OS Landlords Adding to the Rip Off

If your openspace/homestead prices don't go up in January, it's because the estate owner had a steep profit margin at the old openspace prices and is going to absorb a significant margin reduction once the prices go back up.

In my case this simply isn't true. I pay VAT on my openspace which squeezes my margins. I'm fortunate I only got one, I was never keen on them in the first place. However the reason I'm not putting the price up is because I feel such an increase is plain wrong. I'll be running it at a loss and will have to make savings elsewhere, which will mean less inworld spending for me.

Well, as you said earlier, you only have one, and you'll be running this one at a loss. Even you shouldn't doubt that you're an exception to the norm in this case. No one who has 40+ openspace sims is going to run them at a loss.

I know im not gonna get a popularity vote with this and yes of course there ae unscrupulous landlords in LS as there are in Rl, but I have been reading for a few days the comments about estate owners and no I am not an estate owner, but please think about things.

1. Estate owners had to take the risk and expense of buying a full sim in the first place.

2. If the estate owner is in Europe you can add 17-21% to their costs both in the initial set up and in the monthly tier.

3. IF they allow you to pay in Linden- a convenience to you.... they have to deal with exchange rates as well. This is an additional fee.

4. IF you pay your tier by PayPal there are costs the sim owner has to pay there maybe 3% or so.

5. You have the luxury of leaving that land without notice at anytime, but the estate owner still has to cover the tier costs the next month whether the sim is empty or full.

6. When you purchase a sim it takes time to recover your initial investment even if the sim is 100% occupied and few are.

7. Most of these estate owners recently dealt with LL lowering the cost of full sims and devaluing their assets by 40% overnight without any notice and then flooding the market with new sim sales because of the lower cost of buying one. LL did this without regard to the effects on the existing estate owners. If they had not yet recouped their initial investment this blow was multiplied.

8. Then when LL released the openspaces in a cheaper more attractive product the renters/consumers fled the parcels on full sims and begged for openspaces. Thus leaving estate owners with big occupancy issues and tier to pay regardless

9. Some estate owners were forced to convert full sims to openspace sims just to stay afloat much less stay competitive. I am not sure but I believe this was also at a cost or fee from LL and again if we are talking about a european owner we are also talking about VAT on top of those costs.

10. Those who had the full sim already have the cost of the openspace to bring online and that has to be recovered.

Estate owners are very much victims of LL in this whole fiasco that began even before openspace sims were made so attractive.

They have invested hugely in SL so you could have a nice private space apart from the mailnand to live and create and I know a lot of estate owners and few of them are "getting rich" on the backs of their renters. Most are just trying not to lose their butts.

If you bought an open sim for 24,000 linden and tier of 30k Linden a month and that was the going rate for a long time that I could see. Then assuming 1K linden is $4 usd that covered $96 of a 250 investment if they had a full sim already and a 1250 investment if they had to buy one.

If you paid rent of 30K linden a month it would take them approximately 3 and a half months to recover the initial investment of $250. If they had to buy a sim to be able to buy the openspace then it would take them 21 months to recover their cost of bringing them online before ever showing a single penny of profit and that does not include costs of paypal or vat or even exchange of linden.

It frustrates me to see resident against resident in all this. That is exactly what LL has tried to do all along in this. The estate owners are not the enemy in this LL is. The estate owners were the ones who believed enough in all our dreams to invest in the first place so that many of us who dont have the capital to invest could play. It is so easy to sit back and look and think they are getting rich off of their investments; but lets remember they carry all the risk and because LL makes willy nilly decisions without regard to any of us - those risks are sometimes very big.

I hope that we can remain solid- we are the ones who grew this grid 44% in land mass and it is our creativity that makes this a place people wanna come. Let us not turn against each other.

Sincerely,
Luci

Might I add:

11. Cost of Advertising (this is a major cost)

12. Cost of land improvements: i.e. Subdividing, landscaping, trees, structures

13. Average Vacancy time (ongoing)

14. Customizations

I can understand the landlord passing on the increase. They aren't usually doing this for charity work. Adding even more profit in seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face, though. The mainland is so terrible, that I suspect anyone who's actually lived there will try to pay the increase, or get a smaller plot of estate land to help cut their cost.

All in all, LL sucks. This is a unethical, nasty way to make more money. It is, when all is said and done, a bait and switch job. They know how awful mainland is, and how so many people love SL and will not move to the crappy mainland, so they figure they can get by with it. Frankly, I hope there are some good lawyers on the case, because bait and switch is illegal, not just unethical.

Shame on you, LL. Shame on you. How do you sleep at night? How do you look in the mirror? Only cold, greedy people could live with doing this. The same kind of people who's greed has brought the USA to it's economical knees. Shame on you.

OK I have had enough about people slagging off mainland.

Just an FYI every time you spam the forum with another pointless whiny thread about LL's openspace increase god kills a kitten. Now back to all your bitching and moaning.

Excuse me Michelle, I am not an estate owner- never have been. I rent. I do know a lot of really good people who own estates ranging in size from 1 sim to hundreds of sims and know some who have suffered great loss in this LL created land fiasco. I have personally owned and bought and sold both mainland and estate parcels lived in both places mainland and estate. And whether you own estate land or mainland there are always people ready to trash you and think that you are getting rich in sl- but in reality few are getting rich in sl and many are just breaking even or getting by the market is false not based on supply and demand - but subject to the whims of ll in both places. The only difference is that on the mainland LL has kept the tier consistent thus far. They have most def played with the supply and determined to keep prices low rather than letting them grow based on demand- thus creating a real economy and value.

I simply see the estate owners side which anyone could see if they care to look and I am against anything that attempts to have us as residents fighting each other when really we are not the enemy.

I would just like people to think about what those who have invested so much RL time money and effort into sl do for us and that is they allow those of us like myself who didnt have 1675 or 1000 or 2000 usd (if you are talking about mainland sims) to invest- those who have put their money in here to buy lands and then rent them have invested in the dreams of all of us. Now is not the time to trash them. And lets face it- it may be cheaper to be on the mainland as a renter or a parcel owner, but the mainland is not for everyone and cannot fill every land need there is in sl for people who do not want to or cannot invest in their own full sim.

A 20% exchange rate to US funds on the $111 tier i pay

As I said, there will always be greed and unscrupulous landlords in sl as sl is simply a virutal environment where RL people come and interact. SL will always have the same mix of good and bad that we see in the real world and even perhaps more of the bad as anominity allows for a certain amount of freedom to do good and bad more so than in RL. However, I know people who had their assets in sl devalued overnight by 40% and few people in rl business could deal with that. For some this amounted to thousands and thousands of dollars.

I know estate owners that had no choice but to rent low prims to save their estates- their investments- to stay afloat- they didnt ask for that LL created that. I know estate owners that had no interest in renting low prim sims but were begged by friends to rent them one. I know estate owners that asked concierge about use of these sims before ever bringing them online.

I know estate owners that have them for nothing more than the public good- galleries- parklands, beautiful places of content and activity and they make no money on them at all. simply their play money covering the cost each month.

ALL I am saying here is before you go running to talk about how you are getting ripped off by someone charging you more than 75$ to rent one - look at what they had to do so that you could rent one- look realistically at how long it takes to recover costs. I dont believe people really look at these things - I dont really believe people look at how occupancy affects the estate owner and I dont think that people really think about how much the estate owners in SL contribute to the entire grid. I get so tired of hearing about the land barons. Where would we be without the people that were willing to invest in sl??

Not where would LL labs be - but where would we- the average jo's that come here to play and gather with friends and spread creative wings and all the other wonderful things that go on here.

ok off my soap box- im just asking people to think and that if that is to be boo hissed so be it. I said I didnt expect to win a popularity contest with that post- but I needed to say it.

It depends on the desired profit margins of the estate owner. Luckily for the prospective tenants of Second Life, you have thousands of estates to choose from.

I remember several estates who advertised on these very forums who were literally only making $5 USD a month profit on each openspace they owned. (And that's not even taking the $250 purchase price into account, since most of them didn't "sell" their parcels, they only charged rent; technically, all of them were set to operate in the red for the next FOUR YEARS assuming LL never raised the prices).

Someone who only makes $5 "profit" on a pure rental sim cannot continue to do business if the cost of that sim goes up by $20 in January (and then by another $30 in July). If your openspace/homestead prices don't go up in January, it's because the estate owner had a steep profit margin at the old openspace prices and is going to absorb a significant margin reduction once the prices go back up.

Just an FYI every time you spam the forum with another pointless whiny thread about LL's openspace increase god kills a kitten. Now back to all your bitching and moaning.

Originally Posted by Zee Linden
[in /352/14/292421/2.html#post2218779/352/14/292421/2.html#post2218779]Ciaran - thanks for your message. We did change the pricing structure from Jack's original post in a post that Mark made. We are not planning to make further changes to the pricing in the post that Mark made, so for now, those are final.

Gordon your bitching and moaning about bitching and moaning.
I do not believe that paying customers should just buckle under and accept whatever prices the service providers decides to spring on them. And many others feel the same way. You may happily pony-up the dough - but do let some of us attempt to save a few bucks here and there. This calls for the service providers to hear our voices - be they bitchy or not - and understand what our issues are and why a large number of us will not accept this arbitrary price increase.
.

OK I have had enough about people slagging off mainland.

I live there (in Ingvar sim). I also own the land parcel that Dani's mainstore is on and a friends club is on. They are mainland too (in the Sea Monk sim).