"For Sale" signs now forbidden?

What I seem to see happening is that folks with one parcel for sale can erect damned near anything they want by way of "For Sale" signs. On the other hand, if there are multiple parcels on a sim for sale by the same owner, or (I suppose) on multiple sims, the new rules apply to the signs.

I think this is kind of silly: one seller of a single parcel can make quite an eyesore, very intentionally harassing the neighbors in hopes of a sale, whereas less harassment is done by a reseller with several parcels in the sim and several signs compliant to the new specs for individual signs.

But that said, I really think doing away with For Sale signs completely would have no negative impact on sales. Right now, however, when some parcels have For Sale signs, some buyers find land that way, but if *nobody* had signs, the same buyers would use other means of discovering land for sale in the vicinity. It really doesn't take much to always view parcel boundaries and notice yellow borders. But none of that is really relevant to current policy.

The resellers aren't paying the smaller-parcel fees. They hold a lot of land and pay the lowest rates. LL benefits by the land cutting only when someone buys a small parcel. They'd be better served selling the land directly (i.e. without a middleman raising the price and discouraging the sale), or even better by giving it away to anyone willing to pay premium fees and tier.

My point was not that resellers aren't paying smaller parcel fees, in fact just the opposite. The point I was trying to make was that if, for example, a reseller bought a full region, split it up into 4096 plots and sold each one to an individual owner that helps LL because their tier revenue goes up due to the higher cost per sq. meter for the buyers of the subdivided land. Using the above example the original purchaser would be providing LL with $195/mo for the full region while 16 owners would yield $400/mo. for LL. Maybe I'm wrong but I didn't think that LL even sold smaller lots except in the case of special builds like Bay City or when land has been abandoned. To me this shows that LL clearly does benefit from land owners subdividing larger amounts of land and selling as individual lots.

Even easier to View->Land Owners. For sale parcels are bright orange.

Yeah, I know. My point is that LL should do that themselves. That's sorta what they're doing with Bay City, and now Nautilis. They should also do it with un-improved land.

Most of the yellow land is useless for large builds, scenic builds and professional projects. All land resellers do is create more of the same. The land glut is largely the doing of resellers. Yeah, LL offered it for sale. Nobody was coerced into buying it, though.

I saw FOR SALE terraformed into a huge parcel of land a week or so ago. It was huge and very visable to anyone flying around, but most unobtrusive for any neighboring sims, I thought it was very clever.

I logged in this evening and.....the 6 yellow/black spinning signs are GONE!!! WOOT!!!! My hats off to the Linden/s who moved that quickly on my AR!!!

BTW...do Lindens actually remove things like that themselves, or send a warning?

At any rate...they're GONE!!

/me does a happy dance!!!

The map overlay can take up to 24 hours to update and the Land Owners thing does not work very well unless you have it on all the time whilst wandering which looks very ugly.

A well placed an reasonably attractive sign on the ground with no rotation, bling, glow or other crap can still very much catch your eye as you are passing by within draw distance.

A small unobtrusive sign on your parcel should be no more a problem than a sign advertising a shop in my opinion. Having one per parcel as long as the parcel is above cutter sizes would also be fine in my opinion.

I have to admit on a parcel I am selling right now I have 2 such reasonable and unobtrusive signs, each at opposite ends of a long 4096. I was not aware that the signage rules applied to parcels for sale until now. I intend to remove one of them as soon as I log in later today.

If you found out, you would have to disappear too.

Interesting, I've seen changes in the for sale map overlay within a few hours normally.

Land Owners works EXTREMELY well (though I do leave it on all the time). I don't go out and look for land for sale outside of my own region right now, but if I did, I sure would use it. It's easy enough to toggle on and off, so I don't know why you'd say that it doesn't work very well.

I think the "For Sale" sign is mainly an unnecessary metaphor imported from RL, like "roadside advertising". It just doesn't translate well when we have much better ways of doing it in the virtual world.



That's fine. I have only stated my personal OPINION of them in terms of practicality; I've otherwise come out in support of their use here.

I was watching for some pricing drops in my area recently and the map was lagging around about 24 hours it seemed to me.

Allow me to clarify, if you don't like having it turned on all the time, it does not work very well. You have to basically turn it on and go hunting for land. Often finding land is a thing you chance upon whilst exploring, you can walk on a Linden road or pass by via boat and never know a plot is for sale unless there is a sign out, if the map is broken or has not updated for instance.
I think signs still have a place personally albiet a smaller one than in RL.

No problem, I am just stating what I think also and I agree excessive signage is a terrible thing.

All of this seems very sensible to me. As others have said, many people don't spend all their time looking for land to buy, and thus don't have the rather ugly Owner View function turned on. So many SL parcels sit empty without being up for sale----for one thing, the To-Be-Auctioned-by-LL parcels can sit that way for MONTHS.

Thus, without a rules-compliant, on-the-ground sign, many people wouldn't know a parcel is for sale.

And the limitations of the map work against efficient information flow about land for sale. As you say, there is a lag of some substantial number of hours (whether it's 4 or 8 or 24) before the yellow appears. Also, many potential buyers of land (especially newbies) aren't practiced at toggling between the Map and the sights they see as they fly around.

All this about 'little pieces' harming LL (and I'm talking 512s and 1024s, in response to your mention of 'large projects' or 'scenic projects'---NOT defending 16m's) seems to be missing two important points.

First, many, many people who buy land are new to SL. They are overwhelmingly going to be interested in starting with a 512m---because of the 'no tier payment' aspect. It is only later, after they decide they like SL enough to put more money into it, that they start buying larger parcels and working on Projects.

So a disdain for 'little pieces' seems to ignore this very legitimate and sizable market. Keeping new Residents from owning land because of a judgmental attitude toward 'little pieces' would be extremely counterproductive to the goal of making SL a healthier, livelier, more prosperous platform.


Second, there ARE many large parcels available. They are available from those who leave SL, and they are available from LL directly, through Auction. If you, personally, are prevented from bidding at Auction, and taking advantage of the generally-lower prices to be found there, there would be nothing to stop you from contacting a reputable Auction-customer---otherwise known as a 'land reseller'---and making an arrangement to buy from them at a reasonable price (and I'm talking just a few USD).

Very large parcels are available from both sources...a flight over virtually any part of Mainland will reveal large unbroken swaths of either yellow or purple.


So the legitimacy of the claim that 'land resellers hurt LL' seems to be quite a matter of opinion.

You will just have to acept the fact that the practices of a few self-centered people who have little or no consideration for others have spoilt it for everyone else. These new rules are a direct result of the microparcle buisness.



Map screen - land for sale flag
View menu - show land owners
View menu - show property lines
Search - Land

How difficult is that ?



The neigbourly thing to do would be to IM the people who's land borders the plot and give them first refusal. After that a single, low impact for sale sign on a plot should be more than sufficent. If the plot then sells there is nothing to stop you moving the sign to the other plot.

On the sim I live on there are a few plots split over a linden road that have more than one for sale sign on them. However they are unobtrusive and modeled on a low impact RW board, these I have no problem with and see no need to bring them to the attention of LL. However a blanket rule that allows "For Sale" signs has resulted in the past, in an escalating "arms race" of signs leaving a lot of the sims surounding me a wastland. In reality people will more than likely be able to "bend" the rules within reason so the situation you discribe will not be a problem. If the land sells then the signs are there for a few days at most and then gone. Most people will have no problem with this, however if they are there for weeks or months at a time then you point no longer applies as the other residents of the sim obviously do not want the land in question and the sign no longer serves the purpose you discribe.


The new rules are a result of there being far too many "Loud Arrogant Redneck's" about with little or no reguard for the rights of others, Jack has drawn a line in the sand in reguards to these people, and if they have a problem with that, they can vote with their feet. We are suposed to be a comunity after all, and as such there are rules aimed at benifiting the majority. Comunities are based on the principle of "utility" thats is the greatest benifit for the greatest number, and that means that you don't have the "right" to play your music at 120db at 3am or allow a rats nest to flourish in your apartment.
If these few rugged individulists have a problem with that I sugest the leave and set up their own virtual world, they can call it "Second Mogadishu" or some such and they can behave as they please there. Let market forces decide who is right on this issue, comunity v's nihilism.

One nice sign per reasonable sized parcel sounds fine to me. When I searched for land for the first time, I didn't look at map overlays or other viewer side stuff because I simply didn't even know about it - and I guess that's the situation for most newbies. I used search and found a parcel from a company and tp'd there. It wasn't what I wanted, but in my eyes sight there were nice little signs on other parcels directing me to other available choices.

I think some people should come down from their high "oldbie" horses and try to stop their biting reflex on everything with the word "sale" on it. Adfarming is a terrible thing, but there *are* good reasons for normal, unobstrusive advertising. Limiting a seller with more than one parcels for sale on one region to only one sign is simply stupid, as long as he follows all the other rules about how signs have to look like.

Linden Lab has stupid, confusing, and contradicting policy.

I have been here since may '03 and have not seen them make a savvy move yet.

That's because they are arrogant and besmirch tried and true management methods.

Because they are the exception to the rule. I guess.

Too bad that when they finally figure out that protecting people's Barbie clothes is less important than the big picture, they will have become a has been.

I suppose it's hard to do when you think you're infallible and you're worried that certain high profile gadflies may sic their lawyer friends on you for damages to their businesses.

The little parcels don't harm LL. Making them more expensive through middlemen harms LL. Having multiple, independent resellers carving up all new sims with no planning harms LL.

Where are these full sims you speak of and who are the neighbors? It will probably take a very long time of strict ad farm enforcement before the surrounding lands can be consolidated into something appealing to build near.

Yes, we know that.


It's not difficult at all, but you missed the point entirely - or ignored it. The point is that a lot of land is bought by people who are NOT looking to buy land. How do they find out that a piece of land that they might want to buy is actually for sale?

Example:
A week ago I put two adjacent 512s up for sale, and they sold very quickly. The person who bought them extended her shop onto them. She wasn't looking to buy land, but she noticed the signs, thought about it, and decided to buy. She IMed me to ask if I'd hold the land for her until the next day when she would have the money to buy it. That's how *not* looking to buy land she was. From her point of view, without the signs, the land could easily have gone to someone else without her ever knowing that it had been for sale and she could have got it to extend her shop.

I agreed with you, right up until the final sentence. Tell me something. If two people are selling one 1024 parcel each, in the same sim, you agree that each of them can put a For Sale sign on their parcel. The part of your post that I quoted indicates that. So what's the difference between two people, each putting up one For Sale sign on his/her parcel, and one person selling both parcels and putting up a For Sale sale on each of them? The number of signs is the same. What's the difference that makes you so adamant that one person should not put a For Sale signs on each of those parcels?

Really? You sound to be saying different things in different paragraphs.

Yes, we all know why the rules came about and, judging by the posts in this thread, most of us know how utterly stupid one aspect of the new rules is.

You mised a bit



If you give the people a rule that says you can have ...whatever they will take it right to the limit just because they can. Now if your for sale signs are low impact, placed with due care and consideration to other users. Then it is highly unlikely that you will be AR'd for them and therefore not fall foul of the new rules.
However, if you are one of the asshat brigade then the rule is one per sim and you will be AR'd so fast your head will spin if you exceed that limit. Linden labs don't necesserly know who these people are but we their fellow uses do. So if you want to be able to bend the rules a bit so you can have more than one sign on a sim while you sell your non micro-parcle plots then be a nice neigbour. Not so difficult.

This reminds me of a question that I've had for a while: What is the "spam threshold" that applies to telling neighbors that land is for sale near them?

Just as a courtesy, I've tried to notify adjacent landowners when I have a parcel for sale, but then I *know* most of those neighbors, so I do it individually, and with a personal note (you know: "How's the partner? and the slaves?" ). And when I know other landowners in the sim, especially those who might need more prims, I send them an IM, too.

But suppose I were really in the land resale business. Would it be spammy to have a system that automatically IMs the owners of adjacent parcels? Or even all landowners in the sim?

Two adjancant 512m² = one 1024m² parcel.
1 parcel = 1 sign = no problem

It seems to me like you created the problem yourself by splitting the parcel in the first place and then tried to put yourself in the victim role by complaining about how unfair it is that you can't put two signs on what was really just one parcel to begin with.

In trying to illustrate why the new rules don't make sense you really just highlighted why they're absolutely necessary. Some people are simply incapable of doing the right thing on their own.

I didn't miss it. I thought it was irrelevant.

Now you seem to be saying that it's ok to break the rules, as long as you do it mildly. So what was the point in bringing it up?

You're overlooking the obvious advantage in selling two adjacent 512s rather than one 1024. The advantage is that it gives buyers the opportunity to choose what size they want. Perhaps the girl with the shop might only have found use for one extra 512, or she might only have had tier capacity for one extra 512. So joining them wouldn't have been a satisfactory solution. The new rule, as applied to For Sale signs, is stupid.

And still my question hasn't been answered - what's the difference in one person selling two plots in the same sim, and two people each selling one plot in the same sim?

Some people (not from this thread) are so against receiving unsolicited communications that they would consider it to be spam on principle. Other people are (imo) much more sensible.

Personally, I'd appreciate that sort of communication. Someone did exactly that a few weeks ago, and I was glad to buy the land.

Just being a smart ass here, the difference is the two residents selling the land are not breaking any 'rules', and the one resident with two signs is breaking a rule.

However, Phil I agree with you it's daft. I also believe that in general if you do have two or more for sale signs on a sim and they are discreet, more likely then not nothing will be said by LL, however that doesn't take into account some of the asshole residents in SL who just seem to spend 90% of their time ARing such things