The great land grab

I'll agree with that! Clearly, I'm on the side of mainland living. What burns me up is the estate owners who buy adlots and put huge ads for their estates on the mainland, making mainland less attractive in order to drive more people to their estates. It makes me wonder how many of the porn/spinning sign adfarmers are really alts of estate owners.

i so agree! hence, my feeling that sl is a game ... regardless of the fact that i and my alts (all premium) own mainland, rent estate land, own a store on owned mainland land and rent spaces in a couple malls.

buy on the mainland. there's plenty around to choose from. you are out the money you spent buying your land. sorry about that part. best of luck.

Yes, just as bad as the Mainlanders who focus exclusively on unscrupulous estate owners and Ignore the many who are responsible and ethical. Both sides need to be heard.

Plenty of times via landbots! Owner plays around with "Sell" settings with friend or something daft...or types in correct figures as happpened to the seller of mainland plot to me (instead of 66,500 L , she typed in 6,650.....and Landbot swiped it in seconds)

Nah, I don't think it's just as bad. Not even close. Mainlanders can't go buy land on estates and ruin their views. All we can do is warn people that they really don't "own" their land, and clearly most people don't listen to us, since we keep seeing these threads about estate owners "stealing" their own land.

Of course there are responsible, stable estate owners who provide valuable services and unique environments to their tenants in exchange for a fee. People who do their research can easily find them and not be ripped off.

A nice land sticky in the forums that presents the pros and cons in an easy-to-read format would benefit both sides.

this has nothing to do with my statement. and i've bought and sold mainland too many times to think about ... and never NEVER had this "landbot problem". this "landbot problem" is an mis-attention-to-detail problem by the resident(s). been discussed to death.

Whatever the semantics of "own" are, someone has been defrauded out of real world money. And it seems to happen with a certain amount of regularity. Right now this is not being followed up not because it is morally acceptable or legal, but that the costs incurred in litigating are too great to make it worthwhile. At some point someone will Ginko this, dump a quarter million worth of land, and it will hit the press, courts, or law enforcement.

Linden has to deal with it at some point. They either deal with it now or they deal with it when it becomes a crisis.

We know Linden, so we know it will be the latter

/me wanders off to the kitchen to make popcorn

Until people stop excusing the new land owner this will continue. The new land owner appears to have quite clearly known that money had been paid, tier had been paid and that the they would be evicting people who would therefore be out of pocket. The new land owner is as much to blame as the seller and knowing what they were getting into very much makes them part of the scam.

Stop excusing buyers.

The culture was way different 12-16 months ago...it was all about BUYING! Due to the scarcity of land and the boom in SL in general, Private Estate scams where generally unheard of. In those day it was generally easy to sell you're whole sim off at whatever silly price too......and people would pay it! Now, thats all changed and so has the economy and because of the tough land market has resulted in more of these Estate scams....the shift has definitely gone towards Renting and away from buying (leasing) plots on PI's

I don't think that's really the case - when we are discussing the specific behavior at hand, we are just discussing the topic and it ALWAYS comes out that there are pros and cons to each style of living.

totally disagree. the responsibility to refund the money to the "owners" was the previous sim's owner. the new sim owner had no contracts/agreements with the land "owners".

Sorry. I meant mainlanders to refer to the mainland Dealers, *some* who do try to show that mainland is the only way to go, that it has no pitfalls and that there are no logical reasons anyone with a brain would want to live on a private estate.

Landbots! Oh oh! If this were a landbot thread one could argue that the person mistakenly typed in the number, had to answer when asked to confirm that she did want to sell at that price, so a simple double check would have solved that probelm, but since this isn't a landbot thread ........

really!

i haven't seen a landbot thread in quite a while. maybe peeps are actually double checking their figures? ya think?

new land owner has 0 responsability for the residents of the previous owner unless publicly agreed with the residents wich doesn`t seems the case

blame the old sim owner who ran with the sales money instead of returning it to the residents, not the new owner wich just bought a clean island

At the very least the old owner should have told the tenants he was selling, and the new owner should give a reasonable time fro them to move out.

It has everything to do with your statement!

"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.

Have you heard of a Landbaron Merlin? He/she use to make a living doing exactly whatt you quoted above. Do a google search on that name and you'll find numerous stories.
Here's one for starters http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=12066

I remember the days this forum was littered with lost money/land stories due to Land bots or have you conveniently forgotten?....we've move on now.......its Private Island scams that's become fashionable to report on.

all blames reside with the previous owner for not warning their residents of the sale

by the op`s post, the new owner gave them a couple days to packup instead of whiping the island clean and use it straight away as what was payed for

edit, you all know i don`t like this practice 1 bit, but blaming the new owner is redicilous

Rubbish. The new owner has bought the sim, at a discount and has treated the existing residents disgracefully and therefore has aided and abetted the scam. If they wanted a new blank sim then they should have purchased a new blank sim. Knowing what they were getting into, knowing what was going on, that makes them as bad as the seller.

for all we know, the deal between them WAS for a blank sim, if the previous owner did not take care of this, you can`t blame the new owner

I'm sory but this scam exists because people keep excusing greedy buyers. Buyers have a responsibility, whilst people excuse buyers it's a scam that is all too easy to engage in and in this case it appears that the buyer knew that residents were going to be ripped off, which makes the buyer equally as guilty in the scam. Greedy buyers paying more than the true worth of an island are very much part of this problem.

Hopefully those threads have educated people to be careful when selling their land, to not make the mistakes that allowed the landbots to thrive in the first place. Check your figures, check the name you are selling to, don't hit OK until you are sure.

Yes I can. The new owner should be paying the price of the island minus any outstanding commitments. That's what the island is worth. Then the new owner pays the outstanding commitments to existing residents, the seller then doesn't get to pocket that money.