Asking advice from landlords/renters

Hi all:

I've recently tried my hand in the housing rental business and I'm not having much luck at it so I figured I'd come here to see what I could get in the way of advice/help/tips.

How do you figure out how to strike a balance between making a profit and charging too much? I don't think I can go into too much detail here as they don't allow products to be advertised and that would come fairly close to it.

But any advise from landlords and/or tenants of housing would be a great help.

Thanks

It's a very competitive market and it's a market where you need to be prepared to make an initial loss, it's not a quick buck making industry.

People will pay more if they like the place, so going for the cheapest option won't always work. You need to advertise to attract tenants. Patience is definitely important.

Hubby and I own "business" land in SL, but we recently went searching for a rental property to plop a house on. I can tell you from a renter's perspective what we went searching for--and while price was a consideration, the "perfect" location will certainly bring in a few more Lindens! It seemed like most "aesthetically pleasing" property was priced the same--around $3700 per week for an 8092 with 1859 prim. Some were higher (prime beach front); some was lower (tons of neighbors with businesses on either side); but that seemed to be about the average.

First, we wanted a very LOW lag, or NO lag, location. Any lag sent us packing. Second, we checked out the neighboring plots (especially when we looked at "covenant" land). We ruled out sims and plots that had neighboring huge builds that were overbearing, "junk" or just flat out horrid to look at. I know one landlord (baron) had a plot that was next to a recreation of what appeared to be a auto junkyard. It wasn't something I wanted to look out on from the bedroom window. Third, we looked at traffic numbers for the adjoining plots. Just because we weren't lagging when we were there perusing the place didn't mean that when the neighboring plot had 50 friends over there wouldn't be a problem. We also wanted a plot where we could put our OWN house--one we chose, or where we were given a couple of choices. I think that's soooo important, as evidenced by the "where do you live" thread. Everyone has different taste, and I know we walked away from a couple of very inexpensive places that had houses already on them that just weren't our "style." When I first came to SL I can remember looking for rentals and just being appalled at what some folks passed off as "liveable." It took a LONG time to find a place that I liked, and I wish some landlords had offered "choices" of various homes and/or furnishings upon rental. My first place had lots of options like that--color changing rugs, furniture, etc., but that was sooo hard to find.

Anyway, this time, hubby and I finally settled on a piece of covenant land that had a great view, quiet and unassuming builds next to it, was a fully residential sim, and had a covenant that was "strict" without being obnoxious. The sim owners had terraformed beautifully, allowing privacy without breaking up the "feel" of the sim as a whole. They had also placed some very beautiful trees and bridges that just made it feel like home, even though they were "returnable."

That's just my perspective, but it boiled down to, for us, location, location, location.

where is this at Arielyn? i wouldnt mind opening a club there jk

LOL....luckily we have a fabulous landlord with a strict residential policy. ;P With that said, I do have a nice piece of "business" land you might want to consider....rofl....it's right next to an adult club on one side, with a yard full of "tornado" damaged furniture, complete with a static tornado, on the other. Yeah, I think we're stuck with it for now.

Ok so basically a nice quiet lag free sim is pretty much the common theme I've found when doing research, now I'm not a sim/estate owner (yet) I'm renting a parcel from a pretty nice beach sim, it's largely undeveloped so if I can get successful I've got a lot of ideas that the EM seems to like.

Anywhoo back on topic (without giving too much info away and violate the rules). Say someone had a plot that was 4096sqm/937 prim. Would it be more effective to cut that parcel into 4 "lots" and put 4 houses down offering a cheaper rent (and a community feel); or would it be better to cut the parcel into 2 "lots" (the lots being for private media which is a big thing I hear) charging more rent but having a) more land to put stuff and b) more prim to play with.

Last option being do I just put down 1 house, make the plot into an oasis (it's a beach sim) and be forced to change an insanely high rent.

It's tough to make those calls, trying to figure out what a renter is willing/can afford to pay and what the property (aesthetic wise) is actually worth.

Next thing is to figure out if rented want land that light commercial con be developed on, I know on the other side of the sim I'm on there's a small nice looking club with some of NYC designs shops (most haven't been rented) but it's done very tastefully.

Next problem I'm having is advertising, the lack of $L to do it with particularly. I can't afford to sink RL cash so I had to work my rear end off to be able to afford what I have now (which isn't bad looking I've been told).

The marketing is definitely my weak point, I love doing the design/planning/layout but I'm horrible at the actual selling aspect of it (something I'm hoping to learn)>

Cutting a 4096 into four leaves SOOOOO few prim!! I mean you have to find a low prim house; low prim furniture; etc. Putting down a whole house with less than 250 prim would be, I would think, next to impossible and still be "liveable" with personal touches. Also, the term "light commerical" says, to me, "slippery slope." I wouldn't rent there for the simple fact that "light commercial" is VERY subjective. I'm anxious to see where this thread goes.

Well light commercial meaning there's a small art gallery, medium sized club and a few shops. I know the agent for the sim and he would not tolerate and kind of crappy developments or huge buildings on his land. We had an issue with some dolt dropping mega prims all over the place, going over other peoples parcels and generally being a jackass, yeah we banned together and got him booted quick.

What I've kinda decided to do on this sim is offer lower rent (500/week 150prim furnished or unfirnished...etc...etc) and establish myself as a good landlord first, then move into another sim once i've got my base and do what I really want to do (and can afford to do) which is super luxury homes (I'm pretty picky when it comes to comfort and I'm a bit of a perfectionist).

No, either put minimal apartment building on that lot or cut it in half at most, not in quarters.

Charge a very low price for apartments, pre furnish them with very low prim furnishings. Do not charge extra for the furniture (of course it stays in the building, they don't keep it). If they don't want to use yours offer to remove it so they can rez their own. Enforce a prim limit but make it enough so they can at least put in a pose stand, bed and chair/sofa.

If you rent a half lot, shop around or make a low prim house for it, or offer them landmarks to places that sell them. Maybe also landmarks to low prim furniture shops.

To be honest the original lot is what I'd rent out, but you might have trouble finding a tenant. Hard to say. If it is a beautiful low lag sim and you are a good landlord (personable, honorable and accessible when necessary) then someone might be dreaming of renting that size lot.

Prims go really fast; view and prim allowance as well as price are key, imo.

Regarding the 4096 sqm plot

4 lots might cause a privacy issue....i think you can read chat from 30m or so. Would probably go for 2 plot split (2048 sqm each with 468 prims). Hard to see that you can make much money from a 4096sqm plot versus the rent or tier you already pay.

A 4096 sqm is likely to cost between 7-8k per month.....means you need to generate 4k from each 2048sqm plot per mth to cover Tier (or small profit).....that's getting onto a 1000 L pw to charge client.

To have any hope of offering competitive rates, you need to have at least one region's worth of land.

What that does, is give you enough discount that you can offer smaller parcels for roughly the same tier as people would pay anyway on the mainland. Of course a lot of us charge just a bit more for premium land... but the real reason is survival. You'll have times without tenants, but tier is still ticking away.

A quick note about lag ~ generally a no lag region is the last thing a resident wants. Why? Because no lag means no usage by others. Which means someone is paying full region tier for one person to enjoy their little house ~ guess how long that will last. That lovely view is costing *somebody*.

There are a few things that can be done though, such as 'buffer' land by double~primming the region; adding lotsa trees to hide neighbours, skyboxes, object occlusion methods and so forth. In fact it's quite possible to get lag down to really low levels if you know what you are doing and educate the residents also.

* * * * *

I think the real question to ask is: why are you getting into the business?

If it's for money, be prepared to put at least 20 hours a week into it and any real payoff may come in 3 or 4 years. Yeah, it's possible to get there, but a part time job at McDonalds would be more money for less work 95% of the time.

If it's not for money... have fun with it! Decide how much work you are willing to do, how much you are prepared to lose (25 a month is not a big deal if you are having fun) and... just go for it.

If you only have 4096m of land though... well that's what, 25 a month? You won't be able to charge a lot more for that; maybe 30 a month with a net income of five bucks monthly.

So say you work at it for 10 hours a month fussing with it all, and put 4 tenants on there... that's 5 dollars/10 hours or fifty cents per hour. Or twelve cents per hour, by tenant.

Now, one of those twelve cent per hour tenants is going to come at you like a freight train over the color of the neighbour's flowers or something... and, get this: expect you to react like the concierge at the Ritz Carlton.

Just saying.

That said, it can be a lot of fun if you rent to friends and just don't enforce any rules. That's what I'd recommend for starters.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far, to respond to the last poster it's mainly for fun but want to earn a little linden to buy odds and ends in game. Not lookin' to get rich just enough to enjoy SL.

Based on my limited experience as a consumer, not a landlord (for sure), here's my 2 cents worth. I wanted to rent and followed a bunch of signs from the Help Island and other newbie places. The one I wanted offered discounts for 30 days as a way to get started and looked reasonably good. I was unable to sign up for an apartment automatically and could get absolutely nobody to respond to my requests, except that one manager would bounce me to the next manager, who would bounce me to the next....

I ended up doing a search on apartment rentals or something like that. The next place I found on the list gave me the same experience. Finally I TP'd to the main office of the place where I now rent and plan on living long term. There I clicked on the landlord's picture and within seconds had an IM chat going with her. Now, my rental is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but it has everything I need...the point is, I've needed to ask questions of my landlady a number of times and no matter what the time of day she has always gotten back to me in a timely manner, when all I expected was to have my IM queued up. In fact, we've gone on to become rather good friends over the last month.

You probably should think of this business (me talking as an outsider) as a service and people business, not a housing business. That first response to a potential customer, and the following interactions are what I found to be the critical factors...I pay more than I wanted to but I would not change anything for the reasons I discussed. You will also need a reasonable level of technical skills for those times when something goes awry...be prepared. PS Good luck. Jackie.