Now First Land gone - can you genuinely own a small plot?

Hello all, I'm a bit of a Newbie (sigh!) and have been searching through land options for a few days. I gather that there used to be a First Land facility for a 512m plot that was abolished in Feb 2007 so now when I search for land to own, I am right in assuming that I'd never truly own the plot? i.e. I'd just be leasing from someone who has purchased a whole island?

Also, those of you that were lucky/clever enough to grab one of those First Land Plots in the past - if you were to sell it, would it still be 'fully' owned by the purchaser or is there just no way at all of getting my hands on a plot of my very own?

I've been reading so much on the subject of land and am getting myself terribly confused!

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks in advance,
Twirly

Oh yes, join the club, the whole land purchase thing really need to be explained to all us new members, after all, without growth there can only be stagnation.

I think you can own land. Like you I'm looking around at the moment but always back off because I don't fully understand exactly what I will be getting for my $L

Anyway, here's hoping someone helps all us newbies out on this one.

There are still plenty of 512m plots that you can buy on the mainland that will be *yours* - as the estate owner. These plots tend to cost $5,000 upwards, but once you buy them they are owned by you and no one else. Make sure that there is no covenant provided in the land details - world > about land > covenant, and once you buy it - it's your's and it goes towards your LL land quota (your first 512 plot is tier free - meaning you don't pay LL for it... other than your subscription, of course).

Land provided with a covenant is owned by someone else. If you find a good estate owner, and not one who will sell the land from under you, this could work out a LOT cheaper than buying on the mainland - especially if you want a big parcel of land. Read the covenant to see what the rules are for what you can build and do with the land once you buy it from the previous owner/leaser or the estate owner.

For no covenant land - try doing a classified search for "no covenant" and see what you find.

Hope this helps.

Search and select Mainland Only from the 'type' drop-down box.
With Mainland, you "own the land" as much as you are ever going to own any SL land. You pay 'tier' on anything larger than 512 sq.metres direct to Linden Lab / SL.

You have to be a Premium Account to be able to buy Mainland.

Take your time. Wander around and get a feel for the types of ground and the 'rich variety' of builds.
There's no rush. Land prices are not going anywhere fast.

If you buy land on the Mainland - the 5 large areas of land on the map - you will own the land. First land was a program run by LL to offer cut-price land in the Mainland. The Firs Land program has been abolished as you say, however you can still buy and sell Mainland land from / to other residents.

If you buy elsewhere, you'll be leasing it (in some form) from a private estate owner. Sometimes these leases are similar to buying, where you pay a relatively large upfront fee, then regular maintenance payments. Or sometimes they take the appearance of rental, a small or zero upfront fee followed by larger regular payments. In both of these cases though, the land is owned by the estate owner in the eyes of LL.

Buy land on the mainland,
This means you own it and someone cannot take it away from you (unless you get permanently banned from SL by a Linden of course, or fail to pay your monthly tier on the land to Linden labs if you own more than 512 of land)

In the land search within second life you can filter to just show plots on the mainland

Your premium account can support up to 512 square meters without you paying extra tier so you might as well buy 512 of land.

Not necessarily, Wiggy. I looked around last night for 4096 sqm plots, and while sometimes you have landlords that do not want an initial price upfront for the "purchase", the cheapest in tier fees i found for that size was 32 US$/9,200 L$ per month.

Now, if I look at mainland tier for that size, it's 25 US$ - and even with VAT on top, I come to no more than 8,500 L$ per month, if I use them to fund my US$ balance.

The plus side for estates is that the land is way prettier mostly. Downside is you need to find a landlord you can trust so you'll be still there in the morning, and a lot of convenants restrict you, even in what you can and cannot build and how it should look. On mainland, you can pretty much do whatever you like - which is the downside because you sometimes have to deal with neighbors that are... imcompatible. But mainland is more or less really yours and only depends on your own regular payments.

Ahh in the long term you're right there... I was talking more about the the short term on upfront fees.. and for a 4096 plot, you'd be paying L$60,000 + on the mainland, compared to around L$20,000 upfront fee on a private sim. We only pay L$7995/ month tiers on the private sims we use for a 4096 plot too, so it's only a little more than what LL charges direct. And we got lucky recently; bagged a 4096 plot for just L$7000 ... yes.. $7k!.. I couldn't believe it either.

Our estate owner is an awesome guy: Jonathan Sivocci - owner of NFL land. I highly recommend him if you're looking for land on a private sim - yeah, he's EU too... so getting hit hard with the whole silly VAT thing *sighs*

And it even can be done cheaper, the parcels I have up for sale only have L$ 1307 per week tier That is for 4080 m2/933 prim parcels, so I guess that is cheaper then mainland after all. And not to forget much prettier

Then I haven't been looking hard enough, I guess, lol. Will get back to you when I'm really serious about getting a plot.

Attend some land ownership classes. NCI, which doesnt sell or rent or lease land, offers some great classes with Q and A sessions following. Learn all you possibly can about land ownership before diving in

As premium member you get 512m tier wise for no extra charges but you do have to buy land but its no longer 512 lindens or called first land.
Yeah its confusing at first I recommend you learn more about land ownership before you make the mistakes I did when first buying land.
I remember when I was newer how hard it was as a newbie to just to figure out how to navigate the land and search window, avoid bad land purchases, and scams.
Learn basics before going on land shopping spree, it will be whole lot easier.

Thanks to you helpful and experienced peops, I now know a little more about land ownership and have managed to stop myself (by bitting off my finger tips!!!) making an uninformed purchase!

I'm still terribly keen though to get somewhere (I never was terribly patient!), but at least now I am looking on the Mainland areas.

May I pick your intelligent brains about one more thing please (does flattery get you everywhere?)? Land sales always mention Prims - do I want a high number of these? My intention is just to have a home and unpack some inventory items.... so nothing too advanced for me yet (although if I had several million more brain cells, I'd love to really 'live' the Second Life experience!).

Many thanks again all,
Twirly

Every 512 mainland plot comes with a standard allocation of 117 prims.
(At first that seems like lots and lots, until you start building on it, and just have to have that extra tree, plant, shrub, fountain, chair, couch, table, lamp .....

prims are tied into land area size, there are some special areas however but hard to locate and I wont get into it now, 512sqm=117 prims..... each object is made from prims, more prims used for home, furniture ect ect the more prims you need. Always a good idea to check prims used in a object. I woould suggest doing the majority of your build in a sandbox to check prim usage, then you have an idae what size land you will need.

Also what a lot of people don't take into account with prims, is that some homes can have less prims than a chair (eg Herman Miller Furniture, which looks amazing by the way)

I know a little about this since I sell many 512 mainland parcels for a 'living.' 512 is a great value if you are in a good neighborhood. The mainland has a few of these clean neighborhoods remaining. You can add value if you can find a really low-prim house. Otherwise you'll have this comfy little parcel, but not enough prims for furniture.

I have a few for sale at the moment--all with a gorgeous low-prim house that is both spacious and leaves room for a garden. Don't worry--the house takes up only 4 prims. So, add your bed and a living room set and a couple of lounge chairs for the deck!

Pricing for these depends on location. I have one in the middle of a sim (cheapest) one on a charming hillside with ocean view (mid-range) and one smack against the shoreline ($$$). PM me for details.

That'll change fast. Say you decide to build your own hair. A good wig might have 150 prims or more in it.

There are all kinds of things you can do to save on prims. The simplest house is an open A frame...a pup tent, made of a single prim (an open ended box set on edge). Or you might decide you don't need a house at all, with SL's perfect weather. My neighbors, a pair of Nekos, live in a graveyard, with no more furniture than a campfire and a hammock.

Still, having more prims in your pocket means you can have more fun...set out more plantings, build that swimming pool, put in a garage and keep your car rezzed, build a new wing on the house....I decided that I wanted at least 4096 square meters/900+ prims. I wound up with double that...and I'm already starting to feel a trifle cramped.

Land has several defining characteristics...
- Private Island or Mainland
- Area, in square meters
- Prim Allowance (some sims are deliberately low-prim, intended mainly as open water areas for recreation. But they're also sometimes sold to landowners. Other parcels may be given a "prim bonus" by the landlord.)
- Terraforming limits (how far up or down you can move the land to create a hill or valley...or pond, bay, or creek if you move the land below water level)
- Covenant (only applies to Private Estate land)
- Resale Permissions (only applies to Private Estate land)
- Purchase price, generally expressed in $L per M2 for comparison purposes.
- Tier (fixed categories for mainland. Tier/Rental fees will vary for Private Estate land)
- Location. Is it inland? On a Linden protected waterway or open water? Mountainous? Flat? Good neighbors? Surrounded by ugly adfarms or laggy clubs?

Right click the ground and select About Land, and you'll learn all of this stuff about any given parcel.

Just to clarify, while NCI does not sell, lease, or rent land, some NCI Officers, Helpers, and Sponsors do sell or rent or lease land. As far as I know, they are all honest people, but NCI as an organization can not guarantee any transactions that it is not a party to.

"Prims" are the building blocks of Second Life. Whenever you drop an object in the world, right click on it and Edit it; then click "More >>>" if it's visible; then click on the "General" tab and partway down you'll see a line reading "x objects, y primitives." Y is the number of prims the object takes up.

Every prim takes space on LL's server to store, and as a result, every region (or "sim" can only hold so many. Thus, SL shares them out fairly between landowners in a region, based on how much land they own. (What makes this kinda awkward is that each region has 65536sqm of land and supports 15000 prims - in other words, for parcels less than 8192sqm it doesn't divide evenly and some prims get lost.)

Objects that you wear don't count towards your prim limit, but objects left on the land do.

117 prims is enough for a reasonable house, provided you go for a low prim design, but the limits will start to pinch at some point. This is why buying land can be addictive

I am a new landowner myself, the best piece of advice I can give you is take your time. I didn't the first time around and some guy built a giant red nightclub that wrapped around my little plot on 3 sides. Talk to people in the same area if you can and take a good look at the area or you'll find yourself surrounded by ad clutter and other forms of urban blight.

SJ

Hooray, I feel like I'm actually starting to learn something now - ty! On the advice of many of you, I've decided to look for bigger plots now (rather than buy something small and try to persuade the neighbours to sell to me in the not too distant future!).

If I find a plot next to land owned by Governor Linden - is this a good thing? Does that mean it won't be sold?

I don't actually want to build anything tall or unusual (I've seen some of the 'interesting' creations out there), but the only waterfront plots I can find appear to be around the L$20K mark and have plots in front of them, so I'm too scared to go for those. Could you please advise me on anything else I should look for in a or around a plot?

Lastly (but no promises!!! ;0), if a plot comes with a house, does that make it considerably more expensive/valuable?

Again, I thank you all for your input and hope other Newbies are finding the info. useful (although I hope they are not pinching the bestest plots before I find them!!).

Cheers,
Twirly

I'd like to add some points, and since they are prompted by several different posts, I won't quote any.

In the comparisons of costs between mainland and estate land, figures have been given which ignore premium membership cost ($6 to $10 per month depending on whether you pay annually, quarterly or monthly. (This is L$1600-L$2600 per month but you can subtract the stipend of L$300/week.) You don't need a premium account to own land in one of the estates.

While land on one of the estates is technically leased more than owned, the residents just think and act otherwise. It's "my land" whether on the mainland or in the islands.

The covenant on estate land is written by the estate owner, and it varies a LOT. It's the rules everyone has to abide by. Most of the time this is your best guarantee of an enjoyable life on your land -- it protects you from having to endure the uncontrolled absolute chaos of the mainland. If you want to do something rather outlandish with your property, and not just build a normal house for peaceful enjoyment, some estate's covenant might be too restrictive for your wishes, but most of the time it just prevents others from creating the undesirable.

There are several very extensive estates, occupying many adjacent sims. If you buy on one of these, you can be comfortably assured they will be around longer than you will need to concern yourself with. The idea of "losing" your land in an estate is generally overblown, but it's technically and legally possible. But it is also legally possible for SL to go out of business, and you'd have no recourse with them, either.

One good way to look for land is to open your map and set the checkmark to show land for sale. (Parcels will show as bright yellow. Small parcels will show as a "price tag" icon) As you teleport around exploring, shopping, whatever, notice the yellow patches on the area covered by the map. (Set the zoom slider about three clicks from the right end. That will show the most area without having the islands just show as dots.)

When you are at a place (exploring, shopping, whatever) take the opportunity to fly over the whole sim -- become familiar with what different regions look like. If you go to the "View" menu, and check "Land Owners", all the land will be yellow if it is for sale, and red if it isn't. Stop on some yellow lots and right click on the ground, then clivk "About Land" in the pie menu. You will see, on different tabs who owns it, how big it is, what the price is, what the covenant is, how many objects (prims) it is allowed, how many it has on it at the moment, and whether the objects go with the land or not -- and how to get more information or buy the land.

Prim allowance works like this: Every sim is allowed 15000 prims. The estate owner divides this up among the parcels. On the mainland it's done simply and mathematically:
a 512 M2 parcel is allowed 117 prims. On an estate, the estate owner can set aside space for parks, recreation and maintenance (allowing no prims or very few) and give his parcels extra prims to make them more usable and desirable. Some estates will have strips of protected land between all the lots, and those lots can have double prim allowances. Moreover, you can be allowed to build right up to the lot line, meaning you need less land for the same size building, without being too close to your neighbor.

I have land and houses both on the mainland and in one of the "double prim" estate regions. The mainland property is a real pain - going unchecked from residential to commercial with no cohesion at all among what is being built around me. What was the top of a beautiful hill with views in all directions became, in a matter of weeks, just an insignificant spot among wildly differing skyscrapers. I've had to switch from a nice house to a skybox to get away from the ugliness.

So - take your pick. Some people like the mainland for what they want to build. Some like a commercial area. Some want peace and quiet for a home. Don't take any one opinion for this without looking around to see what YOU like.

Adding my 10L's worth (and I declare an interest, being an estate owner) - explore, explore, explore - and talk to existing tenants/owners.

As others have noted, you can buy on the mainland in a nice quiet sim... 2 days later you're lagging to hell because someone has set up a massive club/art gallery/whatever that all consume server resources. Or you decide to lease from a private sim owner... and log in one day to find yourself banned, your objects returned and they've muted you. LL will NOT interfere in such cases. It doesn't happen much, but sad to say there are some greedy types out there that conduct business this way, exploiting the unwary.

My own personal story - I bought a 512 after a few weeks (hehe - I was forever logging in to my favourite "club".. a few weeks later after I'd figured out that my new house (and I was SOOOO proud of it) was too prim heavy - weeelll, the way to rectify that is to buy more land/prims...... so I ended up within a month with 20000m of mainland... to cut a long story short, I ended up buying a private island after my last mainland purchase (quiet, new, no lag, protected waterfront, blah blah blah..) ended up being lag hell from the art gallery next door with a gazillion textures....

It didn't stop there of course... islands can be addictive too.... mile:

The debate over mainland vs. private islands.. well, some will swear mainland is the only way to go.. others will swear they'd never buy mainland and would only ever rent. Figure out what's best for you... you can always rent short term, mainland or island, while you decide what to do. But DO talk to existing tenants if you go renting either short or long term - they'll give you a better feel for how you're likely to be treated than any spiel from the owner.

Whatever you decide, have fun with your second life - and welcome to the community!

Inc

If the plot is named "Protected Land" then usually it won't be sold.

Otherwise, it's usually a plot previously owned by someone whose Second Life account has expired, and it WILL be resold (usually at auction) if they don't reactivate their account within a limited period of time.



It depends if the house is a prefab you can buy elsewhere, or a unique one. If it's a unique one, it may be more valuable. However, it would be very unusual for a mainland plot to come with a house.