. constant grid restarts
4. ban by avatars for no reason
5. noisy neigbors
6. ugly and unsightly buildings around you.

If you can endure all the above..maybe you will learn
a few tricks on how to avoid and fightback the SL way plus skills in
buildings, scriptings, enjoys tons of creations make by other avatars

....HAVE FUN...I did the same thing and never look back..

Seems like you live in a rough neighborhood. You can also have a much more peaceful mainland experience if you find the right area. That's why the best advice is to not rush into it.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Seems like you live in a rough neighborhood. You can also have a much more peaceful mainland experience if you find the right area. That's why the best advice is to not rush into it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++

Yes, that is because good land cost more than I can afford.. so I dig in and bite the bullets..

Go slow, start small, and ideally, in a place where you can sell off and move readily, once you have learned more and know better what you want.

I've found a lot of users tend toward 500-1000 prims for everything, long term - maybe closer to 1000 than 500.

That's after coming in starry-eyed, getting huuuuge amounts of land, and then facing costs a number of months later.

There are exceptions, mainly on forums, where people have lots and lots of land. Often these are the people who can afford it, or have booming businesses in here that can support it.

Another effect of a lot of land: it pushes friends and neighbours faaaar away from you (you are sitting in the middle of your own land!) and suddenly it becomes a lot more like being offline and doodling on your hard drive, than being in a social world.

Is that considered cheating?

Yep.

The largely silent but smugly victorious MS Paint "Opensim" community save 295 USD per month simply drawing islands in their simple offline editor, and stick-figure representations of made-up friends.

Content is as easy to create as choosing a pixel color and placing it. With the powerful Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X and Ctrl-V commands, one can animate literally anything, and even duplicate entire regions.

This community is huge, but oddly, largely silent. It may have a lot to do with the fact that they don't need an internet connexion either.