Allowing non estate owners to purchase homesteads

You know what gets me, while Im out exploring I still see people setting up Clubs and Malls and sometimes Both on what will now be a Homestead sim. Why would anybody want to do that. Theres no way they can make money. And why are the Estate Owners letting them do this. 2 more days and it will be against TOS. I had a Mall and a club move right next to me and Ive reported them to the Estate owner and to LL twice. And if neither do a thing about it Ill park 20 bots in the air and close the whole sim down.

I completely agree with you Sim. I rented my opensim to live on. There is only myself and my partner there. Now I don't mind that its being converted to a homestead because I agree that we're using it for more than woodland and scenery. However, its the club and mall owners that have brought about this change. From a club owners point of view I certainly don't understand it. I would never consider putting my club on an opensim or homestead even if it was allowed. I'd rather have a low lag club than what must be heavy lag on an opensim.

I love my private little paradise thats just for me and whoever I might choose ot allow on the access list to visit now and again. I'd just like the option to make it mine.

I agree with you Sim The Estate Owners are all about making money while they can and don't care or ask question about what is going on them. I have visited many place looking to buy a full prim sim to own on SL now is the time to invest in the program with people dumping their sim to get out from under them. I have spoke with alot of Estate Owners or their Managers and not one person has asked me what I wanted to put on it. The bottom line is they don't care about the resident they care about the All Mighty Linden. I think if Linden cracks down on the Estate Owners that are just about getting money then it might change some things on this program. I have seen and heard of Sim Owners taking teir from their residents then dumping them and leaving the residents out to dry, and Linden not getting their money back for them. I think Linden needs to step it up alot more and side with the people the residents some times and not just back the Estate Owners. It all boils down to GREED!!!!!!

Estate owners sink a lot of their own cash into making a nice existence. They may do it for profit, but the profit doesn't come anywhere near compensating the amount of time and cash that goes into building that business. Not all estate owners are good estate owners, but there are many good, honest and competent estate owners out there.

As for why not being able to buy your own? Precisely because there are too many and they stress out the system, and because they will make SL even more of a ghost town. From what I understand, they are reducing the amount of islands per CPU core to increase performance, which means that they have to increase the cost somewhat to compensate for the loss.

I would agree there are some Estate Owners that care about their content on their property. I am talking about those that just want the Linden at all cost. I wonder if a big mall was built next to what you thought was going to be your dream escape of life in general I wonder how you would feel about that. I for one would be upset to have invested money into a peice of property and to find out my Estate Owner didn't really give a heck about what I had to say. You said and I would agree that the Estate Owners sink their own cash into the property, however I ask you this if you weren't an Estate Owner and had to rent a place to live isn't that sinking money into the same property as the Estate Owner. Does the renter not matter just the Estate Owner. I mean remember when you came on this game you weren't an Estate Owner you were like the common user.

Rayy,
I think it be better to look at estate owners as players just like everyone else. Elevating them to some higher class is dangerous.
The only thing that makes estate owners different are the bills and the stress of collecting enough each month to cover them. There are all kinds, some make money, but most are just here to have fun like everyone else. And this mysterious profit...that can easily be eaten up by empty/unrented parcels, price changes, new limits, etc...

Anyways, i'm sure i am being redundant in this thread...the point i wanted to get across is; Estate Owners are players too. To elevate or demonize them is more than dangerous, its just silly.

edit: jack just left a new post on the blog. interesting timing...Saturday night is official policy dish-out time i suppose.

Please do not put us all in the same box! Not all estate owners are the same, do you have any idea how much time you spend to keep your estate nice and now much you get in return?? And I know a few of estate owners who are the same, who care about their estate and run it with passion and not for money!

My estate owner is wonderful. I started out with a 2048, increased my landing holdings to almost a 1/4th of a sim. When the openspace sim became available, I was notified of how it was supposed to be used. Mine too was for strictly residential use. When the openspace fiasco occurred, she made a what I thought a fair and consolatory offer. Which I as far as I am concerned was very smart on her part to keep her existing tenants. Will and I ended up "leasing" a full sim from her with our own CPU. Prior to meeting Will, I had no clue the impact of having your own CPU makes. I have been with Jackson for over 2 years and not once did I feel she was in it "for the money". Yes, if I made such an investment I would expect some return on it. As previously posted, some are not even making money. Their return on the investment may be more than just monetary.

I believe there are more estate owners that are good, honest and decent people than given credit for. So to those out there KUDOS!!!!

I didn't even know what an agent limit was before the openspace situation. So for me and perhaps others (possibly including estate managers), this has been truly a learning experience.

Talking about learning expereinces: What is an agent limit. I see I have one but I don't know what it is. And, spybots..... can anyone enlighten me? I have had one or two visits on to my Homestead (as of today) and haven't a clue what they are or what they are for.

The agent limit is the number of avies you can set to allow on your parcel. I believe for homesteads it will be set at 20. For the openspace sims I think its 10 if I read the blog correctly. Now the spybot question, I can't answer that. But I am curious why would 2 of them be visiting your Homestead? If you know the creator, mute them. I hope that works.

The agent limit is the maximum number of avatars that can enter the entire sim.

I don't know anything about spy bots. How can you tell what they are?

Ok, then I know about agent limits, thanks guys.

As for he spy bots, since the whole opensim debate developed in to issues around agent and script limits I have been monioring my land to see who visits, in order o to get an idea of trafic and issues affecting performance. I checked a couple of the profiles and some of them are clearly identified as spy bots, or "information gatherers" as they like to call themselves. I have never actually seen one.

Ok, then I know about agent limits, thanks guys.

As for he spy bots, since the whole opensim debate developed in to issues around agent and script limits I have been monioring my land to see who visits, in order o to get an idea of trafic and issues affecting performance. I checked a couple of the profiles and some of them are clearly identified as spy bots, or "informaion gatherers" as they like o call themselves. I have never actually seen one.

Profile of one of the bots:
Hi. I'm a crawler bot for Metaverse Ink Search (http://metaverseink.com/OpenSearch), formerly known as SLBrowser. Sorry if I don't reply to you, but I'm not programmed to do that! I work 24/7 to find your latest and greatest products and places. They are then listed for free in the Ink's search engine.

Sure there are some bad estate owners out there and there are considerably more abusive tenants.

The point I want to make though is that Linden Labs did exactly what you are saying to almost everyone who owned an open-sim and then had to abandon it - in some cases only days after paying. After many dished out the significant setup fees for open-sims LL then raised the price. Did LL offer people who lost everything their setup fees back? no.

live and learn people. What was the famous quote from George Bush? "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Ahhhh, no truer words have ever been said.

One of the questions in the premium account survey that LL sent out in December was about whether as a premium account holder you would be likely to buy a homestead if allowed.

So I guess they must be considering it.

It's a tough call to make for LL really. If they allow everyone to buy a homestead, they'll hurt their people who pay a lot for multiple sims and rent them out. But as far as LL is concerned they'll probably make more money themselves as more homesteads will be sold to people who aren't interested in renting from someone else.

It's not that tough a decision, they sell the product at a lower price with lower tier to estate owners than they do to non estate owners. There are umpteen examples of this sort of model in the business world. I can buy a printer direct from HP, I can get the same product cheaper via a reseller. The reseller are of course operating at lower margins, but the model is widely used.

Well that's true. But would they make the discounted price retroactive for estate owners? I kind of doubt it and that they'd only introduce new homesteads to estate owners at a lower price going forward, no refunds on homesteads already bought at the full price which would be for people who don't own full sims.

Nah, more likely they'd sell it at a higher price to non-estate owners. Comes to the same thing, doesn't it?

What determines if someone is an estate owner? Anyone who owns a full prim sim can buy an OS/Homestead outright. There's no registration process for being an "estate owner" is there? It's very much a renter beware process.

I think Linden Lab should move on this as a priority and make it a benefit of being a premium account that you can buy one and only one Homestead region without first owning a full island. But then again that whole feigned interest in improving the premium offering vanished like all the rest of the promises over time didn't it?

Hey, now that would be a great idea in how to make a premium account more desirable, and how to increase the price of the "Homestead" sim again - this time from $125 monthly tier to a minimum of $131 monthly tier.

If they can transfer it, then why can't you just get a landowner to buy one and transfer it to you. Then you can be the owner.

They can't do that,only estate owners are allowed to own homesteads,if it was that easy everyone would have one,at this time one can only rent from estate owners.
They say you purchase it but you don't,that is just the set up fee you pay.