Private Island: How do they work?

I've not really figured out how this whole thing works with private islands in SL.

Ok, I know a few things, but I'm not sure about a few others, so I best write down what I know or think I know and hope someone can enlighten me

Ok, this is what I know/pretty sure about (just confirm that thats right):

1) Person A buys a island from LL and pays 1000$ and then 300$/month rent at them.
2) He can then devide the island into different parcels and sell them, the price is usually pretty low, 1L$ or something
3) Person B buys one of those parcels, is now set as the owner of it and can do pretty much everything, but has to pay A a monthly rent as well.

Here's what I'm unsure about:
4) Person B is set as the owner - but I guess it really still belongs to A and A can take it back by force if he wants to? (for example rent isn't paid)
5) Person B can do pretty much everything with it, including dividing it further and selling it again.
6) If B sells the whole or part of it to Person C... then C pays to B, and B still pays the full amount to A?
7) If B stops paying A and A takes the land back... C is screwed even if he payed B or does A have any obligations to uphold that somehow?
Can A just take it back for any (good) reason, or only if the rent expired? (Well I guess he can't just do it on a whim without risking concequences for fraud or whatever - but what if there's certain issues with B and he wants to cancel it, probably even returning already paid rent and cancels the lease?)
9) Most landlords seem to use automated rent-systems to handle this - do they automatically recognize who bought the parcel and take action if the rent is not paid, like take the land back, or do they just send messages to A and he has to do all of it manually?
10) Anything else really important I just can't think of?

Thanks for any answers, but the whole issue is pretty complicated, and I'm wondering about it for a while now.

Neither is really the owner, Linden Labs still owns the servers. The estate "owner" is the one who pays Linden Labs, and therefore the one who has powers to do whatever they want with the land, including ejecting tenants at whim.

5) Person B can do pretty much everything with it, including dividing it further and selling it again.

Subject to the covenant, and any contract between the estate and person B. If a significant amount of money is involved, you would be wise to get a contract with real life ID between the parties. Otherwise you are making a deal with an anonymous other person, with no way to enforce your rights.

Can A just take it back for any (good) reason, or only if the rent expired? (Well I guess he can't just do it on a whim without risking consequences for fraud or whatever - but what if there's certain issues with B and he wants to cancel it, probably even returning already paid rent and cancels the lease?)

They can take it back for any reason, good or bad, and Linden Lab will not help the poor tenant who was kicked out. Of course, that's a lousy way to run a rental business. They can get away with it because Linden Lab will not tell you their real identity, and the amounts are not large enough usually for real life legal process. It does not make it any less breach of contract if they take your money and don't live up to their side of the deal.

Can you see any other way to do it, though? The only tribunal in which it really makes any sense to litigate over a couple of hundred dollars -- which is all it's likely to be in most cases -- is a small claims court, and that's a non-starter when the two parties to the dispute possibly live on different sides of the world even before you consider the difficulties the learned judge will face getting his or her head round the matter in dispute between the parties.

"And you say, Ms Zenovka, that you evicted the plaintiff because he was keeping Psion chickens and had too many temp rezzers? Could you explain that in English?"

"A" can be the sim owner but any estate manager can reclaim land as well (technically the estate manager abandons the land which causes the land owner to revert to the sim owner but at this point they can independently set it for sale as well).

Subdividing and joining can be blocked at the estate level so if you buy estate land there's no guarantee that you can subdivide or join parcels (it'll tell you whether you can at this moment in the Estate tab of "About Land".

Ownership change can be blocked at the estate level as well which blocks land sales but also being able to deed the land to a group (again you can tell in the Estate tab).

Note that being able or not being able to do either of the two is subject to the sim owner's whim they can change it any point.

Take a peek at World / Region/Estate for what can be blocked .

A and B would have an arrangement which may or may not preclude subleasing (general or even to friends but the latter would be hard to enforce).

This is a rather context sensitive question .

A doesn't even have an obligation to B (in the sense that nothing is enforced in the SL toolset) so C is definitely out of luck.

A can mostly do as he/she pleases within the confines of the TOS.

While "defrauding" might technically fall within the realm of the TOS, LL will take the stand that any private arrangement is really none of its business. It's one of the reasons why you shouldn't ever pay for private island land unless you don't care if you get the L$ you paid back and be weary of paying for too long in advance.

There have been cases where a sim owner griefed his/her tenants (examples would be evicting someone, estate banning them and then demanding money to come pick up their prims; randomly returning walls or other things to try and drive them away; etc) and it's going to depend on what exactly they're doing as to whether LL would do anything about it.

That's one option, there's also an option to buy a second hand island which will almost certainly be cheaper than purchasing from Linden Lab. The exceptions are grandfathered islands which cost USD$195 a month instead of USD$295 a month and therefore cost more to purchase upfront, you can't get these from Linden Lab.

This forum is a good place to look:

/114/1.html





He can if he chooses or he can just deed the land to a group and rent them out. Selling for L$1 is a risky business, it invites chancers. If I'm selling a parcel I usually sell it for one week's rent.



I do weekly rent, most do weekly from what I see but the owner (A) is billed monthly by Linden Lab. Person B should pay Person A.



The land belongs to Linden Lab, they can take the land off person A for any reason or no reason although I know of no examples of Linden Lab taking land from someone just because they feel like it. Person A will however have a big reclaim land button in his viewer and can take the land from person B.



Not always, both of these can be blocked at estate level, I don't allow resale as it's a straight rental agreement. However some estates do allow this.



That would be correct yes, C's deal is with B and B has to pay A. I run an island where I'm in position B, C pays me, I pay A.



A has no obligations to C, the same as Linden Lab have no obligations to C.



A can take it back for any reason at all, including on a whim. Whenever I've wanted someone to leave I've refunded them, for example they didn't read the covenant and decided to setup a club, I have no obligation to do that but it just seems the right thing to do.



This would depend upon the setup. Rent boxes just show who has paid rent, if B has set the rent box up, A would probably know nothing about it. If A has made B an estate manager then B can abandon the land and reclaim it that way, if that's not the case then A would have to reclaim the land.



Read everything carefully, especially if the person selling the parcel isn't the owner of the island or isn't mentioned in the covenant, the covenant is an extremely important document and you should read that. If you have any doubts contact the person who owns the island.

Owning a private island in SL is pretty much like being a landlord in real life. You own the property, and you set the rules on how it can be used. And in SL, there's no renter protection laws or homeowner's associations to back you up. LL considers any transaction between residents to be a hands-off business transaction, and they refuse to interfere, even if a slimy sim owner rips their tenants off, or a slimy tenant rips a sim owner off.

As a sim owner:

You can treat the sim like a residential rental property, and rent out pieces of it to individuals, on whatever terms you dictate.

You can treat it as a commercial property, and can rent out space for businesses to set up their shops in, again, on whatever terms you dictate.

You can combine the above options, for mixed use.

In all of the above, regardless of how you "Sell" individual parcels in the sim, it is still the sim owner who has to pay Linden Lab that $295 USD a month in maintenance fees. If the sim owner defaults on that payment, the sim gets closed down. It is up to the sim owner to make their own arrangements with the tenants for how they pay their share of sim costs. Some use rental boxes, some use PayPal subscriptions, and some collect the fees manually.

The sim owner can set whatever rules they like. No terraforming, no reselling parcels, no commercial businesses (in a residential sim), no private residences (in a commercial sim), no non-Human avatars allowed, no non-furry avatars allowed. Whatever they choose. Most of the time, these tend to be limits intended to make the area fit a theme, and to ensure that the tenants don't harm each other or the land value of their neighbors.

The sim owner can, at any time and for any reason, revoke a tenant's rights to their parcel, and reclaim the land, and evict the tenant. They have to be able to do this, so they can get rid of people who refuse to pay their rent, and can make the land available for people who will pay on time. But a reasonable landlord won't just evict someone for no good reason. The ones who collect rent and then kick the tenant out, or who promise more than they can deliver for the money, quickly gain a reputation as someone to avoid at all costs, and find they have no tenants, and therefore no income to pay the monthly fees on their sim. Are there bad sim owners? Certainly, just as there are slimeball landlords in real life. But there's good ones, too.

Some private sim owners will allow tenants to resell parcels, or to sublet to others. But generally that is a very bad practice. What happens more often than not is that the middleman "rents" his parcel out on inappropriate terms, and skips with the money, leaving both the subleasing tenant and the sim owner in the lurch. The sim owner and the actual tenant are much better off dealing directly with each other.

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Mainland works differently. with a Mainland parcel, you pay a membership fee to Linden Lab, and then purchase a mainland parcel from an existing owner, usually at a much larger up-front fee. Your monthly rent is then paid directly to Linden Lab. There's no middleman that can evict you, and you're free to sell it and move on at any time, to any other Premium member. Linden Lab can still choose to evict you though, if you don't pay your monthly "tier" on time, or if you let your Premium Membership lapse. And they can, and have in the past, change the rules on how land can be used, forcing you to move, or rendering your land unusable for the purpose you bought it for. Like when they outlawed casinos, and banks, and when they forced the public Adult Venues to move to "Adult" rated sims.

1) Person A buys a island from LL and pays 1000$ and then 300$/month rent at them.

Worst case. Buy used.


2) He can then devide the island into different parcels and sell them, the price is usually pretty low, 1L$ or something

More or less, yeah.


3) Person B buys one of those parcels, is now set as the owner of it and can do pretty much everything, but has to pay A a monthly rent as well.

Yeah.


4) Person B is set as the owner - but I guess it really still belongs to A and A can take it back by force if he wants to? (for example rent isn't paid)

Yep.


5) Person B can do pretty much everything with it, including dividing it further and selling it again.

No. Person A may tell him: don't do that.


6) If B sells the whole or part of it to Person C... then C pays to B, and B still pays the full amount to A?

If A allows it.


7) If B stops paying A and A takes the land back... C is screwed even if he payed B or does A have any obligations to uphold that somehow?

C should be. But so many times, A eats it, and settles with C to save his reputation.


Can A just take it back for any (good) reason, or only if the rent expired? (Well I guess he can't just do it on a whim without risking concequences for fraud or whatever - but what if there's certain issues with B and he wants to cancel it, probably even returning already paid rent and cancels the lease?)

There's a million ways for a resident to make life very bad for A. A likes rent money though, and is generally very reluctant to toss people.


9) Most landlords seem to use automated rent-systems to handle this - do they automatically recognize who bought the parcel and take action if the rent is not paid, like take the land back, or do they just send messages to A and he has to do all of it manually?

Manually, generally.


10) Anything else really important I just can't think of?

Yeah. The most a region, fully rented out, is gonna make you is maybe 150 USD/month, or if you really really push it, 200. More likely you'll be extremely lucky to make 50 a month, if new to all this.

In three months, when you realise you are working countless hours for a dollar an hour, you'll *still* have tenants to be beholden to, long past the day you never want to do it again. Make sure you do right by them; also, if you really want to do this, be prepared to have at least 10 or 20 full regions or the returns are going to be ridiculously not worth your time. Only if you are a retiree or have no other moneymaking options, will land barony be worth it to you financially on a small scale.

Best of luck though ~ a few dedicated people beat the odds, and do well all the time.

Thank you for the answers so far, it seems alot clearer now, but also thrown up one or the other question again:


Wouldn't that put me in the position of B then, with A still the owner of the estate?
Or is there actually a way to transfer every and all rights, including the contracts with LL to a new owner?


I of course haven't checked all land but most private islands seem to have no covenant since its not LL land.or so it says on the covenant tab.

There's a way to do a full transfer.




I think you've got this the wrong way round, mainland has no covenant, most private islands have a covenant.

Yes, and it's explained in this official documentation page:

And, in *American* small claims court, at least (see - I'm learning), judgments are not enforceable. A small detail those Judge Judy shows and the like leave out (and likely why many go on those shows to begin with - at least they WILL get paid.)