The great land grab

Well, I guess its too late to disallow land sales in Estate land. However, its not too late to change the rules regarding sim transfers.

Fixing this scam will require more linden involvement than they are willing to invest at this particular time.

.d

If you on a well run Estate, the only difference is really being able to sell that purchased land.....so in theory you should recover your purchase price if you have bought it for sensible price, maybe making a little profit from it. That's how it was supposed to work............until the run of dishonest EstateOwners "double selling" land.

If you really want to own land, then buy it, and the only way to buy is on mainland. "Buying" in Estate is just rent. What LL can do about that is change the Buy sign for rent on Estates' land info.

But that would bring too much problems too, so people should be more informed when buying land, some people buy land without knowing the difference between Mainland and Estate and that's a problem of them not LL or estate owners.

What if you're Estate Owner comes from Turkey? Do you think you could persue a reasonable claim?

Maybe it's just me, but I misread the thread title as "The great land crab" and found myself thinking "Hey, has someone found Sideways the wandering crab?"

LMAO

I thought I saw him yesterday, he's in the real-estate business now....

Exactly. I can resell my plot, and right now the going rate is a bit higher than what I paid if I wanted to sell. Plus be aware that on private land, there could be restrictions in the Covenant that limit what you can do on the land. In my case there are only 2 of concern, it's residential only and there is a 20m height restriction.

The way i think SIM Transfers could work successfully, would probably require additional participation & monitoring by LL....which would make this a non-starter IMO.

I would favour a system whereby LL has a type of holding or deposit a/c for each resident-to-resident SIM transfer with the proviso that funds would only be released to Seller 48 hrs after the physical transfer of SIM to the Buyer onto grid. It would mean that all payments for SIMs would have to be made via LL (and not Paypal) either in Lindens or USD.
This would allow residents 48hrs to raise a query and submit a ticket to LL. If there are any disputes like the OP's one and a ticket is submitted against that transaction....LL would hold onto the funds until the matter was resolved satisfactorily between the parties involved. That imo would prevent a lot of the "double selling" of land.

When you "buy" estate land all you are doing is paying a fee so you can rent the land. This makes no sense to me. My free advice to anyone listening is to never pay an estate owner anything but the rent.

This particular case has a twist: the new owner doesn't intend to resell the parcels, but rather to just do rentals. Odd, though: This new owner doesn't seem to be interested in keeping on any of the former parcel holders as tenants in the new arrangement.

I suppose it would be very hard for a former parcel holder to see it as something other than having their land stolen from them, but in fact, there was nothing there to be stolen: it was an up-front fee for the privilege of paying rent and maybe (maybe!) being able to sell it to the fabled Greater Fool before something like this happened.

So, really, not all that much has changed, necessarily, but that's probably not an easy thing to accept. And hence, maybe not many would have stayed on anyway, but it seems like starting out with some tenants would be financially better for the new owner than wiping the slate clean. So there's something here I'm not understanding.

Susie....its not a solution! The horse has already bolted......a long time ago.!! There are now thousands upon thousands plots of land already sold on Private estates.
LL or someone has to come up with a viable solution upon the sale of these SIMs'....the past cannot be undone.

Yeah, this one is a bit odd... why toss an existing resident in good standing?

Something very strange here.



Sim transfers like this are really icky.

What's to stop someone from 'transferring it to themselves'? Get an alt, pay the Company fee, now it belongs to Moe and not Curly... wipe the 'history' of land fees, start fresh, erase the 'debt.'

Though, all things considered it wouldn't be very practical, because the time it takes to cycle through all nonsense that is probably worth more than the value you could scam. And when a scam only pays off after phenomenal effort... what would be the point? Might as well run things honest.

Hmmmh, that could quite possibly become the new scam to hit SL....never thought of that one! It would require 2 accounts registered to different emails with two different payments on file. ......but wouldn't the Bank details and CC have the same name tagged to it?

"Edit Could be done between by 2 parties working together

For just a moment there, I was pretty excited about this new honesty scam.

What you are missing is understanding that this is a reactive person with an eye on one thing--more cuts in the land, more rentals, more money. I've no doubt the only thought was that the land owners would want the money back they paid for the land. And because she assumed that, she didn't actually ask or seek to come to some sort of arrangement that promised to have built in renters. Better to boot them now and not have to worry about any "messes".

I will add this too. Storm was the largest holder of land. All the other lots were 4096 or smaller. The new SIM owner loves little lots with 2 homes on a 2048 or 1024 lot. No mystery why 8K sqm had to go bye bye.

This new owner could have easily simply raised the tier to her rental level and informed the prior owner of the increase and that a resale of the land would not be allowed from now on. Instead, she has earned yet one more slam against her reputation in a very public way.

A better plan would to have allowed the ones who bought a lot stay, continue to pay tier at a higher level and then let them sell their lots one by one to phase out the buyers and introduce renters. And anyway, only 1/2 the isle was made up of those who "purchased" the land. The other half was renters already anyway, and actually, I think it was more like 1/4.
There are 50 ways this could have been done fairly.

LL really owns the "land." sue them. Enough people do, and this crap will end.

Thanks Monica - I do remember seeing your name there. It's just a shame that this type of thing can happen.

There were many solutions but this was probably the worst possible - the new estate owner is just heartless. My wife and I have acquired new land but will probably purchase a sim so this can't happen again. I understand that you never really own the property but it is an asset (or should be). Technically it is all rent but when they advertise it as "buy" and cane be "resold" it is very misleading.

I learned my lesson - and I will post here more - I have plenty to say and many ideas -

Thanks everyone for the welcome and the advice

Yes, Nimbus, he truly is a great crab. And ever since that trip to the vet, he no longer wanders the Mainland in search of lady crab booty.

Not getting involved in another one of these sad discussions, other than saying if you choose to rent, no matter who you rent with, minimize your upfront costs and the risks associated with possibly not recouping them.

Is there an Extra Small Claims court I don't know about?

These two avatars (former and current owners) aren't alts for each other, are they?

How far away did the island move?

In real world this is called graft and corruption, crime, scams, crooks, etc. If allowed to flourish in SL, because of weak to non-existent policing, then world-wide organized crime groups will see big opportunities. Crooks have a royal invitation.

No, having paid the former via Paypal and thus know his info, I am as sure as one can be that they are two separate people.

caveat emptor was never more true then when it comes to buying anything in SL be it virtual goods or virtual land. Being somewhat pessimistic I've always doubted the reliability of buying or renting from others on private sims. However, it didn't stop me from buying half a private sim over a year ago, and luckily I picked a group with a well deserved reputation for design and maintenance. But, even that has had it's prickly moments. When I originally bought, the covenant clearly stated the land could be resold in the future, that has since changed without notification and I am out the initial purchase price. My home is safe, I just took a knock on recouping what I put in, so I chalk that up to experience. I buy/sell/rent land, that's my game, but I only deal in mainland because I can guarantee it'll be there tomorrow (more or less) and give me another chance to recoup an investment. Am I a greedy land baron, far from it, it's a hobby, a lot of times I just let my friends live free on the land so they have a place to build and socialize.

Linden Labs could help alleviate ALL of this with the simple change to how premium account members are billed. Most everyone outside of North America who wants to own land is left little choice but to buy from private sim owners because they lack a credit card to become a premium member. Paypal is already in use, structure it so that non credit card holders can become premium account members and buy mainland. This would have a ripple effect in the economy for sure, and it would also eliminate having to buy Linden dollars from third party sellers that we've been hearing about. Come on LL, you already have offices in the UK, I'm sure you could devise and implement a verification system at least for those people and I'm sure in various other parts of the world as well. Land sales will continue, people will continue to make money, and people will continue to lose money from ventures that go wrong, but the playing field can be evened out and a lot less people stung with the way things currently are. I would hazard a guess that if LL were to do such a thing, an influx of well intentioned builders, barons et all, could only help improve mainland and the economy.

addendum/afterthought :
It seems to me that mainland was to be for all people, and private sims/islands were to be for those wanting a little more luxury if they were willing to pay for it. Somewhere along the lines, that didn't happen and we now have the issues we're dealing with as well as segregation of europeans/north americans because of the lack of a credit card. Utopia...ah yes...where did it all go wrong....

I believe there are avatars out there who accomplish all this and don't even bother with the alt, since there's really no one to hide from. A lone scammed resident doesn't have any recourse, or any real ability to spread the word about the scammer. They come onto the forums for the 1st time to complain about a scammer, but we immediately tell them not to name names. So why does the crook even need to hide?

I really think, however, that most of these cases stem from failure more than from deliberate scams. Estate owners don't plan, or their plan depends on immediate and permanent 100% occupancy. When they fail, and they have no choice but to get rid of the sim, there is obviously no money to give back. The new owner obviously wants no part of the previous owner's crap business plan. They would also never purchase a "used" sim if they thought they had an obligation to pay back every previous land purchase. That would be stupid anyway, since it's the responsibility of the previous owner who took the money. Oh wait, he's broke. The tenants in the middle are inevitably screwed.

It's a terrible situation, which ruins SL's reputation just a little bit more each time it happens.

But couldn't a person just have an alt with a different credit card and therefore a different paypal account? Or how about a spouse with a different paypal account or credit card? How about working out a deal with my buddy up the street? or my brother? my minister? the old lady at the library? The abilities for scam here are endless.