The great land grab

I am sorry for what has happened to you and I think that if in the future if you check out whomever you might deal with things will go much better for you. Talk to people, check them out in the forums, see how long they have been in business. This person could be new to owning land and needs to learn more about land, although that is not an excuse for what has happened to you in the least. The former landowner has an obligation to you!

The only reason I ever sold land to customers is because I found I was losing some nice ppl who wished to own land. So, I have just a few sims in which I sell land in. I have never raised tier/rent on anyone and don't see any reason for it unless LL raises my tier. I find I dont sell sim only buy them. The only sims I have sold were to companies I brought in from RL and I knew I would sell to them from day one.

It is important for you to know there are many excellent land people in SL who will be very helpful to you. I do feel it was up to the former owner of the land to respond to you and pay you back your land purchase fee and any tier you had coming to you as a result of the land being sold.

If you contact me in world I will do my best to try and help you in anyway I can, trying to help you resolve your problem. Maybe a third party just talking might be able to help. It might be a good idea if you were to rent from whomever before you think of buying land from them. See how they operate, what type of customer service they offer, which is so important in all aspects of SL.

I wish you the best and feel free to contact me anytime if I can be of help to you

Alliez Mysterio

Thats all that you need to say. Your first mistake was 'buying' land from a sim owner. NEVER... EEEEVER do that. As this is what happens more times then not. You have no real control over the land. Only the sim owner does.

If you want to buy land buy mainland. Cant be pulled out from you unless LL goes bellow up. Then SL as a whole is moot so it metters little. I have a nice chunk of mainland and love it with no worries the sim will be sold out from under me.

Also take the others advice and seek a partial refund from the orginial owner.

Good luck

I think it's absolutely inappropriate to slam on the new estate owner here. (No, I don't know her.) She paid a lot of money to OWN the sim, fair and square in the eyes of LL, and has every right to do whatever she wants with it, just as mainland owners do. She has absolutely no obligations to the existing tenants, and any responsibility for the existing tenants losing their "purchase" price falls entirely on the previous estate owner, who took the money from the "buyers".

I am SOOO sick and tired of these "my estate owner stole my land" threads. I really wish that LL would change the buttons for "buying" on estate land to make it clear that it really isn't a purchase, and that there was a standard disclaimer that automatically went in all covenants for estates that stated this. But I get the feeling that no matter what LL does, people will still keep thinking they actually own their rentals.

You know, a lot of confusion could be avoided if the name of that little blue button was changed from 'Buy' to something else, perhaps 'Lease'. One can argue semantically one way or the other whether it is a purchase or a lease/rental, but the simple fact is it's very different from buying on the maingrid with tier paid to LL, and so a alternative term should be used.

i've always hated the term "buying land" when referring to non-mainland land. you are renting.

you are really just bribing the estate owner into letting you rent from him/her.

nothing more.

That'll teach me for not reading the whole thread before posting! I think this is something LL should seriously consider.

Well both the old and new sim owner are morally culpable. Ultimately, Linden has created a system that allows people without repercussions to sell land, immediately reclaim it, resell it, reclaim it, and continue in perpetuity. You don't need to create an alt, it's within their rules.

I would dispute the notion that it's better to buy mainland. Mainland is a horrid cesspool of pornographic adfarmers and zone barrier lines. Someone said that something like 80% of land is now in private islands. I suspect most people would rather not have land (or play SL) than buy on the mainland.

Linden needs to deal with this and enforce owners rights over parcels that are managed by private estate owners. But Linden needs to start dealing with a lot of these issues proactively not reactively. They will fix it eventually thought because eventually someone is going to do this on a Ginko level, a scale large enough to trigger a major lawsuit, news story, or criminal fraud investigation.

On the lawsuit level, at least in this state (Massachusetts) you have ever right to file a small claims case even if the defendant is out of state. Find the landowners real name or information or name the plaintiff as John Doe DBA Landowner Name c/o Linden Labs. You could also file a complaint at https://complaint.ic3.gov/Default.aspx tho I have no idea where any of that really goes.

again, none of this land is being sold or bought. it's being rented.

the ownership of estate land never leaves the hands of the estate owner. never.

the only exception to this is, as in this case, when the whole estate is sold to another avi.

i would think at least we in the forums (supposedly more aware of how sl works) should stop using the terms "buy" and "sell" when referring to estate land. it only serves to continue this false idea of owning estate land.

But that isn't what happened in this case. The new sim owner bought a used sim. She doesn't have a moral obligation to the people who rented from the previous sim owner.



Not all mainland is a horrid cesspool. There are some quite lovely mainland sims. Estate owners perpetuate the myth that all mainland is awful in order to drive people to their estates so they can profit. Many adlots are owned by estate owners for this very purpose.

My group holds land in Lilypad and Gemmed, which are both lovely, porn-free water wonderlands. However, I also have some land in Disl, which is a perfect example of a porn adfarm cesspool. It's very sad, but it's not the norm. Adfarms spring up around popular mainland attractions so many people get the idea that it's all that way, but if you explore off the beaten path, you'll be surprised how nice mainland can be.

I want to add one more thing: I do a lot of exploring, and I've seen just as many ban lines on private estates as I have on mainland. Sure, some estates don't allow banlines, but a lot of them do, and many of the ones that don't are full of security orbs.

There is a growing number of mainland landlords who provide estate-style living without the estate-style price. Many of us take care to create beautiful communities and provide the kind of security that goes with quality residential living. Avion Raymaker just bought an island, but his mainland holdings are just as beautiful and lovingly crafted as any estate. And though he is the first to come to my mind, there are quite a few more out there.

And if you're patient enough, most nuisances will go away. The laggy club with shouting idiots built by some noob will typically fail in about a month or less.

agreed.

i still own some land in yamma yamma on the peninsula on the "bottom" of the southern continent. no ad farm on it or any nearby sims that i could ever see (and i did do a lot of exploring thru the whole area).

oh so true!

Obviously I disagree, if you buy a parcel on a private island, you have bought it. The only thing is that Linden won't enforce the contract as part of their game hosting service. If you're going to say you don't really own it, well you don't. But you could say the private island owner doesn't REALLY own it either because they lease it from Linden. But simply because Linden won't enforce an agreement doesn't mean a de facto contract didn't exist.

I also disagree on the mainland. And it's not because I haven't been there. My first beautiful piece of land despoiled by a large black cube was in 2004. I sold that and bought a 2048 in a planned community. The purple sex club arrived a few months later and I sold out to Ansche. I have never and will never own mainland again.

Hmmm... "most" perhaps, but the price of Mainland is still supported by somebody. Find a sim with no visible adfarms, and see what prices are like. If LL provided some way of enforcing CS6, LL couldn't make continents fast enough to handle the retreat from islands.

Personal opinion, you do not own the land. You may have 'bought' it, but it doesnt belong to you. While it is true that LL could take mainland away from anyone at anytime, it doesnt happen without reason. I mean, you dont see a lot of people coming in here saying LL sold my sim to someone else and I am out $200 usd!! On private sims, you do not have 100% freedom to do what you please with the land and if the owner wants they just snatch it up and boo to you. No security at all, I would feel a lot safer buying mainland. So no, I dont think you really did buy it. The sim owner can break any contract they want, its their land. Yea, 'their' land, you are just borrowing it for a fee. You paid a large fee upfront to move onto it and pay the tier to the sim owner, but it isnt your land at all. =/

when it is stated that mainland and estate "purchases" of land are the same, i fail to see this.

i have been in sl for almost 2 years. in all that time i have never seen a mainland sim or ANY mainland land be ripped out from under the "owners" feet and re-sold to someone else. the only exception i have seen is a land owner not paying membership fees or tier.

but as we have seen from the OP and others, this does happen to estate land "owners".

again, here is an instance of using the term "buy" for estate land. highly inappropriate.

It doesn't work that way. If you buy a parcel on a private estate, you have bought the right to use it from the avatar who owns it. And your agreement only extends to that person. If that person is dishonest, you can get screwed.

Its not the new owner's fault (provided they are different people), the new owner is the one with the REAL LEGAL ownership in the form of sim transfer. The new owner does not owe the former residents anything, as he has not entered into a business agreement with them. What would you say if an avi came up to you and asked you to give them a "refund" for something they didn't buy from you? Personally I would tell them to go after the person they gave the money to.

People need to educate themselves on this subject. I own sims, and when I used to rent them out residentially I had so many folks turn up their nose at me saying they didn't want to "rent" on a private estate, they wanted to "buy". This because I only ever charged 0 or $1L upfront fee. I would have done better "selling" the parcels.

Sure, there's a de facto contract between the estate owner and the tenant who pays money to the estate owner. That contract does not carry over to the person who buys the whole estate, nor should it. The tenant never paid the estate buyer any money nor did the estate buyer agree to those terms. It wouldn't hold up, legally.


Of course many people will continue to disagree on whether estate land or mainland is better. I've had bad experiences on mainland too. But you really can't say mainland is inherently bad just because of a couple of bad experiences when there are so many positives too. Okay, you can say whatever you want, of course, but a lot of people won't buy that argument.

There is always going to be disagreements on the definition of ownership of land in SL, as it's not very easy to draw on rl comparisons. However, I'll give it a shot.

In most nations in RL, you are considered to truly own land when its security is at the hands of the authorities/government, but no other individual. If the government wants to build a highway through your property, then the fact you 'own' that land means very little. But, it is ONLY the government/authorities that can bring down that 'illusion' of black and white ownership. If you rent in RL, the security of your home is also at the hands of your landlord/lady - the person or company who 'owns' the land in the eyes of the government/authorities. So there is that extra level of insecurity, and importantly, the land is owned by the landlord/lady, not the tenant, in the eyes of the government/authorities.

In SL, I see LL as occupying that top level that government/authorities do in RL. If you pay tier to LL, you own that land in their eyes, and only LL can take your land from you. If you are 'buying' land off of another estate owner, just as is the case with RL renting, you are adding that extra level of insecurity, and just as is the case with RL renting, the land is owned by the landlord/lady, not the tenant, in the eyes of the top level of authority: LL.

That's just the way I see it, and of course opinions will vary. What can not vary, as no one could sensibly argue to the contrary, is that buying land on the maind grid, and 'buying' land within another resident's estate are very very different, and so this distinction needs to be made very clear, especially to new residents. In my opinion, a simple but effective way of making this clear is by changing the name of that little blue 'buy' button.

It's all semantics in the end anyway. In either case you are not "Buying" or "Owning" anything. It's just that "Own Virtual Land" is better Ad copy than "Pay us so we will give you someplace to put your stuff".

it is all semantics ... but semantics is important.

when i started looking to own land, i was confused by this "covenant" stuff on some land. i took my time, asked around, and figured out that "owning" and "owning" were two different things ... depending on whether i was on mainland or estate land.

unfortunately, too many residents don't take time to figure this out. or maybe they do figure it out yet choose to ignore the ramifications.

That is true. There is a risk vs reward in estate living. For me the rewards outweigh the risks. The issue does need to be easily explained in anobjective manner. Too often it is a case of one side pressing their agenda on the topic.

one of my alts is pestering me to "buy" some estate land. island land. lots of water for his boats, etc.

it's fine with me ..

but he has to think of the upfront "purchase" money as something he could afford to lose completely. if he's okay with that, it's okay with me.

Brenda I personally think its the big mainland dump that brought land prices crashing coupled with (for a large number of estate owners) VAT. This has caused many estate owners to be unable to keep their estates and have to sell them on to recoup some of the $1675 outlay they made.
While a few estate resellers disregard any resident who bought land on their estate when they sell on Im sure there are many who do the right thing. Nobody gets to hear about these though.
While LL continue to make changes without thinking about the effect they could have on the economy and land market then these kinds of stories will continue.

Definitely. Every dollar I have spent in SL is money that is from my entertainment budget. It might just as easily be spent on a movie, or a trip to the casino.