What are the dos-and-don'ts of buying your first piece of land?

Hello all. Long time lurker but first time poster here.

So I've been in SL for a year now. At Christmas I decided to take the plunge and go premium, and now I think it's time that I bought my first piece of land, so I'm looking for advice from you good people. I'm not looking for anything special; just my humble 512m². It'll be on the mainland, and I'm told to go for something that's PG-rated, but beyond that I have no idea what else should I be looking for, if anything? Any types of places I should be giving a wide berth? Any pitfalls to avoid, or is it a case of land is land is land?

Any advice would be much appreciated, naturally

OK....... things to consider:

a 512 gets you 117 prims. Boy do they go quick! If you're sticking with that size plot, and assuming you're going to place a house or skybox, you need a low prim one - otherwise very few prims for anything else. (In my first incarnation, I bought a 512 and my very first house was 70-odd prims, no teleport to the upper floor so I spent all my time whizzing around trying to land on the upper floor etc etc .... )

Mainland means you're very limited in any terraforming you want to do, not can you change the ground texture (you can of course always rez a prim over it and texture that)

Your neighbourhood now will not be your neighbourhood tomorrow... things change A LOT. If stuff at ground level bothers you, go skywards (although again that can get cluttered). Neighbours wil come and go - some will be fantastic, some will be OK, some will be royal PITAs .. but you can pretty much get the same anywhere in SL.

Get used to red banlines across your screen, unless you have good neighbours. And expect that to change.

Others will no doubt chime in with their thoughts and suggestions, but you might want to look at one of the other active threads and think about why do you really need to buy land? What are you going to do with it?

Oh and don't expect to make a profit on any eventual sale! Consider it entertainment expense, so if you do get anything back it'll be a bonus.

Inc

It depends on what you to do with the land. If you want a nice place with a view at ground level where you can hang out my recommendation is simply to not do it and downgrade back to basic. At ground level it will be very hard to find anything that is flat and lacks something unappealing within your view and even if it exists that way now there is nothing to guarantee it will remain that way very long.

If you want a place to up a sky box or don't mind putting up panoramic walls all around you to block out unappealing views or you just want your own little sandbox to create and build regardless of your elevation then your main concern should be that the sim is not laggy. You want to avoid a sim that has an event oriented area (musical performances, nightclubs etc.) that could result in frequent lockouts from access to your own land because the avatar limit is capped out. A sim with neighbors that are running lots of heavy scripts (like zyngo parlors) is also to be avoided.

Of course the problem is that conditions on your sim could change at any time and those changes are largely beyond your control.

If you want to use the land for purely residential purposes and have never considered it, you might want to look into renting estate land (private island land). There are estate owners that will allow you to have the land in your name which means you can do anything that you could do on a mainland parcel that you own.

The 2 drawbacks are (1) there are land covenants restricting what you can do (but that also protects you from things like nightclubs showing and zyngo parlors showing up on the sim and ugly inconsistent builds showing up in general) and (2) you can have your land reclaimed at any time by the estate owner. On the plus side, if you find a trustworthy, good estate owner you have an extra person to go to besides Linden Lab that may be able to help out with land issues.

I rent estate land this way and on the ground I have little cafe, house and docks with lovely views of a saltwater cove on the ground and have a skyplatform where I can build in relative peace and quiet.

At one time we were supposed to avoid land bordering Linden roads, but now that's not as much an issue with ad farms all but gone.

Sometimes you get lucky, like me, and have very tasteful neighbors. I don't have any ban lines or eyesore builds within draw distance to speak of. And none of that ugly terracing effect I had so much trouble with on my previous parcel.

So just shop around - but no need to rush into anything. Try not to pay too much over the average going rate per square meter unless it's a parcel you really, really like.

Hi Gareth8,

Take your time choosing a piece of land. Have fun checking out the land in the ads to get your own sense of what's being offered and what appeals to you. Open the map and pick a spot and check out the land offerings that way too.

It's true that a neighboring build can be replaced overnight with something to make you weep. That's Mainland for ya! But the opposite happens too. It's hard to get a sense of how stable an area is.

It was my perception that PG areas were likely to be less cluttered. But that didn't hold true. Check both PG and Mature listings.

Make sure you check the land boundaries in About Land. See if the lot is irregular, or if there are microparcels owned by others within the lot.

Anyway, have fun in your search.

dont spend any more on your land than you are willing to lose.
consider each land purchase as an 'offering', with the knowledge that you havent really bought anything at all.

Just watch out for those evil land barons.

>.>

<.<

I hear they are everywhere

I recommend opening the map and checking th box to show land for sale. Then teleport to a whole lot of yellow areas on the map to get a feel for what kind of area you'd like to own land in and how much that kind of land costs. If you keep doing that long enough eventually you'll find yourself on a spot that you know is a good deal and is a piece of land you want to own. Don't rush into anything.

the other tip i have always offered is to always land hunt with property lines turned on.
it helps you avoid some really bad plots... have a look at this donut plot. the 16m 'hole' in the middle is set to sell for $16,000!

Yes good point always have the property lines visible (Check that option on the drop-down "view" menu.) And always click on "about land" to find out about different parcels.

If you want you land to be as secure as possible, buy mainland rather than rent or lease.

Remember that your neighbours can do or build whatever they like on their land, as long as it's within LL terms of service.

Buy a regular 512m rectangle, it's more saleable if you decide to move on. Also I think 'mature' rated land has a slightly higher value than PG at the moment.

Use land search to find the best prices. A lot of land is very overpriced.

I've found that living next to a Linden protected route has been nice - it means that on one side I'm guaranteed not to get blocked in and one day it will, hopefully, be a nice new road rather than lumpy scrubland.

Check there isn't a ransom plot, like a 16m square, for sale separately at L$50,000, stuck in the middle of the 512 you wish to buy!!!

none here... nope, not a one........ nada...

You might also have a look through the SL Wiki Land Buying FAQ.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Land_Buying_FAQ

That may well be true (it would take a while to compile really reliable statistics). But remember that for a 512m, the US$ difference in price is going to be in the range of a few pennies.

There is a slight advantage with PG sims, in that they're less likely to attract lag-inducing clubs or malls.

But to me the best advice is to choose a 512m that fronts on Protected land or water. They (especially the land ones) can be had for a US dollar or so more than your average land-512m parcel, and it's well worth that dollar or so to know that you can face your build out on that unblockable view side.

Remember that the microeconomy of SL means that paying L2,000 for a 512m parcel, versus paying L7,000 for a 512m parcel, is a US-dollar difference of only about $18. There are thousands of Protected-waterfront 512s that can be found in the L7,000 range. It might be worth dropping those few dollars, if you think you might be around a couple of months or more---just for the added pleasure the parcel would give you.

Two good ways of finding them are to simply fly over Roads (or coasts, in the case of a search for waterfront land) with either Property Lines or Land Owners activated in the View menu (top of screen), or to scan for the word "Protected" in the Search land listings. (If only Search were more efficient!!!)