Narrow question about land prices

The current minimum price for land (at least on the mainland) appears to be about L$8.5 - 8.9 /m^2, if I look for land using the search tool inworld.

I have been watching the results of Linden land auctions for the last month, and the low end of the prices people pay at auction are right in this range. (The average is well over L$10/m^2.)

But if I look at the LL Economic Statistics page, the average price per meter of land sold by residents was L$6.5/m^2 in January, and L$6.8/m^2 so far in February.

My narrow question: Why is the Linden figure so far from what seems to be reality?

/me has wondered about that, too.

Maybe they include estate sales and L$0 land transfers in their math?

Because there is a lot of land that gets sold at a lower price, but either it is transferred directly between avatars for 0 or 1 L$ or it is immediately snatched up by landbots. The lower end of the land prices just never is there long enough for us users to see.

Yup, I think Novis is right. Think of all the land transfers that take place between alts of one person, friends giving land to people they know, and people transferring their land into a group. All those sales occur for as little as L$0-1 total, not even per square meter. Add to that the land that bots buy before it has a chance to become visible in the land listings, and land sold quickly to brokers just below the base price you have a true average far below what we see using the search.

I don't know if estate land sales are included in the average, but that would bring things down a fair bit too.

It must be that they just do an average over all sales transactions - which renders the number meaningless for anyone who actually wants to buy land in the open market.
It's a bit like using the average temperature in the North American continent as a guide to what sort of clothing to pack for a visit.


*If* they included estate sales in that as well ..... Wow! That would be seriously sub-optimal thinking.

Those numbers from LL may be accurate, but they aren't relevant since they have no bearing for people buying land on the open market. The average price for the average joe is somewhere about L$9.0 a meter. Probably closer to L$10 in my opinion.

Same as the member listings... How can there be a claim over 40,000 people logged on when most of them are alts crammed into a box somewhere just to drive traffic.

"CX"

So True!!!