Is demand building for full mainland sims?

We went from 8 sims a day being dropped to the auction page for almost two months (more than 400 new sims to market) to less than 10 sims total in the last month*. Yet mainland prices have not gone up one penny.

Are barons just taking a break or are they done? What will happen when LL starts releasing full sims again? Is the market so battered that it will plummet further once they start dumping? Will you personally be bidding?

The last time they stopped releasing sims like this, prices doubled in two months. This time, nothing as far as the base price per meter goes. I don't know about you, but I think that's a pretty dramatic shift of the land economy.

It's Sunday. Let's talk land.

*did not actually count all the sims to auction, but that's a rough idea of what's been going on.

I think that prices right now are too high as-is. Principal reasons I state this is that there is a TON of mainland available right now that is just sitting vacant all over the place.

Maybe people are waiting for a weekend, or a week, without "[STABILIZED] Gridwide Slowdowns ....... same old, same old .....".

Let's see if they Blog on Monday with a clear description of what went wrong and what they are doing to ensure that this will not get even worse into the future.
Right now, I'd be very slow to invest any more.
I've been thanked for my patience too many times.

It's a great pity. I really love SL - or rather what it's meant to be.

vat debacle plays into this as well i imagine.
im watching to see what happens with all the eurobarons. i imagine many other ppl are as well. it might be a good time to land a deal on full sims/islands.

ps: its monday.

due in large part to the fact that many ppl paid $10+ for the land and are not likely to just dump it at 5 or 6.

Still, if they have a large amount that they are sitting on, the tier costs can outweigh selling at a loss. I recently sold a lot of land to tier to 0, but most of what I had was bought on the cheap, so I made out overall, although I took a loss on a few parcels.

Now living a carefree lifestyle on Raymond's sim. No tier, crazy neighbors or bad tenants to trouble this girl anymore.

i am debating cutting up half a dozen 512's and donating them to noobs just to tier down another level.
ll have motivated me to tier down to 10%, i'm now looking to take it down to 5%. gg ll

I have noticed a lot more mainland renting especially around where I live. Could the market be switching over to a rental base?

I would think that the VAT issue is going to encourage renting over owning for European residents.

Not until they've paid tier on it for a few months anyway.

Monthly tier is the main roadblock to land ownership in SL. If they reduced tier rates more people would take the plunge into land ownership. Sure your first 512m is included in your premium membership, but you really can't do much with that.

1. More and more mainland - which can only be bought by Premium accounts
2. Premium account numbers not rising in proportion.

Either Premiums keep increasing their tier just for fun, or they buy and make the land earn tier.
The land exists, and either the Barons, the Baby Barons, the flippers or the end users have to find the wherewithal to pay tier.

Rentals seems an obvious move - maybe even for the whole chain if people find themselves with land they can't sell.

I wonder, if the ad farm extortionists don't have any luck selling their overpriced eyesores to current residents because it's cheaper for people to pick up and move elsewhere than it is to pay those rates to save their view, if there's any chance more adland could be given up to revert to its natural state.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking. I'm hoping that many of the adfarmers are Europeans who get hit by VAT and want to tier down.

I think that when land prices go down, and nicer land becomes available for a reasonable price, there is a tendency for current premium users to tier up to take advantage of the 'sales'. I did. Traded up from a plain flat green 512 lot next to an adfarm to a bigger lot of protected watery goodness.

However, there is a limit for what most people are willing to spend on tier per month without earning money back from the land. And of course, there are people who bought land when prices were much higher who don't want to sell at a loss. Therefore, I agree that this is probably what we're seeing with the increased mainland rentals.

Some of these comments beg the question, "What will LL do with tier fees?".

Will mainland tier cost more or less or the same in the near future?

Would love to see a full sim buyer chime in on this thread. Brazil? Stephen? Joep? Bueller? When they start releasing sims again, will you be buying?

Interesting question.

I think it's pretty enlightening to convert land prices into months of tier. Tier for smaller parcels would be about 2.0 - 2.5 L$/sq/month (and that's w/o VAT ). So back when land was very expensive, buying a parcel was equivalent to about 6 months of tier for the same parcel. Now it's less than 3.

So what? Well, this means that tier fees get more significant now compared to land prices themselves. Tier is now more likely to prevent people from buying.

This would imply that prices will fall further, because a decreasing percentage of people would be willing to hold land, no matter what it costs. If this is the case, the obvious course of action for LL is not to add new land ... which they seem to be doing.

Feel free to shoot holes into my theory ... but based on this I predict that mainland tier is bound to decrease eventually, when the economic downturn gets bad enough.

If you look at recent auction prices, you would think that demand remained at the level it was a few months ago. Why should any sim go for more than 2k USD? But several have. We'll see what they are used for...

Well it's certainly too early to call on the VAT issue.

I think people have been awaiting the seasonal adjustment recovery, but at the moment there's no sign of that happening. Maybe it's too early still.

It would be nice for Zee to organize another townhall to talk about LL's financial situation (as it affects us, nothing internal) and how he sees the future.

If the demand for new land goes down (less auctions and less per sim, less private sims), and Supply Linden sales stay low LL is going to be short(er) on money and the only thing there is for LL to increase is tier since they're intent on keeping accounts free.

VAT is relevant in the sense that it might be a sign that LL is struggling for revenue already, a 20% increase (assuming it's true that they've been silently funding it themselves) of their EU income is a quick and instant boost and they have a convenient cover story beyond "we're short on money".

As it turns out, a sim that I was bidding on for development has gone up for flipping (by a new person who has not bought a sim prior to the new auction system). It's terraced and carved up, selling at 10.7 L/m2. It's a nice sim, yes. May well be worth it for some of the plots, especially those on the water. But how long will it take to sell? We'll see.

hmmmm, new person or new alt? one never knows these days...

I think that's the first time I've been asked to join a thread by name!

Basically, due to VAT reselling mainland is no longer an option for me - the increase in tier I could have worked around (put the land in a group, pay Americans I know to contribute tier to the group), but my margins per sim were low enough to be more than wiped out by the increase in purchase price.

I always wanted to buy a private island but can not justfy the money even to myself. I can think of much better ways of using my money. ABout tier, I rent in Caledon but as a "premium" member get 512 sqm. Wish I could do something productive with it.
It would seem that a drawn down in sims might be next. After the gambling bust and now EU increase it would be in order.
Myself I only care or worry about Japanese or American law. Since I do not fall under their laws it is not my worry.
If it becomes my worry goodbye to Second Life! Enough people do this and there will be a flood of empty land, land in Second Life has no real value anyway!

ahhhh another Positive Americanese comment from Ranma..... LL is Europe AND Usa based now ... so Eurolaws ARE your laws as far as SL is concerned....the same way as the US view on legalisation of digital representation of kids or the illeagalisation of gambling effects me........ Internt laws havce a funny way of spreading thier grip a lot further than thier grasp.

So ...,

SL Dump thier land prior to the "introduction" on VAT to its EU residents, land prices go down, people who have land bought so when there was the chance of turning a profit. Now that its at a loss people wont buy above going rate which is VERY low at the moment.
People who HAVE land cant sell becasue NEW land is too cheap and 65% of the user base doesnt want to incresae tier due to VAT

The only real way is make it good for people to own land again, for what ever reason but if LL increase tier costs it will proberly drive even more people out of an expensive game.

I know people comment..... but as i have said previously SOMEBODY needs to own the land even if you rent, my offering of an option is to allow NON premiums the ability to own land... get rid of premium membership alltogether and JUST sell the platform as is.

For many the ability to pay LL LOADS of money in tier by getting premium just isnt worth even the stipend.

The cost of a mainland sim is simply off the scale to what it used to be about a year ago. You might have gotten people fighting for a particularly nice one but normal flat land etc often went for $1001.

There's just no way I am paying $3000 or so.

I actually dont believe that LL can get away with the "one price fits all" mentality these days, with different regions having different rules and to be honest i KNOW LL see thier pricing structure as " becasue the market can sustain it" (as its been quoted on many occasions) which means

Will will charge that high BECASUE people will PAY that high, Its also been referenced that server farm rentals are far cheaper than what LL charge thier customer base. I think with the VAT fiasco amd the fact that LL are now 20% better off on average we might see a stay of increased tier.... if LL DOES increase tier it may be a death drum for many european land owners