Another Rental Question

For a themed rental sim:

Some developers (Ray's Liome, for example) subdivide their land and rent lots. This gives the renter more freedom as to what sort of structure to put on the lot.

Others seem to not subdivide the land at all, but rent space (often with an existing building on it) and a prim allowance. This gives the renter less flexibility, but a ready-made space. And the builder can better preserve the theme of the overall area.

Which method do people seem to prefer?

It depends. The first gives a lot of freedom, but there are people that don't want to have to shop for prefabs. They like to keep it simple, or they may just like the design.

Because I build all the houses I rent, I use them as a showcase for my talent and to remind myself to make more variety. I also customize all the interiors, if desired, which is an advantage versus someone who may purchase a no-mod house. Just yesterday I darkened a room in an apartment for a new tenant, and totally changed her floors from marble to wood.

Depends entirely on the customers. Both methods have a client base that they appeal to.

A ready-made apartment or house with a prim allocation for your personal stuff (bed, etc.) is great when you are first getting started, and when the renter doesn't have much cash or building skills or experience.

A blank lot tends to be preferred by more experienced residents, as by then they have their own ideas as to what sort of home they want, they can afford to buy a prefab or have skills to make their own place, and generally they have too much 'stuff' to fit in the stock apartments.

One other advantage to the renter, depending on the business model: The house does not count toward the prim limit. This is something that many (though not all) landlords offer. People that rent bare lots discover the joys of land ownership, in that they discover how hard it is to decorate and stay constrained if you buy a primmy house.

As a large landowner, however, I can offer them a full X amount of prims and mean it (when they use one of my houses), whereas others make the prims of the house count toward their limit. That is just my business model, however, but it's a boon to a person that chooses to rent from those that work this way to have a full 200 prims to decorate, versus 200 prims minus a 40-50 prim house.

Oh my Lindal so hard at work.

I think one should consider who is the target population. I agree with Ceera, more experienced renters would prefer a blank slate while newere residents may prefer things done for them.

Why not a mixture of both if possible? Majority of rentals for the newer residents in mind, and a few blank slates for the more experienced user.

Just my 2 cents.

I like it! Variety...the spice of SLife!

I am very spicey, you can ask any vampire.

We do exactly that. Although we provide a range of houses - some bought in, some own creation - if someone wants to put their own house up we give them the prims for free. Have to fit with the style of course.

A small aside - we actually had a house stalker this morning - she'd determined she wanted *THAT* specific house and had tried to pay the rent to take it on (as the existing renters were 1 day in arrears!) So I asked, and discovered she'd spent the whole of her RL night obsessing over whether she could get that house. After pointing out that nooo, that house wasn't going to be available but we could rez up that exact same house elsewhere ... well there's a lot to be said for Californian cheerleaders....... w00t w00t I think was mentioned....

Inc

Another thing to consider, subdividing allows the renters to play their own music and videos.

One other thing springs to mind - I use the Hipporent system and prim counting(although buggy) is a useful tool. Can't do that unless you have individual parcels. And there's the new search tool to consider too, which operates on a parcel basis.

Inc

This is something I've never understood. You can buy products that tell you they'll play tons of channels of video and/or audio. Yet each parcel only has one media stream.

How does A/V work in SL?

Someone else may explain it better, but here is what I know.

You have two streams on each plot, a video and an audio.

I have never done much with the video. But many audio objects have preset notecards that will set the URL channel to what ever is selected. I have also recently seen one that scans the net for active stations using keywords. You can then select the station you want.

Having property lines in place does not mean you can't be supremely flexible in all other areas. But when you have them, the renter can control his/her music and ban list. When they have their own parcel, they can name it anything they want in the about land window. I use the description window below it to let them know the next time rent is due. Also it allows you to easily take a prim count of how many they have rezzed and keeps them from rezzing prims in someone else's space.

As far as blank space versus prebuilt rentals, I offer both. Property lines don't factor into being able to give that option.

BTW, folks, I saw Lindal's land. There will soon be a fantastic new rental option coming your way in the near future!

/me looks up, leans on her shovel, and wipes the sweat from her eyes.

Yeah, if I ever get this furshlugginer place terraformed halfway decent.
Hey, bring that backhoe over here!

That's my favorite part of the process. If I could go inworld today, I'd ask you for modify permission. Suggestion: leave it pretty close to how it was and terrace your builds.

because you may have a resident rez/build something terrible in the middle of your little village.

i prefer individual parcels with prefabs. this allows me to maintain the theme and attractiveness of the area.
i will deed each parcel to a separate group as well, and give the renter near full control of that parcel.
the houses do count against the primlimit, but i make up for that by adding additional prims to the parcel. for example, a 1024 may have a 35 prim house counting against its primcount, but it has 300 prims available. so the renter not only has 265 prims on the 1024, they also have a house. i reckon thats better than 234 prims and no house.

im thinking i may go further and actually allow renters to choose which house to have automatically rezzed on the plot.

It definitely will need to be terraced, Ray. But I've been trying to do that by terracing the land. Are you saying, just plunk some big honking prims down to create terraces?

Yes. I just did this for Keepdown. Almost every house is built on top of a base, with steps, because flattening the parcels too much would make the land ugly.

In many areas of the real world (almost anywhere where the land isn't fairly flat to begin with), almost all houses are built on some sort of semi-raised foundation. Sometimes it's just wood stilts, sometimes it's brick or cinderblock. It generally looks nice, I don't see how it would be any difference in SL. Besides, if the front door is on the upslope of the property, that gives you an excuse to put a nice wood deck out back