Renting land?

Okay, I'm sure this has been discussed many times before, but the search function isn't very helpful for me to find things.

I want to rent out a parcel of my land. I'd rather NOT deed it to a group, as that just seems like a real can of worms. I don't understand the point or the process, so I'd rather just avoid it.

But, I want my tenants to be able to use a house I bought, rez their own furniture, and live like normal avatars.

So how do I set it up. And if I must do the group thing, how do I do it without accidentally screwing myself all up? I'm not trying to avoid my tier payments or take land contributions from anyone else, so it just seem pointless to me?

Thanks in advance, as I know you guys are always able to help, no matter how strange my questions are or what kind of problems I'm having.

DL

One really, really simple way is allow 'create objects' and 'run scripts' and things on your land, and let your tenant do what they want there.

Just make sure you don't return their stuff, and if they pay you $L (whatever) every month - there ya go.

Drawbacks: anyone coming along will be able to put stuff there too, your tenants won't be able to do anything about it, will need to get you for cleanup and they won't be able to shoo away anybody annoying. For all those reasons, most people will see the above method as a 'negative'


Another way: Create a group ($L 100) and deed your land to that group, and make sure the group has land tier of yours going toward it. Then invite tenants as group members, and give them powers over the land by editing their 'group role' capabilities.

If you want to get snazzy, get a device to keep track of their payments too - usually a scripted prim that will report time remaining, take payments &c.

Yes, arcane stuff, I know! Isn't it a pain? But that's kinda how it works for mainland rentals.

On private regions we can just deed land directly over to residents insofar as we can reclaim it anytime we need to, anyway.

Good luck!

Thank-you, Desmond.

I'm really, really confused by all the group stuff. I've read everything I can find about it, but am still confused.




If I start a new group, and deed my land to it, how do I make sure my tier is going to the group? And it seems if I want my land back from the group, I have to buy it back. And, somewhere I read some caution about other group members being able to buy the land themselves for nothing or next-to-nothing.

I think I'm okay with the first method for now, but later would like to be able to make it all a bit more maintenance-free so I won't have to run over there every day or two fixing stuff or banning griefers. But the group thing really has me confused. I just don't understand the point or the purpose.

Desmond is very, very experienced and successful in the land business, and you'd do well to listen to him.

All the same, though, I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that you can get pretty much the same results as laid out in Option Number 2 without going so far as deeding your land to a group. Go ahead and create a group, then in About Land: General just set the land to your group. You retain ownership of your land 100%, there's no need to sell or buy anything, and you will still be able to limit building and such to members of your group (or only certain members, if you want to dig in and define custom roles and such).

Thanks, Anti. I'll give that a try.

I have to say - I sort of glossed over it because I'm butterfingers with group land controls too.

Private estate land is different - if there's an issue I just reclaim it and deed it over to the right people again. So no 'end of the world mistakes' no matter how bad I botch the land deeding. Which, over time, has made me kinda sloppy and stupid

Hopefully someone will come along with a really good techie in-depth explanation, but for now, the one mentioned above sounds pretty good.

If you're sure you'll only ever have one renter, it's not such a big deal, but if you have multiple parcels rented to multiple tenants, having them in separate groups makes it a lot easier to manage, and to keep them from "hurting" each other. One thing that tends to be "management intensive" without group-owned parcels is prim count: if their parcel is deeded to a separate group, it has just its own pool of prims for them to use, not a big pool shared with others, the sharing of which you have to enforce manually. (There are scripts that can help a bit, but ultimately it's still a labor-intensive operation.)

Otherwise, open Group Information on some group of which you're a member, click the Roles tab, and select a role... then scroll down the "Allowed Abilities" pane. Should the tenant have any of those abilities? If so, you *might* want to use group-deeded land--but it's a little more complicated than that, because a few of the most commonly demanded operations have been made available to scripts so that, if the scripted object belongs to the landowner (individual or group), others can operate the script; these notably include changing parcel music & media (as with scripted "Radios" and "TVs" and managing parcel ban lists (as with security orbs). Also, as mentioned above, some of those abilities can be granted to everybody, group or not, such as running scripts and creating objects; those are listed in About Land / Options. (Of course, allowing *everybody* to do these things may or may not be what you and the tenant want.)

(One thing that was a long-time problem but I think has changed: allowing other residents to set their home to the parcel. This used to only work for group-deeded land, but I *think* that's no longer the case. Maybe someone can confirm?)

Thanks, everyone. I just set my land to a new group, and I think that's good enough for now. I don't intend to become a land baron or slum lord, so I think this is adequate.

Thanks again, the advice is very much appreciated.

Most welcome!

I didn't intend to become a land baron either

whoops

You really want to deed the land. Your tenant won't even be able to set the parcel as home if the land isn't deeded. They will also have trouble with media streams.

Deeding land does look scary initially but if you take the time to understand it, it's really not such a bad idea.

Gee, I really think land *set* to group now allows group members to "Set Home to Here"--at least, that's how I read the closing in the 1.19 server of the longstanding http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-404.

Interesting, the knowledgebase still says it has to be deeded.

Yup it's fixed, setting the land works for setting home.

Re: Deeding land to group and tier: If you deed the land to group, you'll see an option to donate tier to the group as well, which covers the land tier. You can set up permissions in the group for your renters to not be able to buy/sell the land, set/not set media streams, etc. Take your time looking through all the options available to group members; you can get pretty specific on what your renters can and can't do.