The Sleigh is Coming -- A Land Renting Thread

The sleigh is circling. Santa is bringing me a gift of -- Land for Xmas. I don't want to go into all the details, but I've had a change in fortune and I need a better place for my store with some expansion room beyond what a 512 can give me.

I have some very dumb questions about renting estate land. I did the costing out and whle a 512 on the mainland with a premium membership is definitely cheaper than rented land, for larger parcels estate land is less expensive.

The problem is, I have no idea how much land to rent. I have an upper price. If I spend less, though, I may be just as happy. I also know I want "liberty hall" type zoning. I don't care about living next to stores. Mixed use is fine with me.

What I can't figure out is how many prims I really am going to need. My current land has between sixty and seventy prims of 117 used. I get a house and a garden out of that. I have always built my own houses and being a newbie builder, low prim houses are easier to make. Prim limits have never been a problem until XStreet more or less evicted me. My 512 really wont' hold both the pocket home and a retail kiosk (just not the space) and the garden. I have a mall stall now (for the next three weeks) which won't let me set a landmark to it which means no exposure in search. I can be dumb as a box of rocks sometimes.

I could probably do just fine with 150 prims this week and don't think I'll expand that quickly. Square meters are every bit as precious since I love to sprawl out at ground level. I do have three new species of trees, but those aren't prim hogs. I also have a larger (15 prim!) retail structure that I can use instead of one of my kiosks so I'll probably expand.

Is there a way to estimate how many prims I'll eventually "grow into?" I get lost after 200.

It's hard to really say what someone else's needs will be.....but I can at least share my own experiences and maybe you can gain some better perspective for yourself.....

When I begun in SL I rented an apartment and I was excited at my 100 prims. By the time I'd spent a month in the place...I realized 100 prims was pretty minimal (and this was an apartment, not land I wanted to put a furnished home on and landscape)

I ultimately upgraded to a rented parcel with 400 some odd prims and put up a home....did a bit of gardening and furnishing..... When I opened my first shop.....I bought my first 512 parcel with 117 prims. It was barely enough to put up a small low prim building and display my items (all just single prim signs) and have it actually look presentable as a shop. I grew out of it pretty quickly and decided to double my space. 1024 seemed more reasonable for a shop and I was able to make things look much more professional.

The reality is that prims rule the grid. It's not difficult to find low prim items and decorate on a prim budget.....but after a while.....when you see all that 'can' be done in SL and all the really amazing builds and landscapes and shopping districts.....you start to get a little greedy. Ultimately I wound up renting a homestead island that had over 3000 prims....I used just over 2000 with landscaping and my gallery. And, it wasn't cluttered looking.....it's just that to get the effect I wanted....I had to be diverse with my choice of items.....and that meant prims. I woodpecker in a birch tree....a row boat resting lazily on the beach..... a rocking chair and wind chimes on my beach shack porch.....

What I'd recommend is baby steps.....move up gradually...get a feel for what you really enjoy....what you really want to accomplish with the space & prims you have.....and let yourself progress naturally (as if there's anything natural about the grid lol) After nearly 4 years in SL I have gone from renting an apartment.....to renting an island......back to renting an apartment in a really great NYC sim. I still love the creative freedom of having lots of prims to play with......but I don't 'need' to have that on a regular basis....and what i can truly afford is more important right now.

May I recommend you go visit a sandbox, with all the things you think you would want to rez on your new property in tow? Rez it all. Set it up as your home, organize everything the way you would want it, and do two things.

First add up the prims you're using there. This will tell you the absolute bare minimum you would require. Good idea to inflate that by at least 25% to give you a little bit of room for growth.

Also start laying down basic 10x10 plywood prims as a platform underneath everything. Line them up perfectly so they fit right against each other without any gaps. Find out how many it takes to completely cover the area you're using (having some slop on the outside where you have extra plywood that isn't covered is good). This will tell you the size of the property you'd require for the layout you want.

Then you'll be armed with a very good idea of what size property you're going to need.

Wow, Rock 'n Roll, this is great advice. And I can get a platform out of the measuring deal if I decide I want to put my new house up above ground level to make more space. I'll have to find a very empty sandbox some time this weekend. My bet is I'll "need" about 150 prims, but at least 2000 square meters.

Be careful. I have already seen a few places move to estates only to die back and go to mainland or close for good.
The problem? Don't discount the revenue of explorers.

A lot depends on what sort of store you want.

A "store" can be nothing more than a flat piece of ground with a vendor on it. Let's say it's one of those multi-item vendors. I hate those, but they do let you store a lot of items in a very few prims. Put up a sign, and maybe a couple more signs like a landmark giver. OK...you now have a "store" for about ten or twelve prims.

On the other end, you can build an ornate structure, with several thousand prims and a ton of visual interest, and have hundreds of one-prim vendor signs with one item in each. I like stores that showcase the owner's creative flair...even if the creation was a collaboration, or hired out.

The retail kosk I built during getting shoved around was 13 prims and it held two multi item single prim vendors, two 2 prim plants in pots, and two two trim benches plus a one prim instruction sign and a large one prim sign for outside. That makes 23 prims to sell 32 items. That comes in somewhere in the middle.

Anyway, I am keeping my 512 since it is "paid in full" and at the end of twelve months, I can pack up and leave. It will hurt, but not that much. It will be fun while it lasts, if it lasts.

Well, here are the results of the layout test complete with pictures.

http://tacheiru.us/byriatt

The post is called Lost Innocence II.

You can all see the build I am planning.