Homestead Pricing to be Grandfathered if purchased before July 1st, 2009

July 2nd and onwards I'll wager your wish will come true. I always said they should offer them at a lesser rate to estate owners to allow for competition, once that deadline is passed they will be able to sell direct...watch the blog space.

I asked this on the blog comment section too: Do you have to own a full mainland sim to buy a homestead sim? If you buy one from a resident (homestead sim) and they sell their mainland parcel and/or their homestead again, do you lose your investment, like 'renting' from someone on a sim? (Those landlords that call it 'buying' the lot when you are really just renting it and paying your part of the tier to the landlord.) How does it work?

Thanks.

Oh and about the announcement, really at this point, I think Linden Labs was darned if they did and darned if they didn't. At least in the long run a lot of people (who'd have kept their sim either way) will be saving some money.

My current belief regarding the rationale for this is twofold:

1) "Homestead" purchases have ground to a halt in anticipation of the increase to $125. In addition, sales of other products, especially mainland, have failed to make up for the lack of "homestead" sales. This is because the original openspace product was a great product that appealed to a large variety of customers, and no other product can adequately replace it.

Linden Lab has learned their mistake by being confronting reality. In my opinion, the reasoning for the November openspace policy was to try to make customers use other products (full sims and mainland) instead of openspaces. This tactic failed miserably. Thus, they are implementing the original marginal solution proposed by many back in November: grandfathering. Unfortunately, they will find that the number of reactivated "homesteads" is low because of how they alienated customers.

2) Linden Lab is seeking a quick boost in revenue for some purpose. That is why they are allowing new "homesteads" purchased in June to have grandfathering: it's a sales tactic to try to get a rush of new customers. To those who doubt it is merely a sales tactic, one only has to see how prominently it is advertised on the main Second Life page.

This revenue boost's purpose is most likely to offset a drop in the economy when they activate their new adult policy. Undoubtedly with age verification, not only the primdong market, but lots of other markets, will drop as well, along with land sales. This is to beef up their revenue in anticipation of this; to allow LL to survive adequately though such an extreme transition (similarly to what happened during the casino ban.)

ll dont really want you to sell your sim. theyd rather see you abandon yours and your potential buyer order one from ll. this is reflected in the glacial process speed and steep penalty fees associated with the transferring of a sim, fees that make it impossible to recoup more than a few hundred $ off a sim you paid 1000-1700 to ll for.

if you want to buy a homestead from LL directly you don't need to own a mainland sim but a private sim, and yes buying or leasing or renting a homestead from another resident has the same risks as when you buy rent lease a parcel on a private sim, offcourse the risk goes both ways, if a tenant packs up and leave the estate owner still has to pay tier to LL

Thank you Abigail

yes there would be that risk to the homestead landlord but not quite equal to that of the tenant i.e. if landlord packs up the land and sells it, the tenant is out the money AND the land...

Ty very much for your reply & info.

Well,,,you were right all along on the first part,so i'm hopeful for the second part