Bay City Land Value -- Worth L$140/m2?

Wow just, flew around a bit.. porchses and lamborghinis in the garages, helicoptors on the rood, 1024m parcels for $240,000.... what is this, Beverly Hills?

More like Beverly Hillbillies in parts



Add.. but the farce is unintentional





What's worse than being a noob?

.... being a nouveau !!

Worth an AR in my opinion, but the price is a scam anywayzzz



For "Joe Average" affected it means he's running at a 20% higher expense each month, and on any sim purchase...


*i wonder if LL taxes "2nd hand" estates ?

.

Yes please - one for me thank you

Sent

If anyone else would like the "Point and Laugh" animation made especially for Bay City by the kind person who dropped it on me, please shoot an IM to me in world as I may miss the request here.

Ready for you when you log in

My partner and I flew around Bay City this past weekend. What a disappointment. Lots of concrete barriers and and flat land. This is the type of area that I came to SL to get away from. I was choking at the land prices, who would pay that? I mean, why? We paid a lot less for almost a 1/4 of a region and our imagination can run wild with landscapes. Guess I just don't see the draw to this area.

Yes! Please!

This is exactly my feeling. My only source of hope here is the fact that all the people with the Pimp My Crib bullshit are actually resellers, so there's a chance that someone with some taste and an understanding of what these sims are about will come in and wipe out the blight of affluenza currently corrupting Bay City.

There's one reseller who is especially guilty of this; he's obviously got a lot of RL cash on hand and has won numerous lots in my sim alone. Unfortunately he has ZERO taste and ZERO desire to stay in theme/period, putting up all these awful builds and reselling the lots for 150% what he paid for them.

I'm not sure if the land in Bay City's worth L$140 a square metre..but I do know it sure isn't worth L$307 a square metre. I had my eye on a plot in Molesworth, decided I'd go as far as 130K. As it happens I didn't bid..didn't get the chance..the price flew past 130 and finished a few minutes later at 205K.

I then watched a plot which I thought might be popular (it's the little one next to the park out on the headland by Barcola Sound). Two minutes from the end it flew past 150 then 210 then finished at 280K. It's only 912 square metres, so that's L$307 a square metre..are they nuts!!

I have noticed that the once purple patches which turned into yellow patches on the map still seem to be yellow patches on the map..how very strange!

Perre..

Two features I'd like in general, that would at least improve the visuals in Bay City:

1. No banlines on for-sale properties.

2. A toggle to make all objects on for-sale properties invisible.

Got it, thank you very much

Affluenza is my new favorite word.

Had to chuckle when i saw this while exploring bay city in front of some burning for sale signs



small lettering says: "this crappy little plot may be small but it cost me enough."
and "Its a shame we didnt collude-we could have saved a fourtune"

I talked to the owner yesterday. They had someting in, I believe, the parcel information about the out of scale classical Roman building overshadowing the theater.

Mari

I had a look around with a serious notion of buying, even at the inflated prices and obviously there are others who are also buying and selling.

I think that regardless of the price of the land initially it is not that much of an investment if you consider longer term to be in a 'premium' or professionally designed sim. You are buying a permanent and stable piece of land that should get high visibility and traffic for years to come. There are only a couple other options available for the average SL business that are either more costly (bigtime for EU residents) or more risky in terms of permanence. ie.. your private island commercial area that is well done and managed competently is great but owners can change.. etc..

People who are building and sticking to the theme should win out eventually, and the difference LL has in 'city building' over the residents offering island estates is they can mobilize, design and build something of this scale and deliver it effectively.


Bay city is good, but IMHO it has a few major problems that don't stop me from wanting to own there but are obvious over sights.
1. There is often no space between the parcels -- in this kind of community wouldn't you prefer to give up a few square meters of your land and some of the park land to run some linden walways through between the properties or something? the box next to box look that happens when people build right up to the border sucks...regardless of what theme it is.
2. The roads are pretty good, but the diagonal patterning creates alot of dead ends, what is worse is the in some areas the way the parcels are cut aroud the dead ends effectively cuts some of the parcels out of 1/2 of thier roadside, while giving the center parcel a double roadside which is not very good planning.

Overall, the economy is showing that this is what people want.. the for sale signs are obviously not devaluing the land. There is not a shortage of people who would be ready to snap up the parcel in Bay City even if it was at some sort of reasonable price.. people who would gladly build to suggested theme and who want the community.


Someone with deep pockets should do the same thing as LL just did.. buy a dozen and ten mainland sims, hire a crew of moles to build a cohesive infrastructure and subdivision of lands, add consistent landscape, roadwork prefabs. . There would never be a guarantee with no covenant that it would work, but i think that it would be a better starting place for people buying into the sim and would encourage people to stay which is the most important.

-whyroc

News flash: there are a number of businesses that do this to some degree already - they create cohesive communities with community amenities. Avion Raymaker is a prime example. Check out the City of Liome. Granted the scale is not as big, but it evolves over time. There certainly is a demand for high quality communities like Bay City.

As the Bay City is pointing out, hopefully the Lindens will get off their duffs, make a few templates and expand this program massively.

Two things going on.


One, people 'buying the dream' - but not what is really there.

"Going to be"... "should be"... "want it to be"...

Yeah.


Second, land speculation.

Reselling people their dream.

* * * * *

Honestly I think the city would be great if it had covenant enforcement, and didn't just saturate with oldbies that let it sit on their credit cards or their charter life tier forever.

That would be the death of it right there, even if it came out perfect.

I think our service provider will figure it out, but Bay City may be that first painful lesson that no, not everyone 'gets it' and there will be the least common denominator that ruins it for *everybody* else.

I don't see diminished demand for premium private estates at all.

Bay City has already logged more hours of giant 'for sale' signs than Caledon ever had in over two years (against our covenant), and none of those nonsense builds would have ever seen the weekend intact.

It's a big world. Even if they competed smack against me for super premium land, there are plenty of residents for all - I sincerely believe that a grander, more compelling world is more good than harm.

Which is why I'm so eager to see them manage it well, or at very least, show me I'm dead wrong. A trashed Bay City would be a sad flagship city of the grid.

Not exactly a news flash, but yes I have seen Liome it is well done and I would say all the power to Mr. Avion! BUT... I don't see anything that competes with Bay City on the mainland in terms of scale or desirability. I am not totally sure what the difference is, but there obviously is one, otherwise why are parcels on Liome are not selling for 140/m2?

-whyroc

Well, they aren't for sale, for one. And two, land speculators are the ones who drove the costs up. There is a certain amount of premium for a double prim mainland parcel like that, but not when it goes into the thousands of USD.

And another large factor is publicity on the blog. Nothing beats that kind of publicity. Some people look down their nose at people who have the nerve to use classifieds to advertise their business, and don't use them to find businesses.

The only other way businesses like his could get that kind of publicity is by being featured in the Showcase, if a category existed for housing.

This is, IMO, one of the failings of the folks who are buying and dividing sims nowadays.

Look at some of the places of SL's history. There are a number of sims that took on a look and feel throguh the landowners of days past working together on a "look and feel." Taber had an old world feel, once. Gibson also comes to mind, Boardman, Shermerville, and others had various levels of enforced building rules, wether part of LLs plans, or those of the neighborhood.

Now look at the way the sims are going on Gaeta. They're being hastily terraced and "for sale" boxes are plopped down. There is no "theme," no attempt to provide anything more than a chunk of land.

If a wise reseller wanted to maximize their earnings, however, they could come up with a basic form for their region. Make a chunk of the land be a neighborhood park, or parcel off some footpaths or other items. Spend a little time making your parcels attractive and desirable. Create at least a little greenspace. It should not take much to make for a pleasing place. Advertise it as an alternative to what the others do. Maybe even hold some "event" to draw in prospective buyers -- it works in the real world. Then sell sell sell, likely at a slightly higher than median price to make up for your time investment.

This is one of the lessons of Bay City. This is how you can make *more* money when you resell sims.

Mari

Interesting idea, Mari, but said reseller has to eat the tier on the green space. Any developer who carves up things like walkways and parks has to sit on that tier. For those of us who develop and hold rentals this is not a problem because the rentals will cover the cost of maintenance land. But in time, the green space/walkways will eat up whatever profit was to be had in the resale of the plots.

It's true, there is such a thing as adding value like this.

Mainland only has two drawbacks to big projects - somewhat more limited land control (not that big a deal) and no great way to expand, really.

Had Caledon been done on mainland, I probably would have been trapped into maybe a few contiguous regions maximum before I hit land-buying obstacles. One tenth our present size.

Once the neighbours see a success, they will start to figure adjacent land is worth more. Or simply not talk or sell at all.

That said, there may one day be a giant steampunk arcology in a mainland region. Looking at roughly 2009/2010, but it's in the plans... grin

/me nods

It is the one difficulty, but hardly insurmountable IMO. It really ends up depending on how much land you make as "buffer." Heck, make it a nice enough pot and, should it become a burden later -- sell it off.

Or heck, if you're not all that worried about things after the fact (and how few are, really?), include those chunks with your for sale plots and let your new landowners enjoy -- or destroy -- those spaces at their leisure.

Mari