land prices.....

The land you described has always been considered premium land and has always had a higher L per sqm price tag attached to it than the remainder of mainland. Relatively speaking, even those prices are coming down compared to a couple months back.

Sorry, but I have never seen the point of paying hefty fees for land I don't truly own (in the sense that it cannot be taken away arbitrarily) to begin with. When you understand the implications of private island "ownership" there is really no way, except for very few exceptions such as Caledon, that I would undertake such a venture. I remember some guy trying to sell me his covenant land early on when I was first shopping for mainland. I was pissed.

It's a shame but you cannot expect to take much beyond a small reservation fee for good management. It goes to underscore that the real value of land is in what you DO with it, not in flipping.

True!

But only because of a poor supply of new land from LL. Whether LL was struggling to meet demand or whether they've been trying to control land prices, I dunno. I hope it wasn't the later.

But things may be different now. Especially since the new land store has opened. It suggests that they're confident with their supply line.

the prices i quoted are NOW prices, which do seem to be (on average) 2m-8m cheaper than a few months ago. a few months ago, a 512m near the ocean was going for L$18k.

Just to clarify:

The main reason why I'm in favor of cheap land is because the rendering engine and network connection of the viewer can't really cope with too much content. Also, overcrowding results in social problems and griefing.

So cheap lands means that people can afford to buy a large plot and therefore keep the neighbors at a friendly distance. No poor frame rates. No lag. No having to look at your neighbors poor taste in curtains.

Just happiness.

Lol- right on the money again!

I like to add another point that might not be so obvious. As a content creator myself and renting in numerous malls across the grid, i've notice a continous downturn in monthly sales. This time last year, my mainstores were generating 65% of sales and the Malls (cummatively) were around to 35%. Nowadays that ratio has changed to around 90% vs 10% (maybe heading towards 95%-5%).

Firstly, i know new ALL search certainly impacted Malls as it favoured Main stores on their own plots of lands, high prims,lots of Picks,large Customer Groups and good keywords.....but now I fear there is an additional reason. The grid is getting bigger, more sims and with that more new Malls springing up...and the SL populace is spreading out thinly across the grid (2.5-3 AV's per SIM at peak periods) hence less genuine visitor traffic in most cases and thus less sales.
Again only a few well managed and established malls are able s to ride this out In a lot of cases, these new Malls spring up and are shut within 3-6 mths.

Yes. It's not just you who is having less traffic and sales. Less people in general, less players buying with less confidence and less spending money with less faith that their transactions will go through. Yet tier fees have remained at their old levels that were always too high, even when the economy was booming.

It doesn't take a genuis to see there be rough waters ahead. I would only buy land these days if I had money to burn, but unfortunately my gas tank is now where I burn my disposable income.

Back to the OP, I would never pay upfront to rent estate land anymore, although there was a time when I did because it was possible to resell.

You would be surprise how many people (probably new players) still prefer to BUY land as opposed to RENTING it...even when you explain that the only real difference is that you're able to resell that land (probably at a loss in this day and age!)

Not everyone is that savvy.....that's why people are still buying SIMs merrily thinking that they're able to rent/sell it all out and make a monthly profit. The reality has changed though...there are simply not enough regular players to feed into that land market. 45000 plots of land set for sale, tells its own story!

I have a neighbouring SIM that has been 90% "Yellow" for over a month now! The sim owner was trying to sell 4096's for 35000 L !!! I wrote her a long IM explaining the market changes and that she should consider dropping her prices by around 50% at least. She was thankful and said she would monitor the market more closely and if need be, slash her prices. Thats what i mean, a lot of new SIM owners are simply out of touch even more so than the people looking for land to rent or buy (edit).

That is one of the last few ways to make money here: take advantage of the clueless.

Hey Cristalle, with mainland sims selling for less than $1250, do you still feel that LL lowering the starting bids of mainland sims is a non-factor?

I think what Cristalle was getting at was Estate land where, no matter how much you pay up front to "BUY" your land, you are still only renting from the estate owner who can still evict you on a whim with no recourse whatsoever.

Yes, a lot of people would prefer to buy on the mainland rather than rent. And with the current land glut, more will do just that.

Personally, I think that the continuous dumping of more sims on the market has much more to do with the drop in prices then the lower starting bid. If the supply hadn't been increased to such an extent, people would still bid up the price considerably higher than the old starting bid.

Well, the way we're heading....we could have 1 sim for every user -lol

and yet some people (filthy land barons) talk like that's a bad thing!

I totally agree and I've always said that the number of sims LL dumps is far and away the primary factor that sets the base mainland price.

However, things have crashed to the point now where the $750 starting price is affecting prices, something I asserted would happen eventually when they announced it.

It's a great thing, unless you were one of the many loyal customers of SL for the last few years whose land is no longer worth anything and you were hoping to resell.

I hope that was a direct comment to me. I love being called filthy, even though I haven't sold land in over a year, you shiny troll, you.

The culture has changed, when i first joined SL, it was a rental market, as Kitty pointed out earlier, SIM owners were unable to sell plots on PI's....then it switched to a "buying land market"......after all the land scams and such.....its changed back to a predominantly "rental market". Don't ignore the fact, that there are still lots of land being " bought" (leased really).....so obviously lots of people out there not listening!

Raymond, it has some effect, but if the amount of sims up for auction was scarce AND if LL didn't drop the price for islands, it really wouldn't make much difference.

<3

I take showers daily!

If mainland sims are being bought for 1000 usd (or costing 4.2 L per sq/m), you could effectively cut the market and sell at less than 5 L per/sm and walk away with a near 20% profit. The losers are the existing mainland owners as it drives the L per sq/m even further down.

tier is the same as it always has been, and that's what decides the amount of land someone is willing to buy, ultimately.

if tier drops, i'm buying a sim!

How are sales of the cut up new sims going? If those parcels are selling well, then land barony is still doing well.

If anyone read my earlier post in this thread - where by stupidity I lost an auction for a 1024, and it went for 6020L - that piece is now up for sale at 15990L. She hasn't got a hope in hell's chance of selling that at anywhere near that price. It's not even an averagely attractive piece. I think some flippers have lost touch with reality.

It's back to a predominantly rental market thanks to an increase in competition and a lot of undercutting, and an increase in mainland rentals. Why should someone pay 600L/wk for a bare 1024 and a measly 234 prims, no house provided, when you can get a house, landscaping and a full 300 prims or more for the same price? If the location (waterfront in particular) isn't important, why should someone pay that kind of money? And yet with private island tier, that is what you need to charge to have a comfortable margin.

I would not regard her as a "flipper", she sounds more like a "speculator" and a bad one at that that.! "Flippers" operate on much smaller profit margins with higher volumes and monitor daily market prices regularly