Best way to set up my land for rent?

I have 1/8 of a sim of mainland (will soon be 1/7). I have my Gothic castle on one side and a lot of empty land. I am thinking of creating a small Gothic village (3 or 4 buildings). Which I will rent out for residential use. In essence carve out a nice little themed area of this sim.

Since I am new to this aspect of SL whats the best way to accomplish this plan?

Appreciate any info.

Placing ads is one of the best ways to do this. That and a low price of rent.

Perhaps I wasn't clear, my bad...

I need to know TECHNICALLY what is needed to do this. Getting renters isn't my issue. Setting this up (How to go about collecting rent, assigning prims to each renter, how best to give land rights to the renters, etc) is.

thanks!

1. Do the math. How much you need to break even, how much profit you want to make, how many prims are available, how many prims you want to offer, how many tenants you can sustain based on those factors, especially if you are providing the structures.

2. How to collect: how much do you want to spend, if anything, on technology? It can make your life easier in the long run as rental boxes are nice for reminders, access list controls and prim counting, but they are not necessary. A lease is an agreement between you and a tenant, nothing more. Rental boxes are a luxury for management.

3. Land rights: what would YOU want as a tenant? Planting linden trees, changing media, setting home, ban/kick/freeze... but do you want them to pay for the parcel listings and share in the accounting? Probably not.

So those rent boxes I see at rental places also give the renter the land permissions/prims once they pay rent on that parcel?

Shameless plug:
I'm about to start renting out some parcels with two and minimum one boundaries on Protected Linden water sims. --- when I get around to it - so it's not really a plug?

To me, the bog-simplest approach is to create a separate group for each rental parcel.
That way the tenant joins that group and can be given any power short of selling the land.
No issue with prim control. The parcel supports x prims and end of story. A tenant can't 'steal' prims from you or other tenants. About Land always shows the tenant the complete story on prims.
Prim-counting by rental boxes is not an exact science, and you probably don't want to be forced to do regular sessions of About Land to check who's rezzed how many withing a shared prim limit.

You can always carve out extra prims for the group/parcel by 'buying' it land from a pool of your own land in the same sim. (This is why I've dumped most of my smaller isolated protected parcels).

The downside is the limit on the number of groups that you can be a member of. You need dependable partners and/or alts to be the minimum two members of each group.
This would be horrendous if you had a large number of rental parcels.

They don't "give" permissions - you set them to reflect the terms of the rental.

No.
They have to join a group that gives them build and land permissions.

There is no way of doing this automatically other than
1) using a bot to detect the rental starting and then issuing the group invitation
or
2) allowing anyone to join the group, and so opening the possibility of griefing.

That is one way to do it, and can be managed with one or more alts. I considered it for land rentals, and may do so in the future. But it's a lot of more of a hassle when dealing with tier allotments and if you want to change anything. I like to offer extra prims and some people take me up on it. I'd rather give them the option to have extra prims and stay with me than move because they found a comparable place with a bigger prim allotment.

Yes, but if you keep a reserve of land in the sim (that you use for your own sandbox) then you can assign some of it to the parcel/group that want the extra prims.
There's no difference prim-count-wise between managing prim counts per individual and carving parcels to be owned by a group. The overall limit in either case is the total metres overall that you own in the sim.

Thank you all for this information, very helpful!

I do have a related question then, as what you a seem to be saying is creating a group for each parcel is the best way to do this.

That being said, how do these landlords who own several sims manage it? They have a couple dozen alts for no other reason then groups for their hundreds of parcels?

That seems VERY inefficient and at some point a critical mass must be reached with its simply unmanageable.

Yes. I did use the term "horrendous" above.
The problem can be mitigated by using the same groups over a number of sims.
That way, the only danger is that a tenant from sim X will go and mess with a parcel belonging to the 'same' group in a sim y.

edit:
The issue would to prevent tenants in the one sim from accidentally or deliberately overusing their agreed prim count in the sim.
If the same group is used in another sim (in order to minimise the number of groups) then the only danger is deliberate abuse by a tenant.

Wow... that just seems so... unweildly (to be kind) to say the least..

That being said, again thank you all for the info, seems I'll be making a few groups! lol

Now land control out of the way. Collecting rent would be using those rent boxes I see? How exactly do they work? Suppose a renter named b0b defaults on payment, does it simply just send me a IM or does it have the power to do anything?

Would a front door you can enable to pay rent too (like from the door vendor A-Doors) be a better option?

I keep all my tenants in one group,I think I would pull my hair out if I had to manage that many different groups. They all have their own parcel with media controls,security etc... But the downside to this,anyone in the group(another tenant) could mess with their stuff too. I can't see why anyone would and I would probably kick them out for doing it..but it could happen.(Hasn't yet though)

If you need any help setting up a box or anything Strauss,IM me in world.


BTW there is no way to control how many prims an actual tenant uses. (unless you went with the multi group thing,deeding each plot to one group.) I have little sensors on mine that plug in to the rental box,that let me know if a tenant goes over.

I use one group for all my properties so I have the most flexibility in purchasing land thanks to the group bonus. All my tenants, whether they are on a separate parcel or not, belong to this group and this group has a large landholding bonus. I own 1 full sim, a little more than half of another sim, and about a quarter of a third sim. If I want to buy land in the half and the third, I have a lot more freedom to buy as much as I want, up to my group's bonus. Whereas each smaller group will have a smaller bonus and you have to do the math with the contribution.

My method allows people to exceed their prim limits, and so my headache is in keeping up with prim usage. But I also employ a lot of technology - rental boxes with prim counters. Most tenants are good about not exceeding their limits or asking for more, so it's not as big a headache as it could be.

It's a matter of preference, really. One is easy to manage strict limits, the other requires juggling alts PLUS the added cost of the 100L formation fee per group.

The box would evict them based on the number of days you configure which allows them to be in arrears. Then you would have to manually remove them from the group and return their objects to them.

The box is just a reflection of the status of the agreement, with automatic timers built in to remind people that the rent is due or if they exceeded their prim limit. A box doesn't give permissions. It cannot invite into the group. It cannot return the objects on the land for you.
Boxes are good for tracking payments and reminders. That's it. The rest is manually taken care of by you. You don't NEED boxes but they are niceties that may reduce the amount of legwork you have to do in terms of administrative management.

hhmmm I see.

Well thank you all again for the information, very helpful

I'm still pretty new to all this, too, but here's how we did it on our half sim:

1. Formed a group. The roles are:
Owner (me)
Officers (my partners and I)
Residents (the tenants)

2. Created an alt to be the group accountant. If you don't have partners, you can carry the business in your own hip pocket, without an accountant...but you should still have an alt as a group member, to ensure the group isn't disbanded if all of your tentants pack up and leave suddenly.

Note: nobody shares "group liabilities and dividends" except the alt.

Tenants can create objects, and change the media streams on their parcels.

3. Set overall parcel properties. Autoreturn at 5 minutes. Push restricted. Object entry allowed. Arrival set to landing point. Landing point set. Parcel described.

4. Deed land to group. Partners pay an equal share of tier (or get a distribution, if the income for the month exceeds tier).

5. Developed the parcel...created homes, roads, parks, shops, toys and amusements, landscaping (you may or may not do this, or do more or less.)

6. Counted up the prims we had left and developed a prim budget and price for each rental parcel.

7. Installed rental system. We use HippoRent. The web plugin is nice, but not needed for such a small parcel as yours. Set up each box to show the price and allowed prims. Set up the payments to be made to me (I bought the rental boxes, so I'm their owner), but income is shared 100% with the group accountant, so any payment I get immediately goes to her.

Properties can be advertised on a vendor that comes with the system. You can set these up anywhere...they make great advertising as well as create an automatic sales location for you.

HippoTech also has door and window plugins that integrate with the rental box, and a security system as well. These are additional cost options.

For only three or four properties, it would be easy (and a lot cheaper) just to have the tenants pay you directly. Send out a reminder IM a couple of days before the rent is due.

When a tenant first pays a box, they immediately get a "Tenant's Handbook" notecard that sets out the community rules (e.g., no temp rezzers). I am notified by the box that it's been rented, and I send out an invitation to the new tenant to join the group, so they can rez objects. Either I, or one of my partners, meets the tenant in person as soon as possible and makes sure they know how to operate their house (open or lock the door, tint the windows, etc.) and see if they have any questions or requests (repaint a wall, for example.)

It's important to be there for your residents...to answer questions, provide a sense of community and caring, solve problems, deal with griefers... Ray hired Rosie to help him actively manage Liome. Between me and my three partners, somebody is almost always on line, if not actually on site. We have a pager board installed as another way for people to reach us.

Mainland landlords who own many sims and use the group-per-tenant method have armies of alts.

Island landlords don't need to use groups; they always have final ownership of the land, and they can safely "sell" parcels to other residents, which grants them all the abilities they would have if they had purchased mainland.

A further note: an advanced system like HippoTech also has several plugin modules that network different devices with the rental box so that the tenant has instant control over the systems once the box is rented. The doors, windows, security and now even a teleporter can be controlled by the tenant once the place is rented.

This is a luxury for smaller landlords but as a larger landlord, it's a must for me - otherwise I'd have to manually edit scripts for door access, window tints, etc. It's easy to manage when you are small - you just edit the door or window tint to allow the tenant in. But as you grow in holdings, this becomes more time consuming and difficult to manage, especially if you don't have all day to sit on SL. As you can imagine, I'm almost fully hippo'd out.

The last thing that Andy needs to build is a single access list for all these gadgets! I have put that request in, I think he's working on it.

Thanks Lindal for posting your steps. This is exactly what I needed and appreciate your taking the time to post the process.

Quick question for everyone. Once a group has been created and the land deeded over to the group, how long does it take the accounts page to update? I deeded the land to the group and the Land tab in-world shows the correct amount. With the 10% more land for tier for the group, the sqm fits within one of the tier levels. As in individual, it kicked it up to the next level. It still shows the tier at the individual level. My assumption is that it will take a couple of days for the revised group tier to be reflected. Is this correct?

Thanks again to Lindal and everyone who has posted on this thread. Your discussion has been very helpful.