Land Taken by Estate Owner - What to do?

If you own land, have paid monthly payment and are not in violation of covenant, do yo have any recourse if the estate owner simply takes it back? Is there anything you can do besides file abuse report and, if have access, concierge report?

Any advice is much appreciated. Thank you.

As far as I'm aware you have no recourse. Others will hopefully have better information for you. Did they have the decency to try and explain why they've taken this course of action?

There is nothing you can do, and there's nothing Linden Lab will do, so it's pointless to file an AR.

I'd say there's nothing you could do without a lawyer. That means it's probably cost-prohibitive, but maybe your circumstances would enable you to proceed.

In theory, you probably have a good case that you have an enforceable contract. But you'd have to file a suit against an anonymous defendant, then subpoena LL to get the real name behind the defendant.

Unless you have a lawyer in the family willing to do this for free, or unless there's a huge amount of money at stake, it would probably cost you more just to get the case filed than you have at stake.

I'd say there's nothing you could do without a lawyer. That means it's probably cost-prohibitive, but maybe your circumstances would enable you to proceed.

In theory, you probably have a good case that you have an enforceable contract. But you'd have to file a suit against an anonymous defendant, then subpoena LL to get the real name behind the defendant.

Unless you have a lawyer in the family willing to do this for free, or unless there's a huge amount of money at stake, it would probably cost you more just to get the case filed than you have at stake.

mmm

I'm not sure there's an enforceable contract. It would depend on how it was marketed. It is just as easy to construe purchases on an island estate as the purchase of an up-front (transferable) option to rent from the estate owner -- which is not perpetual, of course.

No. the land is gone. All you can do is warn all your friends not to rent from that person. This is why mainland still is a good way to go as far as residences. And why renting from reputable estate owners like Darien Caldwell, Sarah Nerd, Kandee Herrey or Wildefire Walcott is essential.

This is exactly why I would never "buy" land not on the mainland. (And I have reasons for not buying land on the mainland, but they're different).

I'll only ever rent. It will probably cost a bit more in the long run, but that extra cost is worth it to me to not have to risk dealing with the OP's unfortunate situation.

Love.

But if you rent on the mainland, you can still get booted.

No, no explanation. 24 hrs after I put land up for sale I got message saying objects returned by parcel owner (Hey! That was supposed to be me.) I went to land and IM estate owner asking what had happened. (It could have been an accident, I thought.) No response except to be ejected from land. That was a day ago and still not a single response to any of my inquiries.

I am sorry, but if estate owners can do this EVERY person in SL thinking about "buying" land from them needs to: 1) know is a possibility and 2) know that there is NO RECOURSE.

Thanks again for all of your responses.

or from me. At least if Linden Lab forcibly reclaims your land on the mainland, you have a defendant who is easy to identify and sue. With a private estate owner, they can be gone tomorrow. You may want to go to another third-party forum where you can name names and identify who did this, because it tends to cast a smidgin of doubt on the rest of the good estate owners who would never do this.

But if I get booted, I'm out a week or two at most. Same as private land. So I don't care.

Love.

It is a gamble buying estate. Personally I recommend Sofia Westwick.

As has been said there is little point ARing ... the Estate Owner deals with any ARs.

Well put. I hate hearing about these injustices because it casts all estate owners in a bad light.

Also -- how do we get on Raymond's list of safe estate owners?

-Atashi

From now on buy mainland its owned by linden labs and second life itself.


Elinah

It's not like my opinion counts for all that much.

I have rented from Sarah Nerd and Kandee Herrey personally and have known Darien Caldwell and Wildefire Walcott from doing land deals and sharing business tips with each other on another forum. I have heard great things about you and Steve. I just base my opinions on personal experience versus what I hear from others.

I'd first file an AR, if only to show that you have taken steps to try to solve the problem.

Then consider getting an attorney to call or write Linden Labs for the estate owner's name and, if that can be acquired, to then contact the estate owner. Many lawyers won't charge much for a service like that, and it's often effective.

Not much point if it's a tiny plot, would cost more than the land.

I don't personally ho,d with the 'sue' society we are becoming anyway.

I haven't rented from Sarah. But I remember wanting to sell some land when I was still nublet and she was very very honest with me (I didn't sell it in the end, at least not until MUCH later).

Does the covenant for this land allow you to set the land for sale at your discretion?

If it was prohibited, it shouldn't have been allowed - the estate tools can take care of that.

Not to mention, a simple IM response to that effect would put an end to it all.

True enough. That would have been the reasonable / easy / professional way to restrict resale. But there might be some kind of fine print in the covenant. There's all kinds of horrible clauses in some of these covenents. I've seen covenants that explicitly state "Do X, and the consequences will be that your parcel will be confiscated" Sometimes X is something as innocuous as commercial activity in residential land. i.e., something that could be resolved more sensibly than total termination. But still, that's what the covenants aka contracts say. You've seen that kind of clause on some estates, too, right?

Well, lets find out. OP, Olde Barrymore, please go back to the estate and read the covenant, are there any clauses in there that cite confiscation without refund as a consequence for transgression? Which transgressions?

Exactly what I was going to say!

One day I might make it onto Ray's preferred list.....

Inc

Does this land have a covenant? If you did not pay tier directly to LL, then you never really "owned" the land and could not re-sell it without the person who pays LL the tier approval.