Will LINDEN let the land price DROP continue ?

Will Linden do something one day ? Is is part of the strategy ?

I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY LINDEN LET THE LANDBARON BUSINESS GO DOWN !!

it is not the Lindens who are the problem. It is those damn CUSTOMERS. They don't want your product at the price you offer it.

It is market's rule: If there are too many of somethings, and too little of those who want them. The price goes down.

Well perhaps some of the landbarons were asking for it when they continually bid tooth and nail against each other on every sim released by LL to stop it getting into the hands of actual land users whilst complaining they couldn't offload any of the dozen sims they brought at stupid prices for profit.

In some ways I don't mind certain land prices going down. The region I'm in is peppered with 16m parcels priced anywhere from L$750 to L$2900. I was more than please to find two of them were dropped to L$100 yesterday. Now, if someone can only do something about that 384m plot for sale for L$50000. (T_T)

I wish it were the case that land prices were dropping because I'd buy more, but from what I've seen mainland prices are rising. Not because the land is worth more, but because "Land Barons" (makes it sound so noble, lol) aka land hoarders, are buying up what they can, raising the price 10% and relisting it a minute later.

I saw this today in Okemo Canyon where I own a small park. There was a huge hillside parcel, almost 5000sqm for sale at 65,000$L. I had considered buying it, but thought it was a bit high. I come back today and someone bought it, slapped an ugly rental shop on it and they're also reselling the land, for 75,000$L. Lol, the things some people will go through to make a lousy 10,000$L.

The irony is the stupid parcel sat there forever and wasn't selling at 65,000$L, until some genius came along and thought they could flip it for 75,000$L when it wasn't selling before.

There are still people out there trying to get ridiculous prices for all size parcels from 19,999$L for 16m to 149,999$L for 1024sqn. On the rare chance you come across a 1024sqm parcel with no 16m lots around it for 8000$L or less, they rarely last long before some bot or Land Monger comes along and scoops it up, slaps a fancy for sale sign and a new price tag on it and starts the cycle all over. Funny thing is, it just seems like one land monger selling to another and round and round until someone has to take a loss and sell it for less.

The whole process seems pointless and only benefits these self annointed "Land Barons" and Linden Labs. In RL, real estate is valuable because there's only so much available. In SL, if the price goes up, they make more land. So the only thing that really sets the price is the seller, there's no "market force" or demand driving it, only greed and speculation. Exactly what helped destroy the housing market in RL. People who think they can get rich quick by "Buying low and selling high". Meanwhile I'll buy an inexpensive piece of roadside, build a successful business selling things I make myself and recoup the cost of the land a hundred times over or more. I could give my land away when I'm done with SL and not lose anything, and I own a full sim's worth.

The bump in mainland pricing for land has nothing to do with the REAL mainland..but instead it has everything to do with the latest way LL has come up with to devalue land that we own already...it's called Nautilus. This is why established owners of mainland property will continue to lose the investment they have made in their land.

When I first came to SL over two years ago...I purchased land in the Semoshi region...and have continued to do so, until I own approximatly 98% of the sim. I pay $195.00 a month in tier. My investment over time to acquire that land was approximately $1600.00. There were fluctuations in the land market over that time that at various times made my land worth $1800.00-$2000.00. That was to be expected.

Six months ago, there was a reduction in the cost of mainland region acquistion, it was supposedly done to improve sales of land for LL....mainland regions were reduced from $1250.00 (as a starting bid price) with most selling in the $1800.00-$2000.00 range, which made my land commensurate in value. The reduction was to $750.00 (as a starting bid price). This immediately devalued my land. In other words, the land that a week earlier was worth perhaps $1900.00 US dollars, suddenly was worth less than a thousand. Why would anyone purchase my land if they could buy mainland land at auction for half the price?

Over time, because of this reduction in acquistion cost, mainland land continued to become more and more devalued. With the further devaluing of the land, my sim was worth approximately $700.00. I lost more than half the value of the investment I made in Second Life, because LL wished to increase their sales.

Now comes along a new mainland continent, part of the parks and recreations program. Its called Nautilus...it is a pre-built series of regions that are currently for sale. The problem with Nautilus is that the parcels are being auctioned by LL for the same lowered acquisition price that was set six months ago, certainly they are being bid up higher by land speculators, but that is not the point, the parcels in these new sims are allotted twice the prims per sq. meter that other older mainland sims are. In other words, you can buy at auction a 1024 sq. meter parcel on the new Nautilus continent and that parcel will support 468 prims. The rest of mainland can only support 234 prims on a 1024 parcel. A lot of folks are saying this is equalized by the high bid prices that the new land in Nautilus is bringing in...well, acquistion price is a small part of the ongoing cost of land. I checked with concierge support and was told that the tier would be the same per sq. meter as it is on the rest of the mainland, and that the "bonus" prims would be on that land permanently. So if you are not already tiered up, having made your investment in SL already, you can get twice the prims for the same amount of sq. meters...and not pay twice the tier. Sounds like a great deal, huh? It's not, it is a horrible development.

Simply put, LL has made a short-sighted decision to improve LL's sales while showing that they have no regard for your existing mainland residents ...a decision that has devalued the land of every mainland landowner in SL. Why would someone pay for established mainland that has already been devalued once...when they can buy on Nautilus and get twice the prims? To buy land on the rest of mainland and get twice the prims...well, you have to buy twice the land. Of course I cant invest in Nautilus, because I own a full sim of mainland already, I am fully tiered up...and have no choice but to keep it, and I don't think I could sell now for more than about L$3/sq. meter...or about $450.00, based on current mainland prices in search.

You've made decisions that made more money for LL...great..but you took it out of my pocket to do it...and out of the pocket of every other mainland landowner in SL. So, can we expect parity with the Nautilus regions? Will you be giving us 2X the prims?...Or will you be cutting our tier prices in half?

I ask this because your mainland pricing and prim charts say this:

1/128 Region 512 sqm 117prims US$5
1/64 Region 1,024 sqm 234prims US$8
1/32 Region 2,048 sqm 468prims US$15
1/16 Region 4,096 sqm 937prims US$25
1/8 Region 8,192 sqm 1,875prims US$40
1/4 Region 16,384 sqm 3,750prims US$75
1/2 Region 32,768 sqm 7,500prims US$125
Entire Region 65,536 sqm 15,000prims US$195

and that is still true...UNLESS YOU BUY ON NAUTILUS...then you pay the same tier, but get twice the prims, which once again screws existing mainland land values.

As for the openspace sims...LL has been running a smoke and mirror game for months...they equate land value and tier with the number of square meters...square meters mean nothing....the PRIM is KING here in SL, and always has been. Give me a 512 sq meter parcel that will support 15,000 prims, and I can build the same amount of living space as what fits on an entire SIM...for them to base their pricing on sq meters is ridiculous...meters of land dont mean anything to the server...it's the number of prims, the number of scripts those prims can contain...and the number of residents that can be on the land...and it seems that other residents now agree with me. In October, one of the worst months SL has had, it would seem from the stats on the webpage...they still sold over a thousand new Island Regions...in November, so far, that would normally mean that they would have sold about 300 new regions as of today...instead they have lost 233 from the net number of regions...wake up LL...the residents are not buying into the real life loss of cash that your short-sighted attempts to keep your revenue up are costing your customers.

Temporal Mitra