Homestead tier increase 7/09 to $125

With the new move to adult lands in July/August time there will be tracts of land on the mainland up for sale, maybe they will still go ahead with the price increase in the hope that some of those losing their homesteads will move back to the mainland where possibly the prices will be low.

Just a thought

LL wants to save its Mainland, and yet the bulk of its recurring revenue comes from the Estates, or Private Islands as LL likes to call them.

I did an analysis on buying an acre on an Estate region as compared to buying one on the Mainland. Based on average pricing in existence at the time, and it hasn't changed that much since then, in the first 31 days, a person buying on the Mainland pays 5 times as much as buying on the Estates.

Why does LL want to save something, i.e., the Mainland, that is essentially pretty darn ugnly when compared to the Estate islands anyway? Answer: ________?

I really don't understand why LL continues to only allow estate owners only to purchase homesteads.
The original intent of openspace islands was for estate owners to have open spaces for water or park land to compliment their estates.
As we all know the prim allowance was 1875,some were being sold as islands by estate owners but at $500 and 1875 prims they were'nt that popular.
Then as we all know LL dropped the purchase price and doubled the prim allowance,and as we all know the real estate market for these OS's exploded.
Estate owners bought them by the thousands and rented them out,thus this boom was created by LL.as estate owners found them very profitable and residents found them affordable.
LL claimed they were being abused and created the homestead and retained the the original OS with reduced prims at $75 tier
So,due to the claimed abuse LL raised the tier on homesteads to $95 with the next jump to $125 in july.
I realize this is all history and has been said over and over but through all this two products were created by LL the OS and the homestead.
The original OS for estate owners to compliment their estates for water or park land is still available to them but of course the prim allowance is pretty small.
The homestead is basically a new product and as such LL should make it available for non estate owners to purchase.
But LL continues to feed this real estate market by allowing only estate owners to buy homesteads.
If homesteads were to be sold to non estate owners i'm sure many estate owners would suffer,but there are those who are out to make too much money from them,there are some who only charge a reasonable amount of profit on the tier.
I have rented islands from both extremes, one at $41US a month profit on the $95 tier and on the $125 will jump to $44US a month
The island i have now is $20US profit which is reasonable
In the beginning there was no real estate problem, LL made OS available supposedly for estate owners personal use for water or parkland
Well that product is still available to them,why does LL still only allow estate owners to buy homesteads,certainly not for water or parkland.
LL should sell homesteads to non estate owners,even at $125 a month that is no problem to most who rent as they pay that now and more in some cases.
Many will give up their islands if the $125 goes through as the cost will become too much,with profit and exchange rates and in many cases VAT.
If i had stayed at my previous island when the increase kicked in i would be paying approx. $180US a month,that is tier,profit and exchange rate,if i was paying VAT add another approx 20%
So LL has taken an affordable product and made it totally unaffordable,the only way it becomes affordable again is if they sell it to non estate owners.
The way it is now, come july many will dump them,maybe this is LL's plan,who knows, but this whole fiasco makes no sense whatsoever,they create a market then try to undo what they created,or who knows,maybe they see the money being made by estate owners and decided they wanted a piece of the pie.
If they leave it at $95 i believe they will have made the best out of a bad situation and at least saved face.
If they go through with the $125 increase,then they will shoot themselves in the foot so to speak and start the whole mess up again.
Not only pissing off renters but estate owners too,and of course if they sell to non estate owners then profits will dry up for estate owners.
But from a renters perspective i would like to pay only the tier LL charges without profit piled on top

Personally, I think one or two things will happen in July.
1. Prices will stay at 95USD/month on homesteads regarding fees paid by estate owners.
2. Price will go up to 125USD/month, but with an increase in the amount of prims.

Just my thoughts. Any decisions regarding homesteads that offer less than what I just stated would be just downright crazy.

And yeah, we can make a very small profit even at 95USD, but with all the transitioning involving homesteads over these last few months and the months to come, we find it hard making them available to the community. Just doesn't make good business sense to do right now, if you plan on being in the land business for the long haul.

Maybe the land prices of mainland will fall dramatically once they have moved the adult content. It was just an idea i threw in the mix Mainland has always been a good money earner for LL though at auction, they make more on a mainland sim than they do on an island sale. At the end of the day however, who really knows what LL wants?

Yes, you are correct. LL does make more per Mainland sim that it does on Estate sims due to the rising rates per tier charge as land is split up into smaller packets and sold off to others, as well as the auction process. Granted, this is all based on whether or not all the land in the given Mainland sim is owned by someone other than LL.

However, Estate sim tiers gives a constant and steady flow of revenue to LL, and the land mass for the Estate sims represents a current amount of 80% of the land mass for SL - perhaps around 70 million USD annually.

Keep dreaming. I don't see a logic to LL changing the time line or the pricing structure in advance of July for Estates/Homesteads. I also don't see land prices on the mainland falling any further, or rising substantially, as a result of the Adult content move to its own continent. I've been a mainland parcel owner for 2 years, visited a lot of Estates, and I don't see a huge advantage unless you plan to live like a hermit on your Estate. Cost wise, for the average SL resident, owning mainland compared to renting/leasing Estate land from an Estate owner is a wash (about the same).

Sorry, Cincia, but on this issue, you are dead wrong. See:

To each their own i guess,i love the privacy of my homestead and want no part of the mainland except to shop,the increases are unfortunate but i for one will never go to the mainland.
I suppose i am the hermit you alluded to,my lover and i spend all our time on our island,we have everything we need there and most importantly the privacy we require.
We do venture off once in a while to go shopping and to events and dancing but our homestead is SL to us

I can think of a lot more mean-spirited acts then "raising the price of OpenSpace sims 67%". I've experienced them. I've still got several hundred objects in Lost+Found named "Wall" and "Floor" that I don't think I'll EVER sort out as the result of one of those.

I've rented land on one of the better estates and owned land (OK, let's call it 'leased' land) on the mainland for almost as long. I also own my house (OK, technically the bank does) and I've rented houses and apartments in the past. Characterizing the degree to which I have been able to feel I "own" the property in each case, I would definitely say that my Mainland experience, with its ups and down, is more like ownership, and my island experience (with ITS ups and downs) is more like "having a really good landlord".

Now you can argue whether having a really good landlord is a better thing than owning the land, sure, but there is just NO WAY you can characterize rentals on an estate as being similar to land ownership with a straight and honest face.

It was a happy accident. I've discussed the ups and downs of Coonspiracy Central here and there in the forums, so I won't go into more detail than that.

Yes, I have heard the argument time and time again. True ownership is paying LL the tier. But there are other advantages to "leasing" land on the Estate sims.

However, the discussion point was about price. It is much cheaper to ... let us say... control land on the Estate sims rather than on the Mainland. That being the case, one can leave a parcel of land on an Estate sim much easier and fly to other pastures, which is done quite a lot. On the Mainland, you are stuck unless you sell your land to get a decent return on your investment. For pete's sakes, I have seen an acre of land on the Mainland bought for over 300 USD, and it wasn't the choicest piece of land either.

But on the Estates, there are other advantages. The first major one is that usually there IS a Covenant. And this Covenant, if enforced, prevents your neighbours from rezzing right beside you a blood-dripping castle. When there is no Covenant, there is NO protection, regardless of Mainland people advertising "protected" land. All that means is that there is a Linden waterway on the border. It means really nothing.

A secondary advantage of Estate sim land control, is that you are not restricted by that 4 metre rise or fall in the land. One can terraform their land and be very creative about it, as long as one keeps within the Covenant if it holds any such restrictions. Whereas on the Mainland... lol.. if you are 10 metres high, you can't even make yourself a water area on your own land with that 4 metre restriction.

As for what defines "true" ownership, that is another totally separate issue. But considering that one's outlay of money to acquire land on an Estate sim is about 20% of what is required on the Mainland, if a "mean-spirited" Estate sim owner takes it away from you the next day, one can learn from the experience and move on. But one thing is for sure, that "mean-spirited" Estate sim owner will not stay long in business. Bad news travels faster and wider than does good news.

I would rather pay 25 USD for an acre of land on an Estate sim, and have beauty surrounding me, than pay 300 USD for an acre of land on the Mainland and be surrounded by ugliness. That is why I ask why would anyone buy on the Mainland.

T'aint no such thing as true ownership of aught in this life, but "leasing" land from Linden Labs is more akin to owning real estate than renting on a sim. Mudding the waters by mixing up ownership with other benefits, why that benefits no man.
Sure there be a muckle of 'em, or I wouldn't be keeping up my rent all these years, and so long as you ain't about muddying the waters by playing silly games with words I've got no bone to pick with you.
For the whole living experience of the mainland. For the variety, and the randomness, and the changing of the neighbors, and the chance of making something great working together that's worth the risk of finding something nasty in the woodshed.

And between premium bonus and group bonus, I figure your accounting is a mite off, but not by enough to be worth the effort of chasing it down.

You might as well ask why someone would buy a house, instead of renting, in the real world... and that's another question I'm not sure I've got an answer I'd be willing to back with a bet.

But either way, I'd be right pleased if you'd quit playing games with words when there's no need of it.

I don't intend to be difficult. I am sorry if I appeared to be. Besides, seeing your using the word "muckle" I don't want to tangle with a Scots person. You are much too feisty for this poor Canuck.

Right now the only Scotch I'm mucking about with is Glen Morangie.

LOL!

Ahhh then Lallands has filtered into out Anglish more than I thought.

Better than a ferret drinking Coffee. No camera can catch more than a blur

We love our Glenmorangie over here. But ours doesn't have a head and we don't drink it by the liter.

I'd like to know where I can buy a house for 125.00 a month before escrow? What country do you live in Windy?

I for one, hope they decide to hold off on this increase. I see friends with whole sims closing shop due to the economy. They were strong, great content, had been here almost from the start of sl and the economy has just killed their Sims. An end of an Era for alot of folks in SL I believe.

My home is 750$ a month. Houston Tx if you must know. And 125 is 17% of my mortgage payment, an excessive sum considering I pay for points of light on a monitor.

Sadly it wasn't a few bad apples that ruined the barrel. The abuse of the LL proposed uses for OSS was widespread. The more truthful is that the majority of the apples in the barrel ruined it for the few who were in compliance.

The uses were limited to non-residential/commercial parklands and waterways.

I've been the owner of full regions thru all this and I'll share the feelings from that set of shoes on this matter.

At the old tier rates you were buying the landmass. A full regions worth for basically the same cost. And later, were getting the same prim allocation that the tiers paid would have warranted for us.

The deal was the OSS came with stiff use restrictions. The prim allocations were increased from 1875 per OSS to 3750 per after a flurry of complaints that the current landscaping trends were impossible given the move toward higher prim botanicals. And granted the higher prim botanicals did look far better than the old 3 prim ones and Linden ones that were so common at one time. People were developing waterways that had islands on them which were beautiful. But most weren't using them for living purposes. Nor rental for living or commercial purposes. There was misuse going on then but its was true to the " few apples in the barrel" scenario.

This produced no ill effects for the full region holders and LL's went forward in good faith. The OSS, used according to their use restrictions, were a wonderful component in SL.

But greed got involved and it wasn't on LL's side. OSS sims being used after LL's increased their prim allocations for residential and commercial purposes. Uses far exceeding what would be allowed its counterpart 1/4 sim became the mainstay rather than the exception.

Full region owners were being killed. We were offering 1/4 sims for the same cost as a OSS sim with the landmass of a full region and the prims of a 1/4 sim. Now tell me under those circumstances what was LL's to do? They backtracked and announced they would be imposing the use restrictions initially. That was met with a cheer from the full regions owners and a cry of foul , the loudest cries from the abusers of the OSS concept, resounded.

LL had a responsibility to its full region owners also and were getting called on the carpet heavily from that side to address the issue.

LL did and announced several options. Each met with dissent. Even the intial one which carried no tier increase and only addressed a coming crackdown on the OSS that were being used outside of the perimeters of their proposed use. This, would have been the most fair of all decisions for the owners of the OSS that were truly using them in accordance with the OSS TOU. Of course the loudest cry of foul, once again, came from the abusers.

The next proposal on LLs part was to roll back the OSS to their lower prim allocation state and keep the tiers the same. Again this was met with a loud cry of foul play , loudest of all by the very bad apples that had created this OSS mess.

Tenents on these sims were also crying foul and pointing a misdirected finger at LL. The culprits were the OSS owners, not LL.

During all this the full region owners are still getting slaughtered and stepping up the pressure on LL to bring this back into a reasonable state of affairs. When you consider the majority share of regions in SL are full regions, LL's couldn't ignore this growing dissent from full region owners. I see those now complaining about biting the bullet on 125 a month.. we were biting the bullet on 295 a month and sitting on what were quickly becoming white elephants. Not to mention we had heavy initial investments into these. Full region owners were abandoning their full sims at an alarming rate. The future picture being painted was one of SL being primarily the overused, high lagged as a result OSS. With a few scattered full regions.

And all the while LL was being hammered with complaints the OSS were far to laggy. Even after they explained the server structure of the OSS and restated their TOU. And addressed the causes for the lag issues.. they were still flooded with complaints.

So the resolution became obvious. Higher tier rates for the OSS regions to make them more fairly competitive with their full region counterparts.

The elevated price reflects the advantage of the larger landmass and now changed use restrictions for the OSS.

If the cost of a OSS is out of reach.. lease a 1/4 region from a full region at the lower price. The solution is simple and LL's haven't created a hardship for anyone. In fact they created a fair playing field between the full region and OSS. If you want more landmass then you can have it on an OSS. At a fair and proportional elevated tier cost.

The truth is the majority of bad apples WERE in compliance. Linden Labs proposed uses were contradictory, AND were contradicted by concierge and other spokesmen for the Labs. This is not a matter of a small number or a large number of "bad apples", this is a matter of Linden Labs screwing up

Unless you were part of the Hollywood Insiders, in which case you could operate super script- and physics- heavy events under the "regattas" exception. And so if something as processor-intensive as that was OK, the idea that a prim house with a fraction of the scripts and the resident present a few percent of the time was wrong was ludicrous. So people asked Linden Labs if that was OK. And Linden Labs said "yes".

Linden Labs Said Yes.

So people went ahead in good faith, and in consultation with Linden Labs, and set up low-impact residences on OpenSpaces. And then Linden Labs turned around and said "oh no, none of that is OK, you should have known it". They didn't say "we screwed up" (even though they did). They blamed the people who had gone ahead in good faith and used the OpenSpaces the way they thought they were intended to be used, the way representatives of Linden Labs told them was OK.

And while this was happening those of us who thought there was something fishy in all this got flamed for suggesting limits on OpenSpaces by the people who started the whole thing, because those limitations (necessary though they were) would kill the regattas exception.

And THOSE people got a free "Blakes Sea" to play around in and hold their regattas on. As if they had no responsibility in setting everyone else up the bomb.

The whole thing stinks.

And even if Linden Labs had no alternative, blaming the people who IN GOOD FAITH and IN CONSULTATION WITH LINDEN LABS set up residences on OpenSpaces stinks even worse.

Even at the current price, it's a constant internal debate whether or not to keep the homestead. There won't be any debate about it if the price increases.

I have no real idea why I am posting this, other than it is a way to get it off my chest. God knows the Lindens aren’t looking here. Haven’t seen a comment or reply by them.

The concept of looking the other way is working well for them, but it does leave a bitter taste in the game (life) HERE.

We have all invested a lot of money to gratify ourselves and make this environment as much fun and as comfortable as it can be. The friendships developed here are more valuable than the Linden’s realize and are holding a lot of us in this world.

I will admit to anyone I am watching other virtual worlds while using SL as a means to acquire the skills I need when and if I move on. They (other worlds) have not reached SL’s standard yet but are moving along at a decent pace.

There is a simple process the Linden’s could use to sooth many of us hurt by the change from OS to Homestead. You (the Linden’s) are going ahead regardless of the impact so okay fine. Now here is a suggestion.

Why don’t you offer us something more for our cost increase that will lessen the pain and allow us to see some gain out of this whole mess.

I suggest for Homesteads increase the prim count to double the current amount or even just to 7K and increase the av presents to 30.

This simple move still puts us way below the region levels but gives us something for our price increase and allows us to actually see something for our money.

Okay nobody is going to read this but what the hell at least I have voiced my thoughts.

My god it’s difficult to work in a vacuum.

Cheers

So noisy and dusty!

Even the bagless ones lol