Leave home furnished when selling? Or empty?

I am thinking of putting my 4k land parcel on an Island Estate up for sale. But since I am under the assumption that it could take a while to find a buyer, should the home be 100% empty of it's furnishings? Or can I continue to live in it while it is on the market?

What are people's experiences here? Sure there is the issue of returning the objects on the property to the object owners once the land has been claimed by the new owner. But other than that I really don't know the normal procedure in SL since I am still relatively new here.

First question: Are you selling the parcel with objects included? Or not included?

If you are selling with objects included, I consider it good form to remove all non-transferrable items from the parcel. Otherwise it gives inexperienced buyers the false impression that they will get some things that will actually remain yours. (I know people do this all the time, but it can be very misleading).

Second question: How will you feel when a buyer returns all your items, probably as a single consolidated object called "object" in your L&F folder?

If you are prepared for that, and have a place you can pull out 4k m worth of stuff in a single rez (both in terms of space and free prims) so you can sort it all out, then maybe not a problem. Or if you remove all your no-copy items before the sale, so everything that's returned is just a copy of your inventory stuff, and so can be discarded.

But as you are selling on the open market and have no idea who will buy it or when, you should definitely NOT count on the buyer notifying you and giving you the opportunity to pick up your stuff at your convenience. I'd say it's a 90-95% chance they will just return the stuff either deliberately, or accidentally by turning on auto-return.

So my recommendations: If you are selling it WITH objects included, only leave transferrable stuff on the parcel. If selling WITHOUT objects included, only leave copyable stuff (that you have a copy of in your inventory), or be prepared to unpack and sort out the consolidated returned stuff in a new location.

as long as youre paid up on your tier i see no reason why you shouldnt live there or have property there.

Thanks for the quick reply Ava. I guess I should just remove all of my objects when I do decided to place the property on the open market.

and ive found the best way to move a huge parcel of prims is to highlight them all, then delete. look in the trash bin and everything will be linked as one object, then you just rez it in one motion at the new property.

I am confused as to why the tier would really factor into things here. Sure I stand to loose the time left on the tier if the property sells at the beginning or middle of the tier cycle. But I don't want to just abandon the property and lose my investment.

well, whether its estate or mainland tier is part of the deal. if you stop paying tier you lose your property. if you continue to pay tier theres no reason you shouldnt live there, even if it is on the market.

I understand how the tiers work. They must be paid if you want to use the property. I have owned this property for 2+ months now. My reason for thinking of selling is that I am just frustrated with the very unfriendly private estate island I call home since I am surrounded by nothing but ban lines and frustrated that all my queries towards being added to the islands estate group continue to be ignored by the sim owner.

No I would continue to maintain the tier payments while I wait for the property to sell. It's just that an empty house is rather depressing (even though Ava has given me enough reasons to know an empty house is the way to go while it is on the open market). Now if I lived in an empty SL home for 6+ months then maybe I should have just abandoned the property to begin with and accepted a 100% loss on the investment. But then I would be homeless and the reason I bought the property in the first place was to have a home base in this virtual world. I just wanted to avoid having to pay double tiers living in a new place while waiting for the old one to sell. For a while there it looked like I had found a great new place to live with the same home style, same prim limit, better views, access to usable water and more importantly friendly neighbours and a landlord who actually cares about his residents and all for 1/2 the tier payment that I currently pay. But it turned out to be one of those too good to be true scenarios as a mistake was made on what the tier payments would be. Anyway, I'm sorry ... this girl is babbling. You don't need to know all this.

Thanks for the quick replies. I will remove my objects if/when I place the property on the open market.

It's been my experience that most people, when they buy land, will eliminate anything you placed on it and start over - often even redoing all the terraforming. I'd decorate the lot with some plants and a throw-away freebie house, and fully expect that it will all be returned when the land is sold, even if I sell with all items included on the land.

I have a large parcel for sale myself, and I took all my stuff off it, and plunked down a simple dock, bungalo and bonfire party area (all made by me) that they can keep or throw away, as they see fit. It makes the place look nicer than an empty sand bar, but leaves most of the space open so they see how much room there is for what *they* want to put there.

It's sort of like selling a RL home. Keep it as clean and nearly empty as you can, so they can see *their* things in the space, and not all filled up with *your* things.

That is excellent advice, Ceera.