Before I buy my first piece of property

I'm about ready to invest in some property, but first some questions:

1. July is not quite ended yet. I assume if I buy today I will have to pay a full month's maintenance? I found a nice little parcel, so if I wait till the end of the month it might be gone, or the price gone up?

2. Can I later sell this property to any willing buyer at any time at any agreed price? What are the rules?

3. What are prims and why are they important? I am guessing it is something like "attachment points" or something like that... for when I want to start building?

Thank you,
_Johan

And Question nr 4: What guide lines can you offer on selecting a good property?

Since you don't know what prims are yet, I'm going to hazard a guess and say that you don't know nearly enough about SL yet to be worried about buying and owning property. I only bought my first plot a couple of weeks ago, and I'm still learning stuff about land ownership.

Prims have to do with the number of objects the property can hold. Maybe you can resell, maybe not; it depends on the land, where it is and the stipulations.

My advice? Learn SL and all that it entails first. Then, when youre comphy and you feel you know what's really going on and you like the environment, then sink some lindens and get yourself some land. It's not going anywhere.

Johan first of all you want to check if the parcel is mainland or estate, different rules apply.

Secondly the size of the parcel, if it's 512M mainland and you're a premium member you won't have to pay any maintenance fees, just your premium membership fees.

Prims make up objects, a building will be x amount of prims. If you want a house that will be x amount of prims and then if you want furniture each piece will be x amount of prims. You can only put so many prims on a parcel, although there are ways of bending those limits, if it's the only parcel you own it will be a hard limit.

Re: question 3, everything you see inworld is made from prims. The basic shape you can rez is a one-prim cube, and that (and the other basic shapes) are cut and twisted, tapered and 'tortured' in various ways, then linked together to form everything from houses to furniture, hair to shoes. You might see a nice couch, buy it, then rez it on your land, only to find out it's made of 100 prims, and your land only holds 177 prims. So prim count is important to know about.

The only prims that don't count toward land you're on is ones you're wearing, such as hair, weapons, shoes, etc.

/me sorta agrees.. Also, read up on mainland vs private islands as the answers to #1 and #2 really depend on where you buy.

Basically, prims (primitives) are the building blocks of SL - everything, with the exception of terrain and the basic avatar shape, is made from prims. How many you can put on your land depends on how much land you have.

Since a full sim is _always_ 65,536 square meters of land and can hold 15,000 prims, the formula for how many prims you can put on a piece of land is 15000 / 65536 * landSize. On a 512m2 parcel, that's 117 prims. On a 1024m2 parcel, it's 234 prims.

assuming you are looking at mainland ...



I'm not sure what day of the month tier is due, but if you have found the perfect parcel, I'd say grab it now.



yes. The only rules are supply and demand.



The more land you own the more prims you can put on it. 512m = 117 prims and it goes up in multiples thereof.

your 4th question is more complex. Assuming you are looking at mainland (I don't know much about estate, but there are lots here who do), I'd say the best plots are next to protected land - Linden roads and waterways. Click on the neighbouring parcels and see who owns them - find out a bit about your prospective neighbours, but don't expect mainland to stay the same for long. Oh, and avoid areas with lots of 16m plots.

most of all, do as much research as you can before buying anything. Learn about land options and permissions and stuff.

Here is a site where a great deal of info about land ownership in SL has been compiled. You might want to give it a look.

http://land-answers.wiki.zoho.com/

I would say it is pretty important to understand prim limits, and the difference between mainland and estates before you "buy" any land in SL. I think you'll find prim limits to be one of the most important factors in deciding how much land you need, likely more important than the actual parcel size.

I would suggest you try renting on a week to week basis while you get a feel for what you want to do on your land.

Best of luck! I find owning land to be one of the most entertaining parts of SL.

The answers differ based upon what kind of land you may buy.

To buy "Mainland," you need a Premium account. Mainland is administered by Linden Lab. When you "buy" the land, you have to worry about two things. One is the "buy" price, which is a one-time fee that you will pay to the former owner of the land to have it transfered to you. Then, afterward, you will pay your monthly tier payments to Linden Lab. The tier payments are billed on the same cycle as your Premium account is billed.

You may sell your Mainland parcel later to any willing buyer.

To by from a Private Estate owner, you do not need a Premium account. Private Estates are private sims administered entirely by another resident. If you ever have a problem with the land, you need to work it out with the Private Estate owner; Linden Lab will not help you in disputes.

Some Private Estate land is sold like Mainland- you pay pay an up-front "buy" price from the Private Estate owner, and then also make monthly tier payments directly to the Private Estate owner. Some Private Estate owners do not charge the up-front "buy" price (or it is something nominal like L$ 1); you just pay monthly tier payments.

The Private Estate owner from whom you "buy" land may reclaim that land at any time, for any or no reason, and there's nothing you can do about it, and you can't get your money back. That's why paying a price to "buy" on a Private Estate is a huge risk; pay L$ 70,000 today, have the land arbitrarily reclaimed tomorrow, and you are out the equivalent of $250.00 U.S. That's why, if you ever obtain land from a Private Estate owner, it's a good idea to not pay up-front money; just pay your weekly or monthly payments, without a lot of pre-payment.

Whether you may sell Private Estate land depends upon the rules set by the Private Estate owner. The rules are in the "Covenant". (On a piece of land, choose "About Land", and then the "Covenant" tab.)

If you don't know how prims work, you will have a tough time evaluating how much land to buy. Some people require lots of prims for elaborate houses and furniture; of course, high prim land is expensive. Some people are happy with simple, low prim houses and furniture.

Prims and land size have a correlation, but not a perfect one. It's pretty much fixed when you are on Mainland (117 prims on 512 sq m). Private Estates could be varied; they could have more prims per sq m (by reserving prims from other parts of the sim), or less prims per sq m (on an Openspace sim).

Before you buy land, take a few weeks going to different pieces of land, finding out about them, and evaluating them. There's no shortcut to learning what you need to know.

OK then, it sounds like it would be foolish to just go and buy without better understanding. I will go do more reading and talking to people first!

so to take this one step further and possibly help the OP (and myself) understand all options... Where do "skyboxes" come in? I know what a skybox is, but its like a building floating in the sky right? How is that real estate accouting for? You can rent/by sky areas too?

If you own (or rent) a piece of land, you also own (or are renting) the air above it. Thus, you can place a skybox in that 'column' of air directly above your land.

ETA: A skybox, and any furnishings in it, will count toward the prims on the land you own/rent. Thus if your parcel allows 177 prims, and you have placed 100 prims on the ground and 50 in the air, then you'll have 27 prims remaining.

You need to do your homework before buying land. Reading the forum first is a great start. Congratulations.

First, walk around, a lot. Visit land that is for auction http://usd.auctions.secondlife.com and just walk through the area. Stick with the cheap L land. You'll get a feel for what mainland and island land looks like and what people build.

Second, spend a few dollars for L so you can upload textures. This makes building a lot more productive. Find sandboxes and practice a few projects. Clothes are the best place to start, but you can also build a house, a car (There is even a scdript to make it work). At least learn to link prims together and texture them. If someone gives you a box of sculpties, terrific! If you can't find someone generous enough, buy at least one box of smooth geometric pack, another good investment and better than land fora beginner.

I'd say build a house for your 512m plot. Houses start at 6-8prims and go up in size from there. Many houses that claim to be low prim are not. You are also going to want to think about low prim outdoor furniture, plants etc... If you want a place to drive a vehicle, a small plot of land won't do it. I have a vehicle which I play with mainly in sandboxes. By the way, you can keep both your house and home made vehicle in your inventory.

Once you have an idea where you want to live and a house made, even if it is not very good, then buy your land. Remember you can always put items back in your inventory and deploy fresh ones so prim limits are not horrible. Good bluiding is prim -economical and chances are good you are going to design a lot of wearables if all you have is 512m.

The technical question on skyboxes has already been answered.

The appeal of skyboxes is that they offer somewhat more privacy than building on the ground. Other wandering avatars need special scripting to fly past a certain height or get their cameras to locate the skyboxes. Skyboxes can insulate you from hearing your neighbors talk right on the other side of your property line. Your neighbors on the ground might not have particularly attractive builds around you, so going in the sky is more aesthetically pleasing.

when you do a search on land inside second life you can select the filter to between mainland or private estates.

I recommend only buying on the mainland since its the only way to be secure in your ownership, and not be at the risk of a 3rd party being able to take it from you.

If you want to rent, that can be anywhere - mainland or private estate.
A nicely managed private estate would proberbly give the best neighbourhood for renting.

Hi Johan - just thought I'd mention that Torley Linden has done a nice set of Video Tutorials about land. I'd recommend watching them before you plan on buying.