Place to build my house for free?

I was wondering if there is a place where I can setup my house for free, without auto-return (like sandboxes). If anybody knows a place like that, please post it here, I would really like to have my own home in SL (I don't have a credit card to buy land). Thanks in advance, and sorry if this question has been posted again.

I highly doubt you will find someone willing to let you use their land and prims for free (that being said, it doesn't mean it will not happen, just low chance it will)

you might want to look into renting, do not need a credit card or anything like that, do not even need to be premium, just need to be able to pay the lindens to the individual
(I suppose you will need a way to get the lindens.... )

Maybe you can find someone with a spare lot of land that also has some sort of businss where you can work in exchange for space, or something. But like Rha said, it's doubtful anyone will just give you a space to squat on.

that is known as 'squatting', and it is looked down on by many.
that being, i remember squatting for a few months myself
basically, you need to find a piece of land that has build enabled and autoreturn disabled. there are heaps of plots like that around. linden-owned land is often set up that way, so is land where the owners have lost interest in sl and left their land in limbo.
be aware that if it is squat-worthy land, other people can make your sl life unpleasant. one thing that people used to do to me was to put large objects in my home, sometimes things larger than the home itself, and i was powerless to do anything other than move my entire home. so if you do elect to squat, try to maintain a low profile, preferably living high high in the sky unnoticed.

When my own land was a smaller area than it is now, I had a second, bigger home squatting in the sky, way above some abandoned land that was a whole sim, Berbera. I had this place for months and it was undisturbed although gradually the sim filled up with other junk and the owner eventually returned all the stuff.

I remember I foolishly invited a newbie there to see the place and he left me a present - a row of missiles - right in the middle of the place. I managed to move the home up higher but I could still hear the tssh-ka tssh-ka noise from the missiles.

I bet you wish you knew about mute objects then

how can find such a place? what shall I type in search?

it won't be in search, however, you could try 'comerapemyland' and see if anything turns up.

then, how can i find such a place?

fly and seek

LOL

I'm not sure if we should be advising newbs to squat *grins*

It is a good question though, I'm sure many newcomers are thinking the same thing. In many respects the old "First Land" system was designed for this scenario - except of course you did need to sign up for a premum account. I think you still do get your first 512m tier-less but you still have to find and buy the parcel itself.

I have a 512m parcel somewhere on the mainland but haven't been there for over 2 years... I think I left build on and autoreturn off... I will have to go and find it again (if I can remember where it is)

This is awful. Please don't come back here complaining when someone abuse reports you and you get all your stuff returned and maybe a temporary ban from SL and a black mark on your account for your efforts. Sorry to be rude, but not being able to afford to buy virtual land is not a valid excuse to steal prims someone else is paying for, whether they're using them or not.

There are SL jobs available for those who need funds, or you could learn how to make things and go into business for yourself. If you have a bank account, you can link to PayPal and put in funds that way.

I currently have about 3 or 4 "Ghost" tenants living on a 10K - one of them built a really cool skybox at 760M so since he put that much effort in it I am leaving it alone till I need the prims. the others are usually garbage so I nuke them every so often and wait to see what new kind of nest they will build.

BLACK MARK??

What the hell? What sort of black mark are you talking about? What kind of drama threat is that? Are you talking about the less than 5% of the logins that read this forum?

And one does not get suspended from SL simply for rezzing builds on someone elses land. This is why we have autoreturn - so that one can prevent such actions and it removes any responsibility from the Lindens.

OMG your past is so shameful. I guess you really did hide the dirt until after the marriage.

You don't need to buy land. You can rent land, or rent a house/apartment.

I guess maybe what you mean is you can't buy Lindens, but there's the option of getting a job in SL or joining contests at clubs to win money prizes.

mate this is complete scaremongering.
there is no way in hell an AR like that would fly, no temp ban would ever be lodged, and no black mark would be recorded. the absolute worst thing that could happen is the squatter could be banned from the parcel
i also disagree with the idea that somehow a squatter is stealing prims. really they are doing nothing worse than using an unused resource, which the owner can reclaim at any time they wish. i reckon if he wants to squat then fine, he should squat. he can spend a couple of months squatting, learning the ropes of sl. maybe he will get tired of having to move his home or having it autoreturned and will by then have the experience to earn L$ to pay rent or whatnot.
but the talk of AR's, bans, and black marks is a bit over the top.

no, the dirt is my nefarious use of alts

To the OP: You also don't really *need* a house. There's enough to do in SL without collecting furniture.

Also, you can buy L$ with PayPal, which doesn't require a credit card, only a bank account.

What others have said.

The best thng to do, IMO, is buy land. It solves a lot of problems you might have other ways. This not being an option, you have a couepl other choices.

1. Rent land. There are places where you can rent a plot. Be forewarned, however: I've been seeing a lot of people complaining about their landlords selling out from under them. Linden Lab will not intercede on your behalf in this situations. There are some landlords otu there, though, who was more honest than others. Caveat emptor (well, I dunno "renter beware".

2. "squat." Like others have said, you could find a parcel with the right perms that someone doesn't seem to be using. Might take you a while and, again, you could find yourself uprooted and/or ARed (the latter may never be acted upon, though), as well as having to deal with other people squatting on the same property or just dumping annoying stuff there. You would not have any recourse if you run into problems doing this. I would not recommend squatting.

3. Rely on friends. You may have a friend or two with land who would not mind letting a friend use some space. It's not likely, but you never know. SOme of the first space I ever used was thanks to my virtual family.

Also note, there is no reaso to own land. You do not *have* to own property. Many avatars nevert bother with such, instead taking to an "hobo" lifestyle.

Having land does, however, uncomplicate a lot of things when you do have it.

re what Marianne says, I had land for around 6 months, luckily for me I won it in a land race and it was totally free while I was there. Now I live in a sandbox and just build, build, build. Of course everything gets returned every 12 hours so my rucksack is truly full now

I've had land for about 10 days. I bought it from a third party but it is mainland.

If you can't find somewhere to squat, buying is much cheaper than renting. If you can pull the cash together to pay for an annual premium membership it is $6.00/month. At 512m2 there is no land tier. The land itself was about $8.12. There are bargains to be had. All this comes out to 35-40L per week. You are not going to be able to rent 512 m for that.

This adds up to less than the cost of a first run movie ticket per month.

I figure I was all ready spending so much time in Second Life that the opportunity costs well outweigh any cash I throw at this place.

I think there is more a psychological barrier than a financial one to paying for land at the low end.

What land lets me do is rez and display objects other than clothes. I still make lots of clothes, and I can't bring myself to build anything dull and square so I have no furniture and no bee hives. I'm still learning.

This thread rocks. Almost makes me wanna squat just for the heck of it.

Seriously though, you can pick almost any random mainland sim, blindfold yourself, spin a bit, and the plot you'll be facing likely has build enabled. If you can get past the banlines. Of course, banlines only go up so high.

One way I used to amuse myself was do Places searches with random, interesting words. Then I would rank them in reverse order of traffic, and start visiting all the places with 0 traffic.

You run into a lot of forgotten property that way. Big sims that someone once had an interest in developing, lost interest after five minutes, forgot to secure the place with build permissions, and haven't bothered yet to close down so their credit card isn't charged each month for it.

Oh yes, I've done that too! Zero-traffic sims are a blast to explore. I've always had a fascination with ghost towns and abandoned malls and stuff, and abandoned sims are just as exciting!