The great land grab

Nice to have such trust..sadly as the author of this thread has proven..that trust is only too frequently cast aside. As an island owner myself (I don't rent it out..not yet anyway) I'm amazed that I have the ability to sub-devide my land..sell/rent it off section by section..then sell it again as a complete island...leaving the residents stranded.

What a great money making scheme..

1/ Buy an Island
2/ Sub-devide the Island
3/ Rent/Sell each sub-devision of the Island
4/ Now sell the whole Island (from under your tenants)
5/ Ignore complaints..don't worry it's cool, LL are ignoring the complaints also.

Only it's not cool..and it's time Linden Labs got their act together and put a stop to such fraudulent transactions.

Well then in that case, the Estate Owner never must use the word "Buy", because you never buy, just are renting with set up or not set up fee.

If i get webspace for host my website, i know that i'm not buying it, just renting.

So if you really want "buy" land in SL you'll need buy the server where your plot is hosted.

I guess that everyone is missing some detail: yes, the former estate owner is an asshole for sell the sim and not compensate the "owners" of plots, but also it is the new estate owner, because nobody buy a complete sim and dont check what's happening there.

It's almost sure that the new estate owner knew it that in his sim there are tenants, owners of plot, even before buy it.

So if he decide to buy with that knowledge and then he kick you, he's a really bastard. Imagine that situation in RL: I buy a building, i know that families live there and i just say: what the hell, i'll kick them, i know that the former owner never will compensate them and it's their business get a new home.

If i would be in that situation (the guy who buy the sim) i'll put as condition to the former owner do a public meeting or sent some document to all the group where he compromises to solve the problem of reallocation of the current tenants.

What if the new owner was misled and didn't know that you all "bought" your lots? I'm not saying that that is the case here, but you all keep missing the common denominator - the seller. The seller is the one with all the cards. The seller is the one with all the information. The seller is the one who roped people into an obligation that he may not keep. The seller should terminate his obligation to you prior to passing ownership of the land, but unscrupulous ones don't. Why should a buyer be obligated to pay, if the buyer is purchasing for personal use? It shouldn't matter, because it's the seller who controls how this whole thing shakes out, and too many sellers want to take the money and run.

Cristalle: i dont think so that someone can pay more than 1000 USD for a land that he never saw before, did he bought in SLX (in marketplace section) or what?

I guess that even for rent an small 512 sqm you check first the zone, read the convenant, ask to the neighbors, etc.

Yes, the seller is creating the big scam here, but i just said that nobody noticed that the guy who bought has also part of the fault in this scam. If you are buying to a robber, then you have part of the responsibility.

The buyer dont have to compensate to the the current owners of the plots, but at least must make sure that the former estate owner must solve this situation.

An island is an island. Some may have tenants on it, but an island is a canvas to do whatever you want once you own it. It's just pixels. The new owner could have plans for a completely different layout of the island. Why should he be beholden to people he didn't bring in?

In real life the buyer would have both a moral and a legal obligation to ensure the people on the land have a roof over their heads before they are evicted. Both legally and morally a certain amount of time would need to be given before they would have to move.

In SL shelter is not an issue. The only issue is financial. The seller took their money originally, the seller is receiving financial gain from the sale of the estate. All responsibility should therefore fall on the seller. You may argue that the buyer has a moral obligation, but that is an opinion and it's one I am not sure I would agree with.

Because behind every tenant there is a real person, this is not The Sims where you can evict families as you kill flies.

I think that the behavior of an avi say a lot of his/her alter ego in RL. Just my opinion.

It's true Bradley, what i say it's just an opinion, not a fact or a law. But if your point is correct, then why i must be polite and repect the others in SL? this is not RL as you say, so i can, and must, grief all the world of SL right? after all, this is just a virtual enviroment.

Well i dont share your opinion as you dont share mine.

I didn't say I don't share you viewpoint. I said I'm not sure I do. Morally you're probably right. I probably shouldn't have jumped in because I'm not interested in discussing moral and philosophical questions here. I'm interested in how this can be resolved and made to work in the future in SL.

I guess I'm looking at it practically. From a practical standpoint all obligation should fall on the seller plain and simple. To go beyond that would require a lot of documentation, fact checking, validation, book keeping, etc, which would be ridiculous. This is not escrow on a home. We're talking space on a server here.

well if we dont consider the moral and philosophical issues then the answer is: no, the tenants dont have any resource against bad behavior and scams of their estate owner. It's just a matter of trust.

What can we do to solve this? well only LL have the power to punish people, maybe we can create some kind of organization of consumer defense, with some public black list or some like that.

And there are a lot less peeps and lot more bots.

Missed a few steps
1/ Create a free alt
2/ Buy an Island
3/ Sub-divide the Island
4/ Rent/Sell each sub-devision of the Island
5/ Create another new free alt
6/ When it is near full sell the whole island to the new alt (from under tenants)
7/ Forget about 1st alt, throw account in bin
8/ Go to step 3

Complaints? AR's? What you don't know doesn't worry you.

Ideally LL should end the ability to "sell" land on private estates in the client due to the amount of criminal activity it causes.

Since that wont happen I suggest :

In the client, for private estate land when you buy or search for land it should say "lease land from another resident" instead of refering to it as buying land.
This way you know you are at the mercy of another resident.

I wonder if a legal case could be made against LL for misleading people into thinking they are buying land from a person when LL wont honour the sale (they treat the land as still owned by the island owner) even though the sale goes through their clients land sale option.

I think that is the same thing, because in both cases, LL must modify the platform / viewer. We can't do nothing.

But we can proppose create some kind of ISO or whatever certification where the community approve and trust in some land baron / company.

You can't become a Concierge user without giving identification, even if you somehow fund the island from L$. Although people could use alts to do this, "free alts" make no difference.

This really wouldn't be hard to fix. Simply make the owners of parcels in a private sim real owners. Allow sim owners to reclaim the land for 90% of the original purchase price and don't allow user to user transfers of sim parcels. I can't believe the coding and database additions for this would be particularly significant.

I doubt LL would be interested in making private island parcel owners real owners, I imagine they're quite happy with only having to support one resident per sim. When private islands were first made available in 2004, you could not transfer plots within them to another resident, the ability to do so is a more recent and deliberate addition.

I think your reclaim idea is a good one, but I would suggest that it should be 100%.

I hope you are going to thoroughly investigate both sides of every story before you add someone's name to your Blacklist, otherwise it is nothing but organized griefing possibly slander. And sometimes even after a thorough examination, the truth is not what appears obvious.

The solution you are referring to is what is commonly called "mainland". Why pay $1675 for a private estate if you can't kick a user who needs to be kicked off your estate? Not every estate kick is unjustified. Some people deserve it for not paying tier, griefing, etc.

Anyway the difference here is US $ and Linden $. LL has a legal obligation under the trade laws of the US to provide the product a customer has paid US $1675 for. US laws govern this. But US laws don't govern Linden bucks and every user who joins has been informed of this fact per the TOS.

Once again I will say that the only way to stop this is for buyers to educate themselves and know what they are getting when they "buy" estate land.

I like the term "lease" for what is called "buy" fpr estates. I am staying long term, can landscape and have full control over my parcel and can sell it when I decide to leave. "Rent" would be good for a short term , with limited control over the land.

Well if you take money for the land on the sim as parcels, your $1675 (probably plus a little more) is being repaid by the people you "sell" your land to. This isn't an uncommon business model, some relatively well known folks have made a million dollars using it! You buy the sim, resell parcels on it, then use the money to buy the next sim. Then you make a profit every month on the differential between sim tier and tier people pay you for their smaller parcels.

Under my idea of forcing repayment to "owners" if you want to kick them, you still have the option to kick, you just need to reimburse them and resell the parcel. That allows ownership (which is important to some business models where the money from selling parcels funds the sim purchase) and profit from tier differential, but allows you to have reasonable management rights. Which are why people are buying in private islands anyway.

Mainland isn't an answer for two reasons. First, it doesn't solve the problem with fraud. And second, as I said, people don't purchase on private islands randomly. Whatever side of the mainland/private island side you're on, the difference is "homeowners association" style management and covenants. Some of us want that. Very much.

The real key to all of this is people want to "own" land, but they want a covenant to protect the character of their land. And people want that covenant enough to risk losing their money rather than live on the mainland.

I guess making new residents read the fact that they can lose land would be quite funny.

The thing, if you rent off someone instead of owning the land yourself - you risk a lot.

Simple fact. Also many people fail to read the knowledge base which results in people calling support when in fact the answer is present in the knowledge base.

Mainland often costs more per sim, well it did until the last land glut and although tier is lower, when you sell a mainland parcel, it stays sold.

In some ways the land models are arse about face. Mainland you pay lower tier, yet LL manage all the different parcels and tier payments and yet on estate, where the estate owner is the only person dealing with LL, tier is higher. I know this is due to added value with terraforming etc. but the estate owner is in many ways a LL franchise. He or she collects the payments and takes care of billing, it's less hassle for LL.

This is what I was talking about with people who buy sims on their credit cards instead of actually having the money for them. Its speculative as to whether they will be able to recover their money because of the way they have structured their business plan.



So basically an island owner would get repaid tier only, but not repaid for all the hours they spend helping new people get set up, keeping peace on the island, etc. Its a lot of work, and you'd be surprised how many people expect to have HOURS spent with them in exchange for tier payments only. The person who bought the sim also wants to be repaid for putting the money upfront. In the tier-only model, it happens, but it takes longer.




Mainland does stop the problem with people who buy being able to have their land taken away. It can only be taken away by LL in that case, or when the owner themselves makes a mistake setting their land for sale, it may get eaten by a landbot, which is the owner's fault for setting it on sale too cheaply.

I agree with you on the point that on private estates there are "HOA" style management & covenants, but should sim owners just be expected to provide 24/7 service for free? As well as assuming the upfront risk of putting cash down with no chance of repayment except through tier payments? Its a nice idea for buyers but most estate owners, as you said, recover their monies through "sale" of parcels.



Why should an owner be forced to repay for the monies in a case where they had to kick someone who was defacing the neighborhood or otherwise breaking covenant? It would only encourage griefers and also encourage bad behavior from those who want to get out of their agreement, therefore nullifying the purpose of even having one.

I have had to kick people off my estates before for breaking the covenant, for all sorts of things from spinning flashing signs & overturned cars in the yard, shooting neighbors or sexually molesting them, to just discouraging new renters from coming in because they didn't want someone to live next to them, & even flat out extortion saying "If you don't do as i say I will send a team of griefers to your island to crash the sim."

As I said before, the reason I got away from residential on my own private estates was because I was 100% sick and tired of people who didn't read the covenant and "bought" from me at 0 or $1L and then tried to resell for a profit when I don't allow resale, thought they didn't have to pay tier, or whined at me because it wasn't fair that my land was for "sale" in the linden list when really they were only renting and I was such a fraudster (even though in some cases they hadn't paid me a linden)

I really think the only solution is for people to educate themselves. Its a very common axiom: "Let the buyer beware."

That and the US $ factor are why LL recognizes only the estate owner as the one who controls the private sim.