Auctions finally hitting the minimum

A common Mainland practice now is to put each tenant in a separate group so the prim limit isn't shared among tenants. The tenant still has to belong to the group, though, which does indeed burn one of those precious 25 groups (and the landlord has to maintain a little army of alts who exist for the sole purpose of owning all those darn groups).

I hope this doesn't come across rude, as I'm likely missing something here.. But $750 in REAL money?.. I can't imagine having that sort of cash just laying around. I'm lucky enough to pay off my bils =x

I've seen the auctions.. Some going even higher than that which makes me think even moreso that I'm missing something.. It simply doesn't seem possible.

So, from my point of view - That's alot of money! Lol.

They used to go for around $2,500 - $4,000 quite regularly, some were even higher.

not everyone is broke

Yup. Me too. Sometimes it's tempting me lately to buy a piece of mainland for a cheap price, but who wants to buy when you don't know if it's going to be working tomorrow, or working on the days when you want to use it. Not to mention that if you own land you do pay tier even when it doesn't work.

I don't think the answer is dat simple, though dat's one of the main reasons. Also consider:

The U.S. economy is not doing well right now, with a lot of people getting laid off as well as an increase in prices (especially gas). This is going to have some effect on "fun" spending, which can affect the SL land market. People are still buying, but I bet the big-land speculation is cooling as a result of this and other factors.

In the Northern Hemisphere, summer has come. This means more time to participate in RL pursuits, and let the SL stuff go to a backburner. There's real world vacations and other things to do, after all.

Some places have seen more speculation than others, and in different ways. The small plots of Bay City have gone for astronomical prices (with some attempting to make a fair amount of Lindens in the resale market), while new land in Gaeta has included a large amount of plain, gray land. Given a choice, I know where I'd buy (and did). Moving the Gaeta land, especially with a lot of land on the market, is likely an uphill battle.

Mari

We're talking gray rocky land?

I like that kind of land. I can have fun with that kinda property. Might see if I can work a trade for some of my flat green...

There is also the thought that perhaps the bad economy wouldn't hurt SL as much because the "fun" stuff that people cut out when hurting for money are things like vacations as you mentioned, but also, things like going out to dinner, bar hopping, etc. I know I could easily spend the equivalent of my MONTHLY mainland tier rate for just ONE night of going out to dinner or hitting the bars... So if hurting for money I might just prefer to stay home and spend my time SLing for entertainment, over going out to eat and drink.

I stand corrected

Ok, I have been out of the loop for a while...while looking the land in Bay City looks great with roads and water etc ...what are the other perks to spending an insane amount of money for that land? *wanders off to use search to figure this one out*

Double prims for the size of the lot. Plus likely more traffic & exposure because its so widely known, and people do go there to wander and check out.

Other perks? The inability to join or divide land. The inability to raise or lower the land. The ability to build in insanely drawn parcel borders. The ability to . . um . . rez a vehicle in Bay City right there . . um . . instead of the two free spots you can rez a vehicle.

Yeaaa see, even at 2x the prims, the prices are...well, mind boggling. Especially with the other 'perks' just listed lol. Maybe this will free up some decent land on mainland though I am resisting the urge at the moment.

I think it's theme, double prims, visibility,and location -- but also coupled with some wild speculation that artifically inflated prices.

Theme: I think this appealed to a great many, both from the materials left by the moles as well as the hope -- perhaps in vain -- for a large scale area where landholders would stick to an overall look and feel. We're now seeing a majority of people at least trying to do so, while many others either have no interest inthe them or are deliberately going against it.

Double prims: This appeals as it means being able to really add some flash to your plot that you can't otherwise. I'm doing some fun stuff with mine dat I could never do on a similar size, regular amount of prims plot. You can get some great detail that way.

Visibility: The Bay City project was seriously hyped by Linden Lab on the SL blog, and a lot of pre-release excitement was built up. Many acted on that excitement.

Location: Bay City is a (dangerous) bridge ride from Nova Albion and its info hub. It's a couple sims away from the Ahern welcome area. when it expands, Hub Island will sit to the other side of Docklands. This gives a lot of potential for foot traffic -- an odd consideration, perhaps, in a world where we teleport all over, but for those who enjoy a good car drive, it makes a lot of sense. Plus, all the roads in Bay City leading off of Route 66 (which connects to Nova Albion, Ahern, and with a turn at Route 50, Shermerville) encourage ground travel. I've seen more vehicles in use there than I tink I've seen ever on the SL roads.

Speculation: You have had some speculators dropping money against speculators, driving prices to crazy heights and squeezing a lot of the "regular joes and janes" out of the market. This has probably been the biggest overall reason, but would not have existed without the first four things. without the double prims, theme, visibility, and location, Bay City is just another block of sims -- and one with some limitations built into them, too!

I think so of the flippers are going to end up holding onto some of these for some time, or sell for a reduced price -- including at a loss. Will they, I dunno -- but it's purty spendy property to just let sit.

FWIW, I tink there's gotta be some nice land on the Heterocera Atoll jes ripe for the pickin'.

There is. I bought some land there without realizing it 2 days ago, for 3.6L from the Ninjas. I could have picked up some in Molesworth for that price, but it was PG. For large landholders like Elan & Skye, it's all the same and inventory needs to move.

shoot, you can make your own moonshine if you have a baggie, some stale bread and a toilet.

Honestly you are not missing anything. If you look for example only at March, with paying accounts flatlined or decreasing at around 90k since last year (and the Linden CFO said it does not concern them in the Gartner/Infoweek interview response), and 408,000 new accounts created that month, it seems clear most people do not even see the point of paying $10 a month much less that kind of money here for land, no matter where it is located.

Truth is, mainland or established estate is dependent on needs/wants, but either way people need to want to spend the money on it.

As speculators or magnate wannabe's begin to lose their money steadily (and laws of probability indicate there are always more failures than successes), more people will have bad experiences which make the general population more reluctant for estate, just as the adfarms and such make people more reluctant for mainland...

SL's worst enemy is itself, and if you want to say people are voting with their money you have to say they are voting not to spend money on SL in general.

Are more people buying sims, or are people buying more sims....and the financials will look glorious for SL because they are deceiving themselves with the numbers I still think.

Um, not thinking hard enough... Google "supply and demand", when demand is high and supply is low, people will pay more, much more. Right now, the opposite is true, demand is not nearly as high as supply is right now, hence, the low prices.


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