Land Bubble has Officially Burst, and LL Pours it On!

Right. And if that were really all that's involved in the process, then the margin should be infinitesimal, because it's dealing in what's essentially a commodity, and the business has very low barriers to entry: just the cost of money for the capital investment in land inventory, some tier expense to service the inventory, and maybe (maybe not) some advertising--tiny compared to other significant in-world businesses. But that's not really all it is: rather, it's a risk-reward thing, wherein the costs have a substantial risk of not being recouped in the eventual sale price.

So, in the long run, market fluctuations are the reason land dealers have any margin at all. (I suspect that's why there's not all that much outcry from this business as land prices plummet; the ones prepared for that will be the ones able to command attractive profits when the market plateaus again, their weaker competitors having retreated from the market.)

The middlemen who buy whole sims for resale simply do what LL used to do in the First Land program.
If there were no middlemen to buy the sims, LL would sell smaller parcels direct. They would get more sale revenue that way, but they couldn't be bothered while people buy entire sims.
It's not rocket science.
A bot could do the subdivision. Some thought has to be put into irregular roadside parcels, but those sims are in the minority.

LL needs to make their auction system work better (like the old one did) before they cut out the land flipper middleman.

Plus, if every new parcel was offered in auction only, middlemen would just buy their parcels at auction since SL has very few end users to absorb the land.

Which is the same as saying that the middlemen have very few end users to absorb the land.

Hmmmmmmmm!
Middlemen just buy land for the hell of it?

I have no idea. I can't think of a good reason why there are still any land flippers left who are not bot runners. You'd have to work hours a day to make a buck or two in profits.

Maybe they want to cut out the land flipper middleman.

Hi hon,

I'm just poking around SL again for a bit. Is Anshe Chung still a fake millionaire from her virtual land, or has this land crash I'm hearing about taken her down too?

(Also...can't say as this was a huge surprise....)

Oi!

Yeah. She's basically gone. A spent force. Utterly ruined.

I spotted her up in the new Moreland continent in the North.
She had bought a 512 for L$2345 and was trying to flip it for L$2355. L$10 is the markup on all her deals now.

At least, I think it was her.

There are enough flippers around to make it viable, until the end of the chain gets reached and someone gets stuck with the parcel.

Kinda like Musical Chairs...

The problem is that the music stopped a while back, and everyone is afraid to sit down, lest they be the one who can't find a seat.

Edit: clarified.

just like pass the parcel at parties then?

Edit: damn you Talarus!!!

If the minimum parcel size is 512, and the group bonus is restructured so that you get a free 512 with every 4096 owned, I could see mainland going a long way toward improving.

Not going to happen. It's been suggested hundreds of times and they're just not going to do it.

Way to be a killjoy, Meade.

jk.

Land flippers, as you call them, are indeed middlemen, but then so are landbots, so are LL in their auctions, so are estate holders who rent out their sim land.

The only way LL would permanently get rid of 'middlemen' is to permanently devalue mainland and private sims. Many human middlemen are not just in SL to make money. We play here too, and if LL let the market flounder for 6 months, and drove out 90% of botrunners and land flippers, those of us who use LL for reasons other than money would still be here to start afresh when the market started to rebound.

But sqaubling about who is a middleman and what value they hold for SL doesn't answer the much more important question of LL's motivation for trashing the land market at the moment. I say trashing because most previous crashes didn't go this low (buying an entire new private sim is cheaper than buying a mainland sim atm, at least until tier fees kick in) or last as long as I believe this one will (I don't see major gains happening till late August/early September myself, unless LL's big news brings in a population boom). So why is LL doing this?

The laggiest place on earth.

My definition of a land flipper is someone who buys parcels in competition with everyone else, but puts them back on the market immediately at a higher price.
If if they do a fig leaf of slapping down a few prims, they add no value. THey simply add cost.

The market is only thrashed for those who are in the market to sell what they buy.
My group has just over half a sim of land that was not cheap even when ordinary land was expensive.
If we sell any, it is only to buy somewhere else.
If we originally bought at 20 and sell at 2, it's no matter if we are buying the replacement at 2.
The land is for playing on.

No way to know because they don't give us information. Jack said he would be updating us from time to time about their land plans. Just another thing that he lied about.

To stop "land flipping", could always do something interesting like impose a 1-month "no resale" restriction. IE, you buy a piece of land, it is definitely yours, for one month. Land flipping depends on quick turnarounds. Denying quick turnarounds would put a squeeze on those whose business model is simply making a quick buck.

Yes. That would be good. It would have to be combined with measures to ensure that group Land Available could not go more negative than a given percentage or for more than a given time.
There are legit reasons for it to go negative, but I understand that there are those who abuse it in pursuit of the mighty dollar.


Flooding the market only impedes land-flipping while the market remains flooded.
As soon as a shortage appears overall or in a particular sector, the flippers will return instanto.

It's threads like this one that reminds me why I moved to OpenSim. I now have my own mini-continent (9 sim in a 3 X 3 grid) running on my PC. Yes, 9 X 65k m sqr. At 45,000 prims capacity each. cost? free! And I'm moving all my full perms stuff from SL into it with Second Inventory. To hell with SL.
And yes, I can let others connect to my grid anytime I wish. Maybe once I have completed the landscaping and building, I'll make the connection permanent.
Bliss, contentment and peace...

My point was that land flippers aren't the only middlemen in SL, and they aren't even the majority, when you consider the bots, private sim owners, and LL's auctions. Your personal land buying strategies are your business. I'm talking about overall market conditions and the things that drive them.

And sitting around demonizing those in SL you don't agree with STILL doesn't get us any closer to figuring out LL's motivation in trashing the overall mainland market.

Divine Dragons cannot be damned, only blessed.

Well, until we damn ourselves, anyway.. :-/

Hiyas Becky.

Nah shes doing fine, because of whats being discussed other thread where they can "SELL" parts of their private island (but still retain absolute ownship of what they sell).


So her huge mega empire of islands was bought and paid for by those she sold parcels to, who have less legal right to their land than a tenant would renting.