Owning an apartment block?

Yeah same as the nightclub post but instead i want a guide on building and running an apartment block!

i can write you one how much are you willing to pay?

Like owning a club, housing rentals are a good way to lose money, unless you know what you are doing (and have a bit of luck).

First of all, a "block" of apartments isn't the greatest idea. Because local chat can be heard for 20 meters, putting residential units closer than this can lead to annoyance for your tenants. Also, to let your tenants set their own music, they need to have their own parcel...which means subdividing your land into plots. For these reasons, you see a lot of single family residences, and a lot of skyboxes, rather than a lot of muti-unit apartments.

You have to make a basic decision: Rent out big parcels with lots of prims, for a hefty price? Or rent out little parcels, with a few prims, for a low price?

An example of the first would be buying a whole private island, splitting it into four to eight parcels, and renting them out. An example of the second would be my Greek village at Lebettu sim (now history), which had around 20 to 25 plots on a half sim parcel.

You also have to decide whether you will rent bare land, and let the tenants build to suit themselves, or rent prefab units (which may or may not include furnishings). Either one can work, but you are after a different clientele.

The key figure is your rental price per prim. You must rent your prims for enough to cover your tier, plus a vacancy factor, plus something to recoup your investment, plus (maybe) a little profit. L$2 to L$3 per prim per week seems to be a typical figure in the current market.

Apartments are not a bad idea, because the likelihood of your neighbors being online and home at the same time are not all that high thanks to SL being such a diverse area. I rent out lots of apartments and those developments are almost always near capacity in terms of occupancy, and rarely is there a problem with two people being at home at the same time in the same building within chat distance of each other.

I admire your tenacity, Ollie. Let me help steer you down the right path here.

Clubs and rentals have a basic downfall - they require regular customers. Clubs need folks that are going to show up on a regular basis, and rentals need folks who are either going to rent long-term or provide for a steady stream of short term visits.

These are very different apples and oranges, sure, but that is the common thread. Another common thread is need.

Lots of people have residences. Why? It's a place to put one's stuff on display, and/or provides a place for friends to meet and hang out. Shelter isn't much of a concern in SL, and asset server hiccups aside, no one really needs a "place" to "put" their belongings by and large. From what I've seen, to retain a long term renter you need low price, privacy for your residents and something not found many other places.

I rented a skybox for my first six months here. It was well away from other renters, on a private island. It had a privacy sphere, and better still, the walls and floors were customizable. Pre-furnished with sex-bed, big screen TV, lots of furniture and 100 prims to boot. Plus I was allowed to build there, so I could further customize the thing as I liked. I paid 400/week, and it was worth it - much better than many cheaper boxes with not so much to offer. Give your renters as much as you can for as cheap as you can manage, but what you give them will make or break the contract.

Clubs need atmosphere. They need something more than a fancy interior. The best clubs are the ones that have been around for a little while, having had time to build a reputation for being a fun place to hang out, and they offer more than gimmicks to visitors. Sure, sploders and contests are nice, but then visit a place like Toby's Juke Joint to see a club that is always occupied with friendly people - because they play great music, have the right atmosphere and offer *live* music on a regular basis. Hey, one bar has a band, and one bar has a jukebox. Where would you go?

Giving the people what they want is key in either case. Take the time to really get to know SL and the environment, and find out what attracts people to different places regularly. Then, do it your way! I wish you much success

I must be running into the Butter Side Down rule, then. Every time I've been in someone's apartment, it seems, someone starts chattering away next door. Usually at the most, er, inopportune times.

84 of my 162 units are apartments stacked on top of each other, in varying blocks: 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8. From what I observe in my travels around my property, it is rare for folks to be online and at home in the same time in the same building. Sometimes it happens, and I have fielded maybe one or two complaints about it. But as part of my instruction packet I let people know about the chat distance, and that they should be more discreet when living in apartments. With whisper returning as a function for avatars in the next viewer, that will ameliorate that even more.

I had a skybox once where I put a megaprim building on the ground. The mega was phantom and looked like a tall apartment. It had a lobby with an elevator and clicking on the elevator panel would tp you to the skybox at 2000m. Clicking on the elevator panel in the skybox would send you to the lobby. The skybox looked like an apartment. You could do something similar by putting skyboxes at a 1000, 1500, 2000,up to 4000. That gives you eight units 500m apart. Outside of shout range for all. I think that would be better than recreating an actual building.

how do you work the prims and who is abusing prim use and things like that with apartments?
i've always wondered that.

My hippotech counts prims, but you must physically visit from time to time to check on it if you allow anyone other than tenants to build there. I allow friends to join the group and rez objects, so when looking at prim usage, I look at whose stuff is in whose apartment and do the math, if there are more object owners than there are tenants.

Thanks very much everyone for your help that is probs what i will go for though tower blocks that are cheap lol could you also tell me how to advertise it all and how much it will cost alltogether also how do i rent out single apartments?