Newbie housing question(s)!

Hi all,

I'll get right to the apologies and beg for your forgiveness for not RTFM. I'm sure all the answers I want are out there, but I did not find them. I did try, for quite some time, but could not find more than bits and pieces of advice. In the end, I had two rules about "land" and "a house" in my head:

- you must have a premium account to have land
- this land can be used by basic accounts!

The first quote was from the support Wiki, the last quote was from a sales post in the land section. Naturally, I'm confused

I joined SL less than a week ago and am hooked already. I'd love to make myself a little home here but I'd like to start as slow as possible and get myself a cheap little house... hopefully something that I won't have to pay monthly rent/maintenance/whatever for.

So, here we go with Newbie Question of the Week: omg I have basic account can I get like house for free?

I hadn't mentioned yet that I did read about that First Land Buy thing. Again, what confuses me is that the support Wiki and the account page say I can have 512 m2 of land without extra cost, but I do need a Premium account (which costs 9.95 a month or less for longer periods). But then, what is that land sale post about?

I thank you for your time, and helpful answers

You have to be a premium member to own land. The link here shows you the land fees.

http://secondlife.com/whatis/landpricing.php

If you don't wish to become a premium member (which means you pay a monthly fee) you can rent land. If you hit the FIND button on your screen in world, go to the classified section. You can use the category pull down menu in the classified tab to chose property or land rentals.

Hope that helps.

A basic account can be a member or an officer in a group that owns land, but the tier for the land must be provided by someone who has a premium account. Typically, the landlord holds the tier and you pay rent to them. On the mainland, you remain an ordinary member in the group and the landlord is the only officer. On an island you can be an officer in the group because you can't actually sell land on an island.

There are also free houses, though these usually have substandard construction. One I remember had such low cielings that poseballs were useless in it.

Just do a search for Free House and see what you can find.

Hi Nemo and welcome to SL

You need a premium membership if you want to own land. But, in order to build a house, you don't need to own the land: you just need to have permission to leave your buildings on it, and you can buy or rent that permission from other players. Often renting can be a better deal, because of prim limits.

You can't "automatically" get land or building permission for free, because the land isn't free to the person who provides it. However, some folks will give free house or business space to new people anyway!

If you buy a premium account, you become able to own a certain amount of land. However, you don't actually recieve the land automatically - you have the potential to own land, but if you actually want to use that potential and get the land you have to buy it. The First Land deal lets you buy your first area of land at a cheaper price than pretty much anywhere else in SL.

Thanks all, it's starting to make sense to me now