Complete Land Auctions Summary

Wow! Can people now post here without having account?

I'm one of the smaller traders on the auctions and I've both paid US dollars on the auction and paid Lindens in-world. As a new player, I'm never really sure what the Linden is worth, despite what the GOM says, because I don't know if it will stay at or near that value, and it is easier for me to understand my investment when I see it first in dollars and track it in dollars later, minus transaction fees, especially given that tier is a hard-and-fast dollar amount each month.

When I'm taking part in these auctions, I always wonder if in fact what is operating is either a cartel of barons, or some barons in collusion with some Lindens (let's say rogue Lindens, or Lindens acting with knowledge of the company).

Why? Because I don't see any checks or balances against such things happening. The names of the bidders are not made public during the auction. That seems odd to me, because in a RL f2f auction, you'd see the person standing up and bidding, you'd know their auction number tied to an actual listed name. I can't understand why this is kept secret while under way, except that the Lindens would hate like hell for people bidding against each other to stop, and make private deals in-world, and they might cover up this loss to their bottom line by saying it's about preventing competing bidders from griefing each other in-world.

I often see later that what's happened is that a big land baron has put in a very high bid from the start, but not come back to bid. I'd like to see if this collected data could track that -- how many of the top bidders put in bids on the opening day that they never come back to bid on again? So they lock in a very high bid if they want the land, but since they don't come back to bid again, what's up? Are they doing their fellow barons a little favor, making sure land values stay up? Are they shilling for the Lindens, to keep the whole auction system lucrative to the Lindens and a few land barons? How can we tell? Only by relentless tracking of this data in the completed auctions. We need to know what percentage of the time the barons stick in a one-time very high bid, way, way over what the Lindens open the auction at, but don't come back to keep bidding. I'd like to hear the barons themselves comment on this practice.

I fully agree with Anshe and others that land barons provide administrative services -- free of charge! they PAY to do this! -- for the Lindens. They parcel and demarcate and move land and the Lindens are then freed of customer service of rank-and-file customers who just want one or two land parcels in their accounts. The land barons represent in fact not oligarchs, but programmers jobs outsourced to India or Pakistan -- but worse, because they spend money for this privilege, and have a hard time making much of a profit, as Anshe has noted -- with the fluctuations of the Linden, with the Lindens tending to roll out too many sims too fast (let's say), with transaction fees and taxes, etc. it's not time to quit that day job yet.

It's a bug, dear. And my status is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Monopolist?

A monopoly is when you have a barrier to entry due to parternships, bundling, network effect or whatever.

There is absolutely no monopoly here. Heck, the link above should make that rather obvious.

Even in the face of crystal clear evidence, we seem to be ignoring the obvious fact - SecondLife has purposely let players parcel out the land rather than hiring someone to do
it.

Arcadia, I was just curious. As to the discussion at hand, forum status is irrelevant. I agree with you on that



I do this all the time. It is called proxy bidding. Because auctions close at like 4 am my local time and because I don't feel like sitting hours and hours watching auction, I bid my max bid on those parcels I am interested in and game over. It is irrelevant to me how much somebody else is going to bid on the auction. I know selling price in world, my margin, my cost and how much I can at most afford to pay.

A lot of great comments here and lots of ideas of data for me to mine. I'll get right on it.

I guess I'll have to spend some time and make the data take up more than one page. Maybe I can try out some php...

Right. I can attest that I am all alone on auctions, not part of any cartel or monopoly or whatever. That is just nonsense. Everybody can bid and if you ever get bid up above market value, then this is not realtor who has to look after price, but another consumer who want that same parcel very very much for whatever special reason.

The potential for the formation of a monopoly exists whenever one or a handful of entrants achieve overwhelming market dominance. In any such case, it behooves the governing authority to take a strong proactive regulatory stance to prevent trusts from forming, which is more efficient than smashing them after the fact.

Premium member, paid in full for more than seven days. I apologize for being irritable about it, and hope the bug is addressed soon.

And I don't think you're doing anything wrong - you're working very intellegently to maximize your profits, which is the goal of every business entity. There's nothing wrong with that, in and of itself, but there is a potential in the system for predatory profiteering if it is not monitored and regulated.

Tiger, would you be willing to sample the data for average land price since the big summer market bubble? I'd like to understand if the prices are staying in a reasonable range since then.

It remains my contention that anyone who paid more than it cost to buy and set up the hardware - $0.15 per square meter - paid too much. The auctions remain a built-in means of encouraging inequity and discouraging collaboration.

One of the graphs is of that very thing, Ananda. It shows the L$ per m2 ratio plotted by time.

WOOO Tiger you rock!

Yeah, what I mean is an average price for all the auctions since September or so. The chart shows 6.83 L$/m^2 for the entire time period, but this includes the totally insane prices people were paying during the summer. It appears that things have gotten much more sensible in the past couple of months and I'd like to find out if that's true.

Ah, so not just year and day summaries, but monthly too, perhaps? Okay. I can add that in to the chart, I think.

this is very much the case - first, it does prevent inworld deals - ie collusion, and secondly it prevents grief. when i purchased larsen, i was immediately griefed. (not the person who actually bid against me in the auction, who was a gentleman about it, but his uncontrollable friend). had the names been public, i'm sure i would have been harrangued in world to discontinue bidding. i think the privacy is great.



i can assure you that i am not party to ant collusion on the land auctions nor have do i suspect others of being so. as a land reseller, i would like to get land as cheap as possible. it does not profit me to pay more than i absolutely have to.

i'd like to note that anshe is in fact providing a tremendous service to land owners in sl. her guts in taking on the land market at that scale provides level land prices across the range of parcel sizes. she also prevents lower volume traders like my self from increasing our margins by offering a very stiff competition. in sl land terms it seems walmart is actually a win win situation.

Some month-by-month stats...

http://tigercrossing.com/monthly_report.html

EDIT: Now with colorful chart...

Thanks Tiger, that would be wonderful! Not being in the land market myself, I am much more interested in the general trends and what they are doing to our little gridworld.



*sigh* If only what we had was walmart! I'd much rather just go get some server space at a predictable price from a predictable source. Instead we continue to operate a flaky cross between Sotheby's and a farm bankruptcy sale.

I can only answer for myself... I have never done this... I only bid what I am willing and happy to pay.

Awesome chart Tiger!
Thank you very much for compiling and presenting this data. I have already learned quite a bit just by glancing at the charts you have created. This will prove to be a useful tool for me and the community.

I don't want to be Sears or Target. Can I be the Sharper Image or some other cool store?

Yes, you learned "holy shit, I spent that much??"

Wow, great post

Actually, these charts do not show inworld aquisitions of land, if we put all that data together I think we all would say holy shit.

This great info and is especially interesting to compare to Philip's stats
that show the average price of land in world selling for around L$5 a meter.

You can get up to date info on the in-world price of land on the Land page of the SL website.

Now if only there were detailed reports on all sales like there is in the auctions......... Haney.....

i would not want that information released unless the incomes of content creators was also released.

the last thing i need is more belligerent fools going off on land traders with a one sided scoop.

with the exception of anshe, land traders represent an inconsequential element in the SL economy.