Basic account and land?

Am I able to purchase a 512 lot with a basic account now?

Hm,... No. Unless it's on a private estate not mainland.

...and a private estate isn't owning it in the eyes of LL. You are effectively sub-leasing it from the owner of the private estate. If that owner then ups and leaves you have nothing to sell.

Of course there is no compelling reason to "buy" an estate parcel as there are plenty to rent where the land gets put in your name and you get all owner admin privileges (except resell...naughty naughty!)

Ninjaland, and perhaps others, rent tier. They charge L$0.25 per week per square meter. The land has to be group owned. They donate tier to the group. So you just form a group, rent the tier, and buy land for the group.

And a Basic account can fully own an estate, for some bizarre reason.

I am a free account with payment info on file. And I own part of an estate, why should I pay extra for a premium account that would do me no good? I dont need live chat and do not need the stipend and the extra support I do not need either and plus I am sooo not living on mainland. I might of taken this out of context but what else was I supposed to think?

I think the bizarreness referred to was that a basic account can buy an island but not mainland. Personally I think any account should be able to buy any land anywhere.

you could very possibly be right and if I caused any problems with what I posted am sorry.

and tabliopa I think so too. would love a small piece of mainland to stash some valueables at for safe keeping.

Bigmoe, I'm going to nitpick you, and I apologise in advance, but many people buying land need to understand the difference - you more than likely do already.

In the eyes of Linden Labs, if you have "bought" part of a private estate from a private estate owner, then you own nothing. LL will say that the land belongs to the private estate owner and won't get involved in any way with any issues that might come up (like the estate owner suddenly deciding not to pay the monthly cost and the land disappearing). You can read many horror stories like this on this very forum.

I'm certainly NOT saying don't do it, just know what you are getting into.

If you do not own the entire island, you OWN nothing.

My home on the mainland has nothing unsightly within the full 512m draw distance and is far far less laggy than many places on private islands that I have been to - including many residential areas.


We all have our biases, but many are just biases that are not really based on facts.

Of course, if you buy mainland from LL, you still own nothing. They can take it away from you for any alleged offense that they believe justifies banning. Or they can change the rules about what you are or are not allowed to do with it.

Or, to be more precise, all you can ever really own in SL is a license to use it in a certain way. It's marginally easier to enforce a license from LL because you at least have a name and address, but for a small parcel, it's unlikely to be cost effective.

Instead of thinking of it in black and white terms - own versus rent - think of it in terms of the risks. LL has a well-known reputation, as do many estate owners. The reputation will let you weigh the risks. For estate owners with unknown reputation, the risks are higher because of the uncertainty. But they all have a risk of going bankrupt or acting in ways that we might consider capricious.

if you dont pay tier directly to LL you dont own the land.

Couple of things here


when I say I own part of an estate, means I am paying half of the Tier to LL. I am not renting anything. I am sorry if I sparked soemthing I should of kept my nose out of

Bigmoe, no apology necessary.

The big question is, who does LL see as the owner of the land? Are you paying your "tier" to LL directly, or to the other person, who then pays LL? Whose name is on the property? because there can be only one per Private Estate. If it's not your name, then no matter what name you give you it, according to LL you do not own anything in their eyes.

And yes, you don't "own" mainland from LL, but from the point of view of LL, you are the one that has recourse if something goes wrong. If you own "part of a private sim" then you are effectively sub-leasing it from the person who bought it, and LL will regard THEM as owning it.

And yes, it boils down to a question of trust - to go into a private estate you have to hope that your estate owner is trustworthy, because LL won't help you if you get in trouble = you have no fall back position.

Estates don't work that way. Either you are paying your half to the person that pays LL, or you own the whole thing, pay LL for the whole amount, and the other person pays you for their half.


ETA: Looks like Kalderi was finishing her answer while I was typing mine.

My bias is the same as Bigmo's and is based on fact. Your 'nothing unsightly' is just the luck of the draw, for today anyway. Don't believe me, fly by my parcel on Whitesun, sim next door to the Cartel hangout. Ooops duck that castle in the sky and don't hit the banlines, also watch out for those purple screaming cubes that were raining down last week. I keep it just for a getaway, it's certainly not my home of choice, the estate land is. All any of us can speak to is our own experience. I'm glad your mainland experience has been good; mine has sucked.

The fact is that you can neither control who your neighbors are on mainland, and, for the most part, cannot control what they do on their land. You're lucky, but there is nothing to stop anyone on neighboring land to build something you would consider to be an eyesore or in many cased outright offensive. There is nothing to prevent a neighbor from doing a build that uses a disproportionate portion of your sims resources, or from an aggregate of neighbors doing so and lagging the hell out of it. Those are the risks of mainland. On the plus side you have more much freedom to do stuff and build stuff on your mainland parcel than you would if you rented covenanted estate land, and you have a much more stable (knock on wood) landlord.

On estate land, like mainland rental, you can enjoy the benefits of covenants to prevent these things. The drawback to that is of course you are limited by them too. On the plus side, unlike mainland rental, your estate manager can put the "ownership" of the land in your name allowing you to do things you could not do with a mainland rental. Of course your estate manager and the estate can go poof overnight but the same can be said of mainland rental (well not literally going poof so you don't have to file a ticket to get your stuff back), which is why one should NEVER pay a purchase price for renting estate land other than perhaps a nominal entry fee of a hundred linden dollars or less.