Philip's blog suggests selling developed land

How about we stick to the freeform ideals that started and have always defined SL and do NOT implement any official job or any sort of certification authority?
Jesus, whining on the forums really moves mountains.
The last thing I want is for some privileged little club of people to get a Linden Seal Of Approval. It will only serve to inflate their ego and generate drama about favoritism.
Let the new behaviors emerge from the community, and be selected for or against by the community, as they always have, and should always do.
And for the love of god, grow a spine. Every time Philip opens his mouth you people start getting all hyper. It's insane. One of these days Philip flips out and decides to start a fundamentalist religion, and you will all blindly follow him to your death.
I can see the headlines now, "There headquarters destroyed in suicide bombing. Al-Philipa involvement suspected."

I do not think the group should be Linden sponsored.

I am for a realestate group that requires tests and certain requirements, but that can easily be USER run.

Giving anyone a Linden approval in a group such as this would just give them the opinion that they are better than any other realtor even if the other realtor does a better job.

As for tests for a real estate group, I do like the ideas here.

Huzzah to you, Philip, legitimizing our enterprise will only ensure the prosperity of barons, such as myself, all over the grid!

I completely support your initiative to get more informed barons into the system! However, I must caution the newcomers that I am a formidable adversary that doesn't take land acquisition lightly!

I welcome all new certified barons!

*chortles and goes back to tallying his latest sales, all to wonderful newbies*

There's no need for sanctioning of this "service" to the SL'ians.

This is a free-market and a reproduction of the Wild West, remember?

This is where you can bid on auction land, then play with the 7-day rule, holding up the release of approximately 150K+++ meters of land (almost 2 full sims) while you choose and select which land will be picked up first, parcelled and sold, without a penalty or hand-smack from LL.

This is where you can withhold paying up to $800 of tier payments to Linden Labs, but god forbid if you are $40 in the hole on your player account -- it will be frozen and you cannot pass go and collect your weekly stipend. We must enforce rules!

This is where the so called free-market makers can then falsely inflate the cost of the land once again because it is a free and open market and they don't have to play by any rules previously set forth by LL.

This is where you can falsely bid on land, never collect the parcel, then force it to be rebid when your account will permit more monies.

This is where you learn to play the game within the game while you see others wait for land while the free market picks and chooses which land the players will be able to purchase from them, when you will be able to purchase it from them, and at what cost.

This is the free market where all scams of property auction and ownership are run against the Linden's and the players, but are continually allowed to occur; but permissions on objects, textures, and scripts have been malfunctioning for over a year are still waiting to be implemented. Welcome to undocumented script changes that destroy your scripted creations within seconds.

Welcome to the internet's first free market. It's a shining example of...

Just get naked folks. Teleport to visit your neighborly sims to chat. Forget trying to build and/or develop any type of content without paying out your wazoo for "mainland" property. Rent an island sim where you can be fractioned off into a gated community where you will never have teleporting problems again.

Welcome to the pretty chat room of this century.

i am not in favour of any LL regulating of the market and its agents. i agree with eggy and oz, that this should group should be run by players.

what i believe LL should do is make the land market more accessible and transparent and properly regulated. all exploits must stop!

- people who default on payments are not only fined, bur repeat offenses lock them out the auctions. i'm confident that this exploit is exagerated anyway.

- land that is not picked up within 7 days must immediately return to the governor and be reauctioned. this rule is there to prevent players from avoiding tier fees etc and it must be enforced! time to add this as a automated system! this is very imported because exploiters are able to run lower operating costs due to this.

- historical auction prices should be made available. with this knowledge end buyers will have an idea of what the profit margin is and make it easier for them to negotiate lower prices.

- better land find tools - sorting by mature/pg land, sorting by regions (so name the regions already! , adding a seller box (possibly optable by seller) to aide in the realestate dealings.

- a proper prompt when land is sold - parcel name, parcel size, and sim + the L$. this will help land resellers track thier stock.

- my land too shows selling price of ones land and the ability to change or flag it without visiting the land to mark up or mark down land to refelct market movement. (hint to scripters - you can create a server software object for this or whatever you call that stuff)

edit:
i revisited earlier posts and i would like to add I am vehemently against lordfly's suggestions, although i welcome the spirit in which they are written, because their application will be subjective and bureacratic and they are fundamentally biased against a free market.

once again, lynn, land is billed immediately whether it is picked up inworld or not.

here are the three possibilities

1
land is billed, payment is not delivered
land remains in gov's hands until they recieve confirmation of payment. if they do not recieve payment you are fined.

2
land is billed payment recieved, you pick up land within 7 days
you paid, you are tiered up, and you are good to go.

3
land is billed, payment recieved, you do not pick up land in 7 days.
you paid for the land, that money is not refundable. you didn't pick up the land in world. you should have lost it for trying to prolong evading tier costs. you should lose your land and your money you scammer! but i don't blame the player, i blame LL for allowing this exploit to continue,

Sorry J, if my sarcasm wasn't clear.

I am talking about the false bidding on sims and other properties that don't clear the credit cards.

In some instances "Foo Avatar" has placed bids on auctions only to win the bid, knowing full well that the credit card assigned to his/her account would reject the charges from LL.

It can happen once. But when it happens three times, no. There's a trend there. Then you check back to find out who the winner of those sims were after the rebidding.

False bidding is still occurring, and regularly.

Phillip,

What we really need is the ability to form corporations and issue stock. I've suggested this in a thread in the "Feature Suggestions" forum.

i am not observing this to happen. sims/land is being picked up. my complaint is only that the 7 day limit is not being enforced.

my understanding is that defaulting on auction bids registers a 10% restocking fee.

can you provide a link to that thread or explain what purpose stock serves and who you expect to act as the arbitrator and manager of the "stock market"? i think the best way to run stock is to create a player run stock market and see if people buy into it. why involve LL is this?

Your ideas are quite similar to my own... nobody need regulate the stock market, as players will regulate it via the "invisible hand" of buying and selling.

I envision a player-to-player intermediary in which buyers and sellers congregate to trade SL's finest corporate securities.

We need the corporation enacted by LL so that we may issue stock, ownership, and voting rights.

oooh this is good land barony with a twist

I say.....it shouldnt be LINDEN affiliated at all. Doing so would put a bad taste in peoples mouths. Basically saying "it's ok to screw your neighbor out of money" when knowing that next month 40 more sims are comming online to recoup the land.

Sorry gang SL is slowly getting to look a lot more like a HUGE monopoly game and he(SHE) who owns the most hotels on the board wins.

Id say two things need to happen. #1 tighten up on the standards about the auctions and the current issue of people taking advantage of the 7 day tier rollover and #2 Reputation ratings need to be fixed. After that then we can consider Realitors and stuff like that but right now with people gaming and abusing the system thats in place, you have to remove the negative connotations associated with owning and selling land before you can have a feaseable market that people will enjoy and utilize properly.

Shadow

Here ya go:

/13/3f/24581/1.html

By my count on the sim auctions, Awa has been auctioned three times. Swain has been auctioned now twice. I believe that there are two or three more, but I don't have my notes here.

The problem is that the auction history of the first auction is erased when the second auction occurs, so there's no documentation of the first auction.

jacqueline, this sounds very interesting although i wonder if it would work in a leisure world. regardless, why don't you act as the intermediary? enlist some top notch scripters and architect an inworld stock exchange with website support or something.

BE PATIENT!!!

Good call on the 'Monopoly' comment, it rings true. The world is being played like the popular parker brothers board, and the one who owns the most comes out on top.

That's ok - I stopped investing in SL for a while now - because its obvious that dwell is king, and the land speculator supreme.

I do however 'Pass Go' and GOM what I get from some casual sales and stipends.

I'd love to know who else has 'cut back' because of the inherent disconnect between LL goals and demonstrated in-world actions.

Doesn't do much good if the credit card account is cancelled immediately after the auction.

There's no winning auction amount charged to the credit card. The restocking fee is also not charged to the credit card.

And lord forbid if the credit card at all is connected to PayPal. We all know how PayPal treats virtual objects.

So there's a "default" on the auction bidding, a "formal" email is sent out asking the end-user to reply and validate and/or give another card for the transaction to complete. And since we're all really busy and this isn't automated...

Well, returning to the original topic, all those empty lots are pretty dismal. I do wish that land for sale not be bulldozed.

I'd love to build all sorts of things, but could never recoup the land fees. Would any real-estate agents want to join forces with a land-poor developer?

The local barons disagree, unfortunately.

And their pathetic attempts to use 'pretty' for sale signs notwithstanding, its still a plague. But this disease has LL backing. How potent!

This is it in a nutshell.

If LL would stop those maniuplating the auction/land system already in place by simply making them pick up the land within the 7-day period, by hitting them with a restocking fee; I'm pretty sure those who are skirting the tier-related fees wouldn't be bidding so darn much.

But while LL allows these individuals to manipulate them, then these individuals can also manipulate the market; then the end-users can call for "reform" on the basis that they need real estate agents.

It's simple, really.

If you want to invest in land in SL, if you want to resell in land in SL, you must pay the associated costs without manipulating and running around, over and under the 7-day grace period. The moment you win the auction, you "own" that land along with the associated tier fees.

Holding and/or withholding over three sims worth of land because *you* don't want to pay the tier fees until you sell your other land holdings isn't part of the game.

Until LL allows it to be gamed. Which is what is happening right now.


(Side not to Barbara -- there is a post in the Tyrell Corporation forum where they are willing to donate land to beginning businesses. You might be interested in applying with them for land development.)

Do *not* make it Linden sponsored. That is a very very bad idea.

If you want to encourage better sales practices, add some tools which will encourage users to develop land.

For example, the land ads should have more fields which can help 'show off' the developed aspects of the land. If it comes with a car, a house, a club.. etc.

I don't think I am ever going to join or support a self-proclaimed group of players who think they can decide who is a good land trader and who is not.

Mmmm, yes. My personal experience with human nature tells me that such organization will only be abused by certain people to push their own agendas, play favorites or try to impose their own ideas on others.

There is two mechanisms who work in relation to land in SL: the market and information. Those I think work very well

Another suggestion on this thread I strongly reject is the idea of putting all land transaction data public. If you do this, then I demand that ALL transactions in SL are public, including sales of clothes, cars, the transactions of Linden Labs and how much everybody posting on this thread earns in his/her job, both RL and SL

RL land transaction data is public. Why not SL? What would there be to hide?

I'd be quite happy to see all in-world transactions public, anyway. But I see no reason why you'd want to bring RL earnings into it, especially since there is a deliberate and important privacy barrier between AV and Person At The Keyboard.

So - I fail to see your objection. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's the wrong this to do.

Abused by others? The way the 7-day grace period for picking up SIMS of land is being abused at the moment by certain individuals who don't pay the tier fees associated with those lands won in auction to the tune of over $600? Are you speaking about those who abuse the free-market portion of real estate prices by holding and not releasing said land, thus upping the price of that land? Or could you possibly be speaking about those individuals who by not claiming their land immediately and/or within the 7-day grace period be cheating LL out of appropriate fees on a monthly basis to make sure their own and personal profits are better?

Then again, explain it to me. I seem to be confuzzled here as to who is abusing who, what , where and how.