Auction Action Imminent?

Land is now at a base of L$8.0 a meter. This is the high end of the range LL said they wanted to keep prices. Could the mainland sim drop be coming?

Hope so. The more actual people, the better, as opposed to alts and/or bots. Lower prices mean more residents.

I'm always interested in watching this sort of thing too.

Rarely is the land market so simple; I'm pretty sure there are lots and lots of awful parcels, and a little bit of (temporary) upward pressure might still be a good thing. Correct the market now, and watch the glut drown the grid in unused land along about April...

Anybody have recent definitive stats, beyond what Meta Linden shows? I know there used to be some websites out there soooomewhere with some insightful stuff...

there's this one, but for full sim auctions only, last updated Sept. 06 2007:

http://cosyhome.org/cgi-bin/auc_statistics/auction-stats.html

Another thing of note: Decent parcels sell in seconds. In August, if you didn't list at the very top of search, even flat green would sit for days.

Interesting.

I've always subscribed to the 'seasonal' effect, though it's turning out a little differently this year than I had expected. I.e. it's happening a shade later than I thought, and softer in impact.

One thing I didn't expect that bucks the trend: the concurrency numbers are higher than I'd ever expected. What is it, 57k peak lately?

I'm sure there is a significant, significant bot population, but even so, unless ten thousand of them have been added just in recent weeks it seems we have some real population coming back in here.

The downside of a 'seasonal' effect would be this, though: watch the numbers drop significantly in northern hemisphere spring.

This is why I would be a bit concerned if there was a land market correction from our service provider at this stage. If the population dips quickly this winter, new mainland will still be around to dog us economically all summer.

Well, it seems to me that a few people haven't noticed the prices. In my home sim, only 5 blocks are for sale.

4096 for L$250,000 - reduced from L$1mil
1024 for L$46,000
1024 for L$$40,000
512 for L$17,000
512 for L$20,000 - reduced from L$25k

They've all be on sale for a number of months now. Seems a little silly, to me.

I recently sold about ten parcels form 1024 to 512 of flat green in nice area for 8.3 per sq m and they were bought in a day by a several land resellers who put them up for about $9 per sq m! I had done the land for sale search and thought 8.3 was a fair price and would take a while to sell. But now they are just sitting there at the new price. Fortunately some are being bought by people wanting to live in the area (it is a nice neighborhood) but I was surprised. Land is definitely going up or else nice neighborhoods are worth more than I realized.

There is coast land next to mine on sale for $15 per sq m which I won't buy though. But I did pay $L13 for land in the middle of a project I'm doing also in a nice area from a neighbor I like.

I don't travel around SL as much as I used to since I'm busy on my projects. It may be that my home sims are nicer than I realized!

I saw some 512m2 lots in Old SL going for 29k to 85k.

People always do this.. I know of 512's that have been sitting around at +L$50k for over a year now. I think it just means that the owner is open to the idea of selling but doesn't want just anybody to grab it..

one in my sim was set to 99k a while back... its gov land atm I believe

Could be, but look how long it took for prices to recover to this point. As an aside, when did you notice $8L a meter? I looked yesterday and the lowest parcels were still $7.4L-7.5L

I think its more complex than just keeping land prices at a certain level. I do think the Lindens want to maintain a sense of value for virtual land. That's a hard perception to maintain during periods of dramatic price drops. The land barons who mostly buy mainland sims and resell the pieces aren't going to make the minimum bid if they can't resell at a profit and a 30 sim dump kinda precludes that. Also, despite record concurrency SL still seems like a ghost town even with over 58,000 online because of all the land dumped previously. If SL is supposed to be a social environment I would think population density matters.

My bet is that LL will be more conservative about releasing sims for awhile.

It's feeling like Spring again...

Who said landbots put these people out of business? I thought they did, but clearly I was wrong. But that's okay.... they may end up selling to a landbot anyway if they priced it too high. 'Twould serve them right.

So what is a fair price for decent land (not filled with junk)? L$8 per sqm? L$10 per sqm? L$13 per sqm? And how much is that affected if it includes some water? I ask because some of you get around more than I do to other sims, and have a better sense of what's moving right now.

Thanks,
Princess Ivory

Can't tell you what a decent price would be - somebody else will though, I'm sure - but does it really matter if it's filled with junk? Once you own a piece of land, you can wipe it totally clean in about 10 seconds.. There may be a psycological impact on buyers if it doesn't look pretty but it really doesn't matter. It's all location, location, location, IMO.

FOr decent pricing I generally check the minimum mainland on the land for sale page, then go up a bit

No, I meant I didn't want the surrounding area filled with junk!

I sort out plots below 512 meters when searching so I see prices a bit higher. I agree they will be conservative when the sims start coming to auction again. We wouldn't have to guess if Jack kept posting to the blog but he seems to have stopped that temporary communication on land activity that he was doing.

Unless you are buying a huge plot, it's fine to pay a L$1 or two above the base per meter price. In the long run, it's the tier that is really your expense, not the purchase price. But yes, the junkier your surroundings, the cheaper it is usually. You do have to pay for your view. And there's no guarantee the nice view won't get junky the next week. That's why I prefer established areas with not a lot of surrounding plots for sale.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/12/07/land-supply-and-pricing-for-late-2007-and-through-q1-2008/

Good news regarding tier. Bad news if you were wanting to buy a full Mainland sim in December. Unless you want to make me an offer on Liome. Even those who wait till January will be bidding on mostly granite blobs.

I thought the full sim auctions would be coming sooner because I saw the base was L$8.0 for parcels 512 or larger. Jack says the AVERAGE price is L$6.3. So obviously, the landbot runners must be doing VERY WELL for themselves since you and me and the other average Joes will never see land that cheap even at the base, let alone an average. They are also calculating parcels smaller than 512 into their matrix.

It's weird that his earlier comment about average price closely matched the base price that we see in land search, but is so far off now.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/10/18/update-on-mainland-supply-and-auctions/

I'm not sure I like his way of calculating. The way he sees it, prices are holding steady, but the reality for regular (non-bot) land buyers is that it's gone up 2 L/m in the past two months.

Economic stats says it's still in the 6's.. http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php

Can landbots really be grabbing that much, that quick to keep the search/land page off by two L$/m2???

It must be land bots and people transferring land within groups and alts doing it. At the moment, 16's and up are bottomed out at 7.4 and 512s are at 7.9.

For sure, it's gone up quite a bit lately and land that's set for sale does not sit as long, especially anything that's half decent that gets listed for around L$8.0-8.2 a meter.
Does he think we don't watch these things?

I don't know beans about land and auctions; I just wanted to comment on the wonderfully snazzy headline nature of your thread title.

Thanks. It's much better than the headlines I get paid to write: Let Princess Cruises Take You to the Best of Alaska for Less.