About owning/renting land

I have recently started buying Linden dollars, and have enjoyed buying many cool items from various vendors in SL

Then I had an idea, why not make my own hotel? (details of hotel not included)

Then I kinda built a hotel in a Sandbox, and began thinking about buying some land to put it on


I went to the land auction thingy and saw a bit of land for sale for 4400L, great!


But then I realized that land ownership is kinda complicated, so I have a few questions....




1) How do I know my Hotel will fit in that land?

2) Is there monthly taxes that I must pay for that land?

3) Must I become a premium SL Member to even own land?

4) Can I set the various permissions on that land? (ex. people can drive cars, people can rent a room, people can shoot guns...?)

5) Does anybody recommend instead that I "rent" land instead? If so, why?





Thnx if you can help with a little info......

1 - dimensions and prim count of the build (don't forget furniture and other items)

2 - tier must be paid and varies depending on the amount of land you own

3 - to own land, yes

4 - yes you can set a lot of different permissions. (scripts, build, fly, damage enabled, etc)

5 - renting might be a good thing for a home, but not for a hotel that you rent out.

As MortVent said.

Also, if you want to rent out in a hotel, please keep in mind that normal chat travels 20m in all directions no matter whether there are walls in-between.

Quite different from RL, you will have to scatter your guests in 3 dimensions to give them some privacy.

(Why don't we have a sticky, or a wiki page to point to when this question comes up? And where is Ray, anyway?)

This might be a good time to buy land, since prices are on the lower end of the cycle. But the Auction page is probably not the best way to do it. The prices there are just the current bid--but if there is at least one bidder, the current winner may have already bid much higher than that, but the higher amount wasn't necessary (yet) to be the highest bidder. In short: Auctions are only very rarely a place to find bargains. Instead, use in-world Search for Land Sales, choose Mainland, filter for the size you need (usually determined by total prim requirements), and probably sort price low-to-high, then visit some of the parcels that are returned, to see what's out there.

(I know it's not the point of this thread, but the "hotel" thing: if you haven't already visited some in-world hotels, you might want to take a look at how they work, and why they're set up the way they are. For example, a single building full of rooms is almost surely not gonna work very well as a "hotel."

Depending on design, why not? SL is very diverse, and the tenants of a hotel could all be logged on in different time zones.

I would add that you do not need a premium account if you rent land on a private island - in other words a sim that is not owned by linden lab (commonly referred to as mainland) but a private individual

There is sooo much more for you to consider too... If your motel is going to cater to "mature" activities, you're going to have to space things out or set a "keep it in IMs" rule. You're going to have to have to put a lot of effort in creating a demand for using your hotel. (^_^)

I haven't even seen the idea of an inworld hotel being something people would use. Most of the rented space I've seen has been entire homes. When ever I've seen anything like a hotel or dorm, it's been mostly a group of friends or a perk given to employees of certain establishments. Either way, I haven't seen one as a standalone operation unless it was an entire resort. (o.o)

You're gonna have to be sure you offer something to see, do, buy, or sell... Otherwise, there's no draw and no return on your investment in the land your planning to get. Then again, if you're doing it for the fun of it... More power to ya'. (^_^)y

The thing you have to research is who, if anyone, is going to stay in your hotel. Specially if you're hoping that people will pay. Not many I wouldn't think in the latter case if its essentially just a big box with cubicles. Not when places like Noob Island already provide a similar kind of service at no cost to the user. They have free-to-use apartments there, as do a number of other places.

A themed hotel may work though, eg. one that caters for weddings complete with bridal suite. The idea being that you rent the whole place out to a party or group for a specific-type of event for which the hotel is geared.

Regardless of the monetary aspect though, building a hotel with all the trimmings would be a fun thing to do, as is any kind of building.

Edit: ooo! some above me is reading my mind =)

Thanks Cristalle. That's just one reason the notion that SL hotels don't work isn't true. The idea is forum-perpetuated and overblown. Residential hi-rises, even when fully rented, are rarely fully occupied all the time.

If you are clear in advance what the pitfalls are in hotel living, tenants who are hung up on those pitfalls will just rent elsewhere. SL is big enough to find something for every taste.

Overhearing chat in a video game just isn't a big deal to most people in my experience.

The vast majority of my tenants are cool about sharing media, and it isn't a deal-breaker. Again, being up front about the pitfalls wards off future complaints.

Some people, like me, just love hi-rise architecture, and simply find them to be worth the obvious disadvantages.

Steve, it sounds to me like you built something that you're proud of. If so, it is likely that there are people who will want to live in it. The biggest obstacle is simply having enough land to support all the prims you'll need for the building and for the tenants. The second biggest obstacle is publicizing it to find the customers. Beyond those issues, go for it! If you browse around the picks in my profile, most of my sims are nothing but people packed together in urban type hi-rises and other close-quarters, and my tenants love them.

(There *is* a "land answers wiki" but I'm not sure very many people ever wrote on it.)



Choose View -> Property Lines from the menu and you will see the edges of the land parcel. Measure it and see if your hotel build fits. If you need a measuring tool, go to the Land tool in Edit and choose to Select Land, and you'll be able to drag-select land in 4m blocks (this is the standard unit for land) so you can use this to count the size of the land area in blocks, and then rez your hotel in a sandbox and count its size there too.



Yes. If the land is mainland you will have to pay a tier fee to LL monthly. If the land is on a private island you will almost certainly have to pay a fee to the island landlord monthly - every landlord sets their own terms but the landlord has a monthly fee to pay to LL which they have to raise the money for somehow.



On mainland yes. On a private island no.



The permissions you can toggle are: build, script, fly, voice, and edit land. You cannot stop people driving cars by any means (disabling scripting specifically does not disable vehicles - this is so that anyone flying a plane over your hotel doesn't suddenly freeze when they enter your airspace). Disabling build or script would prevent most guns from firing but would also leave people unable to furnish or run scripts in their hotel rooms, which would probably not be popular.



I would suggest not. If you are planning to rent out the rooms in your hotel to others then you will be essentially competing with your own landlord, which could result in a great deal of drama.

Also, if you are planning to rent out the rooms in your hotel then you will need to decide how to be competitive. There needs to be a pressing reason why people would pay for a hotel room rather than a land parcel of their own on which they could rez a private house. If there is a role-play aspect to the hotel or there are other special features there, or if it is a really good build, or if you can build community between residents in the hotel.. then all of those could provide such a reason. But don't expect to be able to rent out empty, unrelated rooms in the current market.

Go to some other hotels and see how many prims they are offering their residents, and at what price. Then calculate the number of prims that you will need for the total number of rooms + the building + landscaping + decorations + etc. Hotel owners that buy land and build first, often end up without rentable rooms because there are no prims available. I saw it happen twice in the same sim in less than a year.

Unfortunately, SL is set up in a way that makes dense urban things like Hotels almost impossible to actually implement. SL is designed for suburban sprawl, and one-story dwellings with lots of room between each home. And large lots per homestead.

--- Only 117 prims per 512 M2 of land area. So you need whatever it will take for the building itself, PLUS 25 to 100 prims per tenant, so they can actually do more in their room than just stand around and enjoy the view of the pool. By the time you get more than a small roadside motel built, you have to buy a vast wasteland around it that is needed for your prim count.

--- Only 40 people per sim. No matter how you build it, only 40 people can get into the sim at one time, which severely limits the idea of a large hotel.

--- Chat travels 30 Meters, and isn't inhibited AT ALL by walls, floors, etc. "Gaming chatter" is one thing. Listening to someone's intimate XXX chatter is another matter entirely.

--- Access restrictions and parcel media are limited by parcel layout on the ground, and NOT dividable vertically. Room 101, room 201, room 301, and all the way to the Penthouse level, all through that vertical column, share the same parcel media, the same Voice Chat settings, AND the same prim limits.

--- Walls and doors keep no one out. All can easily be circumvented. Even if you place fancy scripted locks on every door and window, anyone who wants to can enter any room, at will. Unless you install a scripted security system in each usable room, which would be a nightmare to maintain...

Can it be done? Well, some people have certainly tried.

Most end up making what LOOKS like a big Hotel, but which has the occupyable rooms spaced at least 30 M apart. So maybe room 101, room 110, and room 120 on the ground floor, room 505 and room 515 on the 5th floor, rooms, 1003, 1013 and 1023 on the 10th floor, and a penthouse suite on the 15th floor might actually be usable, while the rest is a hollow shell. Careful planning and positioning MIGHT keep all the rooms far enough apart, both in distance to each other and in terms of vertical stacking, to avoid problems. The rest is a hollow shell.

Remember that your attraction is NOT the rooms. It's the rest of the area around the hotel. No one needs a room for the night. But if you have a fun pool to play in, some scuba diving attractions, boating... well, hopefully you get the idea.

Before you pay a single L$ for land, try to find other Hotels in SL, and see if they have done something that works, and that you can learn from.

I'd recommend an NCI land ownership class before you did anything - it would answer questions you don't even know you have yet.

QFT !!!!

Here ya go:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Land_Buying_FAQ

*Nice!* Thank you!

With all the available megaprims and the new build height set to 4000m I think one could make a really BIG hotel.

There is also http://land-answers.wiki.zoho.com/

I'm the one who wrote the original post about making a Hotel.


Here are some of the specifics....

Business Concept...."A tasteful Hotel affordable for nearly everyone ( 10 - 20L a night) with luxurious private accomodations and a bed with full sex animations for romantic couples not wanting to express their romance/nudity in public"


1) I'd like each room to have a bar, music player (or maybe music for the whole Hotel), a Hot Tub with sexy animations, a couch and plants near the windows, and the main thing would be a bed with sexy animations.


2) I thought about separating the rooms but it totally disturbed the layout of the Hotel


3) The primary rental would be "for the night" to be used for Honeymoons and romantic encounters.



What I learned and will probly do.....


1) Will separate the rooms as much as possble within the Hotel layout for max privacy....

2) Take the NCI ( whats that stand for?) class on land ownership....

3) Advertise on a regular basis in the places that might produce the most business

4) Have other cool stuff around to draw people, including.....(I dunno!) maybe a nightclub, a freebie shop, a Car Store ( I know a guy who makes cars) Maybe something else....? ( suggestions welcome)

5) I read the Land Buying FAQ thing there and Im thinking I better be careful and use the mainland so I wont get controlled by a private "big brother" But I might have to forget the Hotel idea, I was thinking about spending like $10-$20 a month....some plans seem to be like $100 a month!


P.S. I have searched and have never found another Hotel on SL. I HAVE found houses that people could rent but they cost around 2500L a week! OMG!


P.S.S. I dont think Ive ever seen the "Mainland" , Ive searched for it but all I got was some Brasilian Sandbox. Can someone who knows about plz add me and send me a landmark to the mainland? ( I am thoroughly confused about the geography of SL) UPDATE : I watched a video Tutorial and will searh "Ahern" and see if thats the mainland

Next time you are in-world select search. Then land sales. There is a tab that says For sale: Mainland. Select this and start searching. Every plot that comes up will be on a mainland sim. You can then sort by price per meter and teleport to thousands of mainland sims from there.

Don't give up on you hotel idea. You can get enough mainland to make that happen for about $15 a month. But you should charge more or don't charge at all. 20L is about seven cents.

p.s. there are a lot of places you can rent by the night. the reason they don't call them hotels is because people want their privacy and hotel makes it sound like you will be right next to someone else who can use their camera to watch what you are doing.

Hi Steve,

NCI - New Citizens Incorporated. They have classes on building and other stuff.



Everything you make or put into the hotel is going to be made out of prims. A parcel of land can only support a certain number of prims. For example, typically a 512 sqm parcel supports 117 prims. Therefore, in addition to wanting to make everything look good and furnish the rooms nicely, you also have to take into account the prim count. If you need more prims, you would have to get a bigger piece of land (which means you'll have more compound space around the hotel, I guess).

To see the prim count of an object, right click on it and choose 'edit'. Under the 'general' tab, it should tell you, "x number of primitives".

If you would like to also have a nightclub, freebie store, car store, etc it sounds like you might need a really big space, maybe 1/4 sim.

To your question about mainland... land in SL is divided into land owned by Linden Lab (mainland) and land owned by private owners (estate land). The only way I know to find out whether it is mainland or estate land is to go to the top of the screen, click World -> About Land -> Covenant tab and see whether it says 'mainland' or 'private estate'.

EDIT to add: There are apartments for rent going for as low as $50L/wk but usually are tiny, furnished, and do not provide much prim allotment for the renter to put his own stuff there. I agree with Raymond, if you are charging then $20L is way too low, it should be $50L at the minimum I think.

There is no reason why you should not start by renting land. Saves you the upfront costs, and gives you some room to expiriment.

Furthermore, if the surroundings do matter, I'd think you are better off at some nice landscaped estate, then on a piece of mainland where an eyesore can rise next to you any moment. Estate land works with convenants so you should read that very well before you rent.

When I heard the Sim I am on with my business is going to be sold, I really though about moving to mainland, as the surroundings are not too important for me. Nothing some large screens cannot solve. Calculating the difference, linden tier was not much cheaper then the price I am paying now for a parcel on a very well managed estate (multiple sims connected too). When I have a problem there is a perfect team of estate managers, compare that to Linden Support. And I save the upfront costs.

So, rent a parcel (lets say 2048 or 4096, depending the amount of prims you need, and start expirimenting. Make sure you get sufficient access rights to the land (like I am owner of my parcel, even though they could boot me if they wanted to). Only after you find your plan is going to work, you might want to buy a chunk of land.

It doesn't take anything away from the point, but regular chat travels 20 meters and voice tends to be even worse than that.

Find a 40x40x40 megaprim, turn it into a sphere and rez it in a room and you'll be able to visually see how far chat extends.

Chat from further away does show as lighter text, but it still shows regardless. Unless you can keep the nearest room 20m away from the next one it's probably just wasted time to separate the rooms, especially if it's going to intefere with the layout of the build.

Steve,

Rather than a physical copy of a hotel, the concept of "skyboxes" works better for what you have in mind.

A skybox is an individual dwelling, placed at some distance above ground (in the new release candidate viewer, anywhere from ground level up to 4096 meters. 768 meters in the mainstream viewer).

Skyboxes can easily be spaced far enough apart for visual and auditory privacy, plus you can leave the ground level uncluttered and use it for community amenities (pool, bar, dance floor, beach, windsurfers, etc.)

Media: Each parcel of land can have its own music and media stream. If any residences share a parcel, they will have to share the music stream too. This can be annoying if one resident likes classical and another likes heavy metal.

The most compact arrangement that allows individual users to select the media of their choice is to divide your land into 512 square meter parcels. Put one skybox in each parcel. Elevate them to different altitudes for chat and visual privacy.

Amenities: Pay attention to the permissions of the products you buy to furnish your units. Many quality items are No Copy, so you will have to buy separate pieces for each skybox. This can add up. If you have many units, talk to the vendor(s) and see if they will give you a package deal, or sell you a Copy/No Transfer version of the product.

When you add up the numbers, you will probably find that you need to get about L$1200 per month per 512 parcel to break even (it will be more or less, depending on your tier level, mainland/private island, etc.) You also need to make back the money you spent up front on prefabs and furnishings, and the up front cost of purchasing the land. I'd guess you'd have to charge more like L$100 per night...but run the numbers for your particular situation.

Aother concept for "overnight" accomodations is the Paradise Blanket. This gadget is a magic carpet. Sit on it and it transports you up into the sky and then rezzes any of a number of selectable environments...a posh hotel room, a harem from the Arabian Nights, a picnic in the country, etc. etc.) Sort of like a Second Life holodeck. You can put several of these in a fairly small area and set them up to allow hourly rentals.

Lindal's advice is good, but it depends on what you were trying to get out of your hotel idea. If you're just more interested in the business concept, then the separate parcels / isolation / skyboxes / etc., like Lindal explains, will probably do better for you. But I get a lot of tenants who really like the building, the hi-rise feel, the view, the urban appeal. They walk around and enjoy the resort or the city and can see thier home towering over it from everywhere. It's much more realistic, and I get a thrill out of designing that stuff: the architecture and fitting it in with the landscape. That's all null and void if you're just going to teleport everybody to isolated server space. But you have to decide what you want out of this.

And I have to warn you about short term nightly or hourly rentals. I just can't imagine that working. I'd be demoralized pretty quickly if I had to set up a new tenant every day or hour, or worse, just never had any contact with them at all. I don't spend all that time and money getting customers only to have them leave after 1 day. There's no way it would be worth it for me, but someone out there might have made a go of it. The concept Lindal describes sounds like it might be fun enough, and automated enough, to make it work.

I only call my hi-rises "hotels" to give them some glamour, make them feel like vacation spots, and send the message that my tenants are getting attentive service for their money. They function more like apartment buildings, and most people stay in them for weeks or months.

I'm surprised you couldn't find any hotels in your search. If you search the classifieds with the word "hotel" or "apartments," you will see mine, and Cristalle's, and Lindal's, and lots of other examples of rental units. You'll see the whole gamut of privacy provided from none to extreme. My "La Tour" building is an example of shared media and not too much privacy, but 10 out of the 12 units are rented, the tenants love it, and most of them renew and stay for weeks at a time.

--Avion