SL Land

I was reading around on the SL page about buying or renting land for my own uses now, if I read this correctly I would have to pay Linded around say 75 dollars per month along with the premium charges for 1/4 a region, unless there is a purchase before you pay the 75 dollars. Can someone help me understand that? I want a place where I can rez a house for myself and my partner and possibly allow a few friends to rez their homes there

Mainland you will have to pay a one off fee to purchase the land too. The price varies depending upon where the land is. You pay this fee to the resident who is selling the land rather than Linden Lab. Linden Lab will then bill you directly.

Alternatively you can rent land from another resident, you will not pay tier to Linden Lab, but you will pay another resident and if they decide to stop renting the land you'll have to move. Linden Lab are the most trustworthy landlord here so if you want more control then buy the land but there are many long term landlords who are unlikely to boot you out on a whim.

A quarter of a region is quite a decent sized plot. A private estate rental might suit your needs better than buying a mainland parcel.

You don't need 1/4th region for a house, you can have fun with much less space... unless you insist on living in a castle.

If you want to own on mainland, then yes, you have to be a premium member to own it and you pay those fees to LL. You also need to pay the price to buy the land you want. And you need to pay monthly fees for the use of this land. Pro-side is, you own the land and unless you do something to piss LL off, you won't be kicked out from your land.

You can also rent land on a private estate owner. In this case, you do not need to be a premium member, buy price varies and you also pay monthly or weekly fees, but not to LL, to the estate owner. If you want to go that route, do yourself a real favour and check out land prices and sizes for a bit, get to know a feel for how much you want to pay and how much you NEED to pay. Also, ask around for reliable estate owners. There have been a lot of people telling stories about the owner taking their money and then kicking them out soon after that - and an estate owner can do pretty much that without LL bothering, because here you are not actually buying the land, but renting it.

For any amount of land (assuming you are not renting it from another resident), you'd have to be hold a premium account first. Then you'd buy the land you wanted. Land values are currently low, but as the seller sets the price there are still parcels for sale at ridiculously high prices. Location and the shape of the parcel have a bearing on the price too, just like RL.

As soon as you own land, LL will start charging you tier. The first 512m of land you own is tier-free. So if you owned exactly 1536m, you pay tier on 1024m at US$8 per month. Also note that if you go over the maximum allowed for a particular level of tier (even by a tiny amount), you are due the full amount of the next level. So if you owned 1552m your tier would be US$15 just for the extra 16m.

If you wanted to own 1/4 sim, it would indeed cost you US$75 per month.

NB: you can get a 10% bonus to the amount of land for a particular level of tier by forming a group and owning the land through that group, so for us$75 you could hold as much as (16384 + 512) x 1.1 = 16944m.

That group has to hold at least two members at any time btw or it will be soon disbanded by LL and you lose the land the group holds.

hehe, good point. LL don't like groups of one. Your main account and an alt is the safest bet.

So in laymans terms I have to pay the FULL price of the land first then the monthly fee's and all? :/ Maybe I should go out and get a job just to buy from LL >_>

Membership gets pretty cheap if you pay quarterly or yearly - take into account that they will give you back L$300 weekly. You can get a decent size piece of land where the tier will only cost you $15-$25 per month -- and truthfully, for the smaller plots like this, it is actually cheaper to make your alt Premium also. And even cheaper is to rent the extra tier above the 512 level.

There is the upfront cost to actually buy the plot though. However, many areas are currently running around L$4 / m.

It's a tradeoff. It may be slightly cheaper to go premium and buy land outright and LL may be the most reliable landlords, but there are almost no rules. Your neighbors may put up a giant blinking, partical spewing, noise making shrine to Elvis or something, filled with lag inducing scripts and surround you with ugly ban lines, and there won't be a thing you can do about it.

Having said that, I just bought another mainalnd 4096m+512m off to one side (which is free for premium members or used to be) for about $70.00 US initially and it will cost me around $25.00 US per month. That's more room and prims than I know what to do with. It looks like it's in a polite neighborhood, but that can change. Shop carefully for mainland.

Private estates will be more controlled and may be a more pleasant experience for one's first land.

Also, don't let anyone tell you that non-premium residents are freeloading. When I or my alt are non-premium, we are still paying quite a bit to LL just to purchase Lindens. I'd find the platform boring indeed without liquid assets.

When I first came to Second Life, I thought I needed a lot of land. I spent a lot of money on 8000 sq m, built a huge house. Over the months, I came to realize that I did not use very much of my huge chunk of land and my huge house.

Now I have my 512 sq m mainland that comes tier-free with my Premium account. I am quite happy with it. I am happier with it than the huge place I used to have.