A question for landlords...and a request.

I'm just about ready with my new residential sim. This is a neighborhood community with houses already placed, a playground for the kids, etc. It is my intention to give the tenant a lot of permissions for his/her land.

The question....what are the pros and cons of "selling" the land for $1 so they have full permissions?

The request...if you feel like it, please IM me for the landmark. I'd like to hear the thoughts of the "pros". It's not totally done yet, but I'd like opinions on what is there.

good luck Honeybear. i only use mainland, so i'm of no use. i just wanted to wish you well.

i'll be watching this thread with alot of intrest. it's a question i'v had for some time myself

-Crunch

Disable resell.

You probably want to disable terraforming too.

Pros are you don't have to send a group invite. They don't have to wait for a group invite.

Cons people don't always understand how it all works.

I set my plots for sale for 1 week's rent so the purchase price pays the rent and then set them up with a rental box.

There are houses already on the land... not good, in the sense that someone could return your items if you do not require them to join a group that you are the owner of. Land rentals are easy on estates because you don't have to manage a huge group of tenants. But when you start providing content, you don't want people to have the opportunity to muck it up and make you have to do it all over again.

Thanks! I'm excited about it

I always deed the land to the resident's name or group, even though they full well understand it's not mainland "ownership."

I'd disable land sale except for you setting up people, personally.

If you do well, and there is high demand for your region, a few people *cough*almosteveryone!*cough* gets the idea to make some money off the situation.

In which case a fine community turns into a desolate parking lot of "land for sale" almost overnight. Killing much of the reason to be there in the first place.

As for the lovely residential houses and neighbourhood - there's two ways to go here.

First, there are people who will be happy in them forever, but this is a minority. If you enforce the theme very tightly you'll lose people as their skills grow and they yearn for more freedom.

On the other hand, some of them will build atrocities - remember, their darling baby prims look beautiful in their eyes - more beautiful than *someone else's* prim, even if he's a master architect.

Personally I let them change things out, buy different stuff, and build.

Overall, there is the 'keep up with the joneses' effect - the more creative control and participation you give, the better most people will like it and get involved, and strive to do better. Failing that, it's like they are "living in someone else's house" and "living someone else's dream" after a while.

* * * * *

Directly on point - I have people IM me for land - avoiding the land search and the $L 1 for acceptance thing entirely. Maybe that loses a lot of marketshare, I don't know.

But it's how I roll, and it seems to keep me out of a lot of land misconception troubles and disputes with people.

Oh....that's a really good point, and the strongest con there is!

Thanks for the advice all!

Another big con is that if you put it for sale on the land list for $1, you will be dealing with a lot of:

OMGWTFBBQ YOU CHEATED ME I DO NOT WANT TO PAY TIER I WANT TO PAY $1L FOR TEH LAND CHEATER SCAMMER111111111111!!!!

You will also have a lot of people treating your $1L parcels as sand boxes... I dealt with that alot in my early days of estate ownership - which is why i no longer use that method.

Also, Des was right about proving people homes. People really do seem to want to do their own things, no matter how attractive you make your sim. Noobs someones like houses being provided for them, but they will outgrow it, and will want to place there own builds eventually.

I've been mulling that over. I think that if someone liked the sim and wanted to stay, but provide their own house, I'd let them do that...with prior approval, and yes, I'd be happy to visit their new home store prior to them purchasing it. Of course, once their house goes on the property, I'd give them a prim credit of what their existing house amounted to, but other than that, it would go against their prims. On a 1024 or 2048 parcel (which mine are), that doesn't amount to much.

..sidenote..NOT ME! I may be a minority in this, but as a tenent (and someone who doesnt want to deal with all the SL housing/furnishing rigamarore...) I constantly keep my eye out for the best deal on a rental, completly furnished with bells/whistles. I'm in one now and happy with my Landlord and what she's done. The only con with what I have is I can't get rid of some of her furnishings..they are nailed down to the floor lol. But i dont' mind, she did a great job and she's responsive and doesnt treat me like an idiot LOL, and that's what keeps me there. I think thats the biggest seller for tenents if you ask me. I was just talking with another renter from another place...she's upset because her LL is a jerk and non responsive..as soon as her month is up...she's out..even though its a better place then mine.

A couple of thoughts..

I think providing houses does add value to the deal for certain tenants, but I would definately not consider it mandatory that residents use them. One of the prime motivators for obtaining land for a majority of folks is that it affords them a freedom to create. Just make sure the covenant is as clear as can be with regard to the sim being a residential community, encourage people to be considerate of their neighbors while they build their dream.. and be ready to just accept the fact that one day somebody is liable to slap together something obnoxious. If they're anything like me when I started, they'll soon realize it, and endeavor to create something better. There's just no sense in hurting someone's feelings.

Second comment-

Meet with each prospective tenant personally, and either deed the parcels to them personally or to their group. Don't set the land for sale for $1. This suggests a landlord not all that willing to engage with her customers, and opens the door to other problems already suggested in this thread. Having that initial face to face time with your tenants can be a valuable experience for you and for them. It gives you an opportunity to feel them out, and watch for any signs of trouble, and it gives them an opportunity ask questions, and seek clarification on anything in the covenant that might not be initially clear to them. You could learn quite a bit about someone just from the questions they ask.

From a service perspective, avoid even the appearance of being too busy to deal with folks this way. My landlord owns and operates some 80 rental sims, and while she's very busy with alot of things, she finds the time to engage with her customers. She even offered friendship to me on the very day she deeded my land. I'm not suggesting that you should do that also, just illustrating that you must find ways to become and remain engaged with your customers. That first meeting at point of sale is your best and most important opportunity to make an impression.

A thought re: the 1L thing.

It is a matter of expediency, since we cannot be online 24/7. Personally, it is only ignorance why anyone would get their dander up in this age of automated sales.

The vast majority of landlords do not own anything that approaches 80 sims. 80 sims provides income that is sufficient to replace a rl job, and thus gives such a landlord the luxury of being inworld for at least 8 hours out of the day. For the rest of us, this is still a hobby and we have to work to earn our rl living.

So if, in a vanilla estate land sale, a landlord makes it clear that it is a pure rental model, a person can buy the land and get started building without having to wait on anyone to set the land for sale to them. There is nothing wrong with a pure rental model automated in this way.

I think the only sticky point might be the issue of estate and mainland both mixed together in the search.

Not the fault of the private estate people that it's "that way" to be sure, and it's not your fault if a new resident doesn't do their homework - but it's sure a mess in spite of all that.

Agree about expediency, it's a great perk for estate rentals for people not to have to wait for group invites but I do question the 1L thing, that doesn't pay for any rental time and means the person needs to pay again or get evicted.

When I started out, I rented land on estates and developed them. I understood that if I paid a low price that I had to pay tier, usually to a box, within 24 hours. The price wasn't 1L, but it was low enough to know that it wasn't a true sale of the land. Anyone who thinks they are paying only 1L for land is really ignorant.

On a bit of a tangent, I was looking for land a while back, and it quickly got very tiresome to get yelled at in extremely aggressively worded covenants and notecards.
It seemed half of the landlords were pretty much saying, "If you look at me the wrong way, I'll ban you, AR you, haunt you in your dreams and spit on your grave". -I've literally seen landlords claiming that if you were late paying them, you'd be banned from SL!
I don't know if they feel they pre-empt problems that way, but it really doesn't make me want to rent such places.

I understand but on the flip side, consider the kinds of things that people have done to instigate such wording.

Actually, I rented skyboxes on my previous sim. I was always ready to drop what I was doing to assist the tenants...and all but one moved with me to the skybox sim, and the one that didn't left SL. I firmly believe that good customer service is the best skill I have to offer, so I offer friendship to my tenants right away, and I communicate with them as often as I need to to make sure that they're happy.

Personally it was the "hi! I noticed you looked at some land of mine! please let me bore you with a sales pitch!" IMs that got on my nerves. If I didn't IM, I obviously was *not* interested.

Especially when it costs them $25/month and they're asking $40/month it's hard to stay polite for very long when they go on and on for 10 minutes about how great a deal it is .

Back when I ran my estate, I placed the parcels for the amount of 1 month's rent. It worked well all around. People could get possession of the land immediately, there was no misunderstanding about how much the monthly tier would be, and were I to get back into rentals tomorrow, That's exactly how I would do it.

My personal feeling is the 1 Linden thing is a bit of bait and switch.

Sounds like a very practical way to do it - however, as Cristalle pointed out, they could return my prims on "their" space, and that defeats my purposes.

Yes, I didn't offer 'furnished' plots. People had to BYOP (bring your own prefab).

Although I "own" several houses in my inventory, when I finally broke down and got my own little plot of land and home in a residential beachfront community ... I went with a landlord that provided the houses, unfurnished. His houses fit the theme nicely. He offered a variety of different floorplans and builds, and I was able to find one that fit my wants. I lucked out and found one available, on the beach. The previous tennant was moving out that same day.

So, by all means, keep the houses there if you want to. Some people may not want your build, but there are others that will.