How is the land dump affecting Private Island realestate

Being new to the virtual world of Private Islands, I was curious how the mainland land market crash is affecting the land rental and parcel "purchases" from Private Estates?

I no longer have sims, but I do rentals on mainland (nice land, tyvm) and my own rentals have decreased...however, I am also assuming it has something to do with summer and will increase again soon. Hoping, at least

ummmm I only rent out at the moment, although plots are available for leasing. I'm almost full on my 2nd island and it's only been open a month. That said, my partner and I (mostly her) have put a lot of effort into making the two islands visually attractive and somewhere you'd want to stay for a while. And we spend a large part of our time in-world on helping our residents with their needs.

Inc

Private estates and mainland are different, though loosely linked markets.

The mainland market isn't affecting me hardly at all, that I can tell.

Everything is slllooooooowwwwww right now.

I don't buy and sell land as a speculator. The land I have, all on private islands, is land I bought because I intended to live on it, and I did. I've been slowly trading up from a smaller lot to a larger lot as I could afford to do so. But I moved recently, to a new private sim, and it's been impossible to sell my previous 8192 M2 of prime waterfront land in a residentially-zoned private sim, even after lowering the price several times. It's a very nice parcel, facing onto an almost all-water Openspaces sim. Yet even at a paltry L$9 per M2 it isn't even getting nibbles. And I am not going to go lower per M2 than the sim owner himself sells land for there.

Even really nice private island land can't attract buyers when the Lindens are forcing mainland prices so low that they are almost giving the land away.

you should never pay a 'up front' purchase price on a private island

you can rent the land at the same price of tier from LL with NO MONEY DOWN from over 600 of anshe's islands


why would anyone PAY for land you can not even own anyway?

Because the land was well managed and nicely set up, and the landlord had a better reputation for not screwing their residents than many of those who offer to rent land at tier rates? There are certain landlords that I won't ever rent from, because of what I have seen them do in the past. There are others I would happily buy from, to get their care and management services as part of the deal.

One might also ask why anyone would ever BUY a house in RL, rather than living in an apartment or condominium. Yet people do purchase homes, even though they may well sell that house and move on well before their 30-year mortgage is paid off.

Umm nobody owns any of the land be it private or mainland. Anshe Chung doesn't own the land either, LL could pull the plug tomorrow if they wanted.

One might pay an upfront charge for user-landlord land if they liked the particular plot, or the neighbors, among other reasons.

First , you're paying more renting from Anshe Chung than you would if you bought directly from LL, same with buying Lindens from her xchange site rather than through LL's. On a sim purchase, approx. $200USD more for the sim and $65USD a month more than buying direct. When will ppl learn. As far as it being "managed" thanks, I can manage my own quite nicely and can build/develop what i want to rather than worry about if it fits in with "Dreamlands" estate plans.

I sold my land just fine on one estate when I moved to another. If the land I was buying on the new sim was to the estate owner rather than a property speculator I could have just transferred tier and swapped it over.

Blatent plug for the Odessa sims ... Sofia ROCKS

There's good and bad to both sides of the equation. I'm glad you have a strong preference and live buy it. I have lived on both sides, I own on both sides and I try to make certain that my estate residents know and understand the differences, up sides and down sides of both routes.

The strong proponents of mainland have their justifiable points: There are bad estate owners out there. It can be more expensive to way more expensive to own/rent/lease/whatever on a private estate and certainly if you have an estate owner with less than stellar integrity there is a greater element of risk that they will simply pull the rug out from under you and you're screwed. You can also do pretty much as you please so long as it falls within the TOS or at least don't get caught.

On the other hand, for those of us who have the moral fiber to be honest and fair in our business practices, there are upsides to estate life. On my estate, one can count on a much higher level of customer service than the average, less than $125 a month user can expect to receive and my residents do not have to worry about an ad farm cropping up next door. They also know that even on the commercial sims, someone is watching out for the overall lag levels and helping the residents keep a balance between what they need to operate their businesses or enjoy their homes and the overall sim stability and enjoyment for all present.

It goes far beyond being stuck to some vision and while I probably have one of the longest covenants in SL, I don't feel that I'm particularly restrictive.

I think we all need to remember that there are choices for a reason. Different situations fit different people. I try to encourage all prospective residents who are new to land or uncertain, to take the time they need to be certain they are making the right choice.

I think a bit of that practice here, rather than the vehement 'my way is the only right way' attitude goes a long way to making the forums a bit more peaceful. Different strokes for different folks.

Charlene Trudeau
SkyBeam Estates

My speculation is that there is some effect, because at L$6 per square meter, you can actually buy 65,536 square meters cheaper (roughly $1462 USD) than buying a private island at $1675 USD. Granted, your land probably won't be in one contiguous landmass and may be scattered all over the grid but it's still cheaper at that rate than private island land. How long those prices will last is anyone's guess.

As a consumer, I bought a 4K plot on an estate and it's been perfect. The value of buying is simply that I get to play with the land menu and terraforming if I want. Plus I loved the look the estate owner created.

The value of an estate is that I can leave build etc. on and not babysit it ... the estate managers will email me if anything funky appears. They will even clean it up as I request if I can't get into SL. They have been very helpful as well in teaching me building and land ownership. Plus there is never a neighbor dispute; the covenant is decently written and precludes most issues that would come up.

I get to focus on my own building/scripting/socializing as much as I want, but still have some of the experience of "owning".

If you look at the change in the number of Premium accounts the only explanation for the decline in growth is that they have lost at least 7000 premium accounts in the last couple months. So far the venting hasn't overtaken the number of new premium accounts. This explains why they are scaling back new sim releases. The reason for the loss corresponds with the death of gambling in SL. While 7k gambling established going under is unlikely there was a big contingent that only was in SL to gamble, some bought land. I can also imagine LL foreclosing on people who couldn't or wouldn't pay tier, hence the increase in available land up for auction. I'm worried that LL maybe be super saturating the market but it is hard to measure that.

It's not a big deal really, when the market is down, it allows affordable entry for new investors. It will be a good while before LL burns through the myths about getting rich off land in SL.

That or they're now cleaning-up/not-counting ones that haven't been paying their bills..

See Meta's comment at http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/08/30/july-2007-key-metrics-released/#comment-458506



edit: also, /me suspects that people in SL *just* for gaming probably wouldn't be premium. Not saying that gambling going away didn't hurt the premium count, just that it might not be as much as people assume.

Not every estate allows you to terraform the land. It's important to read the covenant of any estate and make sure you have your questions answered before commiting.

They may be scaling back a bit, but the relentless outpouring has continued for a month now. Very few bidders right now and sims are going for very low prices still.

Heh. JB will probably outbid you anyway. The famine is coming. Buy your mainland now...

He is taking a break. Unless KM is one of JB's alts...

Good grief, there's a whole lot of mainland sims that appear to be going for less than a private island, USD$1,400 and less? Am I reading this right? That's around USD$1,000 - USD$1,500 cheaper than they were going for a couple of months ago.

I was initially wary when I bought another island in my Estate, not sure if I would find renters. But a couple weeks later I've found my concerns were unfounded. I'm renting parcels rather steadily.

Yup - just looked at the Auctions history. Quite a few at 1380-1450 US$.. one or two less, several more. All Mature I think too.

Inc

You are reading it right. Very few land brokers anticipated the relentless dump that LL has been doing. Even scaling back to 8 sims a day has not seen a rebound in prices because very few brokers are willing to risk buying more sims with the glut of land that is out there. Note that recent sim auctions are getting very few bids and the same names are doing the bidding.

Supply keeps coming. Demand is waning. Good news for new buyers. Bad news for most established players who bought before the correction and are thinking of selling.

It is my understanding that Anshe has recently changed her policies and no longer rents land. I also could not find any reference to rentals on her webpage.