land sale scam

I recently purchased a 8192m plot of land on a homestead sim, and paid a weeks tier to the land manager. The land should have had 936 prims. But, when i tried to use my land, i found that there are no prims whatsoever. Not one. cant even rez a cube. So I read the covenant again to see if membership of a group was required to give me rights to the land, but the covenant specififes this is not required. Hmmm. Naturally my next move was to contact the sim manager, have been trying for 3 days now, by IM and by notecard, and got zero response. A visit to the land this morning turned out to be interesting. 2 girls were in the process of purchasing the adjoining plot, and found the same problem as me. next I was approached by the unfortunate person who had the land the week before me, she told me she had paid a months tier and was now out of pocket by 6k. I also heard of the same manager selling a plot to someone, on a different sim, again there were insufficient prims, and before the unsuspecting purchaser was aware, the entire sim was sold without warning and all her items returned to her, she lost a huge amount of money on that deal.
I have filed an abuse report to linden lab, but I am not hopeful as they do specify they cannot be held responsible for transactions between residents. BUT how can this person be still allowed to do this on sl? surely if all his victims file a report he should be banned? this person must be getting away with huge amounts of money and is still allowed to do so by linden lab. I dont think i will ever attempt to purchase private estate land again. My mainland plot now has a huge ugly skyscraper right next to it, cant do much about that but at least its my land, my prims and i can do what I please with it.
I find it extremely worrying that there seems to be little security for our money with transactions of this nature, and the crooks are getting away with it. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

You can AR this as Fraud now. I assume this person is using the bonus prims option and some or a few residents have used them all up, stopping new residents from having any at all. The bonus prim option is one thing that catches noob land owners out a lot and some not so noob land owners. I spent days trying to explain to a landowner once that 16 tenants could not have 1500 prims each on a sim.

I have nothing helpful to add, just feel so bad for you. It's estate owners like this that give the honest ones a bad name, and make people feel like you do, 'never buy estate land again'. So sorry, this is horrible and I hope LL sees it as fraud, what else would one call it?

This is a prime example of why you do NOT want to rent land where all the land remains in the same group for all tenants. Someone who was already there in the sim has used up ALL the prims for that little Homestead sim already, leaving nothing for anyone else. THAT is who you should AR, if anyone. See who in the sim is using more than their fair share of prims, and complain to them.

The way to keep this from happening is for each parcel to be deeded to a different land group. Then each will have its own prim count limit.

Say the landlord plans to split several homestead sims into 4 parcels each.

A Homestead has 3,750 prims available, and 65,536 m2 of land.

Divide that into quarters, and you could make 4 16,384 M2 parcels that each get 937 prims.

Assign each parcel to a different group, such as "F&G Properties LG1", "F&G Properties LG2", "F&G Properties LG3", and "F&G Properties LG4". These groups can be re-used in other sims without much hassle. The tenant either joins the parcel's land group when they rent that parcel, OR is allowed to "Buy" the parcel in their own name, OR the landlord allows the parcel to be deeded to a group owned by the tenant. Either way, the parcel remains locked in for its designated quota of prims.

There is zero risk for a private sim owner (homestead or regular sim) allowing the tenant to buy a parcel or deed land to their own group. The sim owner can ALWAYS reclaim the parcel later, if there is an issue.

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In your case, I'll bet the landlord had all the parcels in the same land group, that all tenants have to join. Well, that does NOTHING to enforce prim limits per parcel. The first tenant can hog all 3750 prims, leaving nothing for the other three.

Your parcel size is 1/8 of the sim. If he is offering 4 parcels for rent of that size, and has half the sim set aside as water owned by the landlord, he can do that honestly by setting the object bonus to 2.0 and using no prims in his 50% of the sim, in the water. But without assigning each parcel to its own owner, one tenant can prim-hog everyone else out.

If the landlord was selling more than 4 parcels or 8192 M2 each in that sim, and they were all supposedly able to get 936 prims, that is IMPOSSIBLE, and is a scam. For example, if he divided it into 8 rentable parcels, setting the object bonus to 2.0 doesn't magically give the sim 7500 prims. If they are offering more than 4 parcels of that size for rent, they are committing fraud and should be AR'ed.

But, she said there was 'no' group to join, that she double checked that? Or did I read that wrong?

They need to see who, or what group, is listed as "Owner" of the parcel they rented. I'd be willing to bet there IS a land group that they need to join. Or that the landlord hasn't got a clue how to rent properties so things work right.

Medusa? Send me a LM for the parcel you rented, and I will go take a look at it. I can at least tell you how the sim and your parcel is set up, and if it looks like it was set up as a scam, or just badly managed, or if it may be an honest set-up with a poor manager who didn't get you established corectly.

groups are used on mainland, yes.
but estates dont really need to use them as they can reclaim if needed.

it did specify there was no group to join. The sim is split into a number of parcels, various sizes, not all of them are occupied. if prims are there, residents will of course use them, surely this is down to poor management of the sim and a complete lack of interest from the manager in resolving it, he has taken my money and I have nothing in return. he will probably try to sell the same land to someone else next week, without resolving the prim usage issue. he is a CROOK.

I agree. See my original post about how it *should* have been set up to work fairly. But a lot of smaller landlords don't understand how land works. They just throw out a bunch of sims and try to rent them out as fast as they can. And some, sadly, intentionally set things up as scams. I can't yet say what the case is on this one, which is why I would like the OP to send me a LM, so I can look at it myself.

Did you actually buy the parcel? Or just pay a rental box or an individual? I really would like to look at the parcel and see how that have that sim set up.

maybe op will post the name of the sim...

Am meeting the OP in-world now

It doesn't matter about groups.

Homesteads have a hard limit of 3750 prims total, prim multiplier or no, parcel prim counts or no.

If there are 3750 prims set out, anywhere, that's it.

No more prims. No matter what the parcel prim counts say, or how the parcels are distributed, or how they are deeded. Period.

What's happened, is that the region is 'overbooked' primwise.

8192m on a homestead should have a primcount of 468 prims, remember it's a homestead. Someone set the prim multiplier to two to make it 936 prims, and if the region is responsibly managed (not oversold, or filled with junk where it shouldn't be) this is fine.

What that means though, is that literally half the land should have no prims on it whatsoever, in order to support the 'double prims' on the remaining half.

Also if the region owner didn't set autoreturn on the half that is supposed to be empty, random visitors and residents *will* fill it with junk. Easier than it sounds to have this happen... if you start cutting and rejoining parcels, autoreturn shuts off.

Well, I saw the sim, and it is NOT an honest set-up.

The entire sim is parceled for sale, edge to edge, with a 2.0 object bonus and NO reserved land to compensate for it. There is absolutely no way it could be fully rented out and give the residents the prim count they expect. They are offering twice as many prims for sale as they have capacity to provide in that sim.

And the worst part? This is NOT a fly-by night scammer or some inept newbie that doesn't know the land biz.

The Estate is one of the biggest ones in SL.

Much as I would like to name and shame, I won't. But the people who own this sim should know better. The OP can tell people who it was.

All I can say is...
Care should be taken...
Shame on that landlord!

OMG.....I'm glad you saw it though, as you have the experience, and understand what you're looking at.

Even if we don't learn the name, here, I hope we learn the resolution of this mess, I hope there IS a resolution forthcoming. OP, please let us know how this works out?

All I can say is...
Care should be taken...
Shame on that landlord!

Nice profile, Medusa.

To OP,

I am so sorry this happened to you. My hubby and I got screwed a few months back too. This person should be AR'd. Although I understand why you cannot name names, but its too bad you can't to help others avoid this sim owner and being screwed.

anyone interested can find it on my profile picks in world. Latest development is a quarter of the sim has suddenly and mysteriously been cleared. which has allowed me to rez a few things. so I have done so, and they arent pretty. still no word from the estate management on this. I have filed 2 AR's for fraud, one against the sim manager, the other against the estate owner. I will continue to raise hell till I get my money back.

on one hand we tell people to 'investigate' landowners before buying/renting, then on the other hand we refuse to even post a sim name let alone an estate name.

i have a hard time reconciling those two things.

ok supposedly we cannot in any way refer to the crooked sim, yet strangely enough will deride those that are scammed for not properly investigating.

Posting the sim name is just as good as posting the owner's name, and it's wrong to do that. You admit you haven't even gone and looked at it yourself. That's called sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong. If you had a business and a customer had a problem, you wouldn't want an univolved third party posting about it on this forum.

Please edit your post.

Just curious...do you own, or have an investment in, :: The Sim That Shall Not Be Named :: ??

:: Sticking my nose where it doesn't belong....but isn't that what the internet is all about? ::

who is Time Engineer? is he a renter there? does he rent that sim from the estate?

Aww Nina! Does that mean I have to go back and edit MY post?? Sheesh this forum stuff is a lot of work.

One thing, when we are about to buy the land parcel, we can always check 'Object' tab under About Land to see how many prims are there. It should show all the prims that are available for that parcel, and it should show that to anybody who looks. If I saw zero prims, I sure wouldn't click that final 'Buy Land' button.