Land Barons

True, Seola. There's a 512 piece of First Land right behind my house that has changed hands FOUR TIMES, being marked up each time. I keep watching this plot of empty ground, wondering which mindless newb is gonna buy into the fad-of-the-day and get stiffed by a landlord.

And also to Reece, let me say this. If it cost you real US dollars in land tier fees to hold onto 1400 plots of land for 30 days before you could flip them, would you buy everything in sight? Well, would ya?


See Reece, here's where your business training fails you. This is not a real estate market we're discussing. We're not voting on whether or not land barons should be allowed to buy or sell land. We're discussing First Land. The kind of thing that a newbie who's just gotten to SL and wants to have a virtual home should be entitled to. Any fresh-meat avvie that upgrades their account to preemie needs to at least have a fighting chance of finding, standing on, feeling, surveying, kissing, kneeling upon, and loving their first plot of ground that was purchased for slightly more $L than they began the game with.

That's all I'm gonna say about this matter. The marking up of First Land has got to stop. Mark up and sell all the old land you want to. That's what it's there for. But if a land baron is going to create a throw-away freebie account just to buy some 512 plots of First Land, then deed it to their own group before they take advantage of some newbs, it's going to cost them a couple real, honest gold coins to do it.

Where are you getting that information?

They used to have such restrictions, but they recently got rid of them, because with the free anonymous accounts it's pointless to try and restrict them.

and thats why i started this thread.....

You see nothign wrong with doubling the price in a week? Who does that in real life? I have a house in RL too... just bought it... just sold another one for a profit but i had to do work on it....

And so therefore.... new players, renters and those who procrastinate (subtext: the rest of us) are SOL....

niiice...

The way to do that is to restrict First Land sales to one plot per originating IP address per month. That way the First Land buyer who ends up with land next to something they don't like can sell out to their neighbor who finds that 512 square meters isn't enough... and go buy something else with the money... but the land swooper can't get in with his 16 anonymous debit cards.

Restricting First Land resale will actually push up land prices outside First Land sims for a while, by reducing the availability of new land, and won't reduce the land prices IN those sims once they open up... because the massive overpopulation will still be here.

Restricting first land acquisition by IP will restrict very few players, but make debit-card-clones at least as expensive as restricting resale, and avoid making the "first land ghetto" effect worse.

There is one nut running around the forums screaming to remove the limit. Now I don`t and I have Not heard any such BS that person was is trying to spread rumors or removing the limit. Its just Forum rumors. Why don`t people just use one avie role and role play with it and thats that!.

But this isn't about the FREE anonymous accounts. You can't buy or sell land with one of those. This is about Premium accounts, which require a funding source. LL is trying to cut down on this kind of first land abuse by limiting multiple avatars from usign the same funding sources.

This is not to say a person with 10 credit cards couldn't get around this, but it makes it more difficult to create junk accounts this way.

personally, i would agree with all measures possible for the first land case. My opinions expressed earlier in this thread are fit only for all other land in mainland.

For first land for newcomers, i would agree with every possible measure.It costs 9+ US$ to open a premium account, if someone wants to setup a junk one. If a 512 plot sells for 9k-10k, the profit automatically is 15-20 US$ per plot or per account.

Lately, the supply of free first land is limited to my opinion, (50 new sims, 40 for auctions and just 10 maybe for first land, in a time period let's say of 2-4 weeks) .So a junk account has limited possibilities to grab this kind of land. We are talking in total for 600-1200 plots of land for this time window, which I feel is nothing regarding the new users every day (even if just 5-10% of them open a premium account)

So I suppose this easy money should be time consuming and also I would suggest to anyone grabbing this kind of land to play a lotto at the same time just in case, which means that you need a lot of luck to deal with this kind of activity.

And as said above, it would be kind of difficult to open 10 different premium accounts just for earning 200 US $ in a long time period , i believe motnhs.(you should be 24 hours online to not miss even one opportunity).

I don't find this as attractive activity for any serious resident or land barron or whatever. And as already said in other threads, the actual prices for land are being set not from free first land reselling, but from the prices sims are going to auction as new land (look the analogy of at least 4 to 1). If the buying price is more than 3500$ for a new sim, then that's a 15+ L/meter. When this come down to 512 plots, it has changed 2-4 hands already (each splitting bigger parcels to smaller ones). So at the end you come up with something from 18-20L/meter.

Yes, I agree with you. I've made over $2,000 USD profit from selling roughly L$5,000,000 worth of properties this month so there is definitely more money to be made just by being a *smart* land baron and having good contacts rather than taking advantage of first land.

I have no problem myself with LL not allowing people to create endless amounts of accounts by making it more difficult to do so or changing their TOS. I just think that increasing the flow of first land to reduce prices is the wrong way to do so.

Remember us Land Barons are a very significant source of LL's income. My fees for this month will likely be near $500 USD between paying tier on the land I own and the 3.5% commission taken on selling lindens. How many average users does it take to make $500 USD income for SL? Probably a few hundred seeing as 90% or so of users are basic members and most others own <2048sqm.

But this $500 isn't all I made for LL. I subdivided my L$5,000,000 worth of property into roughly 550 lots. These are all sold except roughly 100 at the moment. That's likely roughly 100-200 premium memberships bought just to buy my land (based on talking with my buyers, usually around 1:4-1:5 need to upgrade to buy my land). So in the end, LL profits some $1500-$2500 off my activity in the month. I know of several barons doing it on the same level as me or higher. If I were to throw out a ballpark figure, I'd guess 100-150 of us are doing $10,000+ USD gross monthly.

As becomes rapidly evident, us Land Barons play an essential role in SL. I highly doubt SL would ever consider any option which they deem to be detrimental to the customers who represent the majority of their income.

Case in point: Eliminate first land profiteering -- yes I could vouch for that. Reduce prices by flooding the market with additional first land -- no, that would anger many of us and benefit those that represent a statistically insignificant source of income for LL.

And for those whose comprehension of English is perhaps inferior to mine -- I say this for good reasons, I've been misquoted twice (maybe more) to my knowledge.

When I said Land Barons mark prices up 500-2000L, I meant they buy a lot and tack on 500L to 2000L to that price, not that they are selling 512sqm plots for 2k. i.e. Buy a 512 for 7.5k, resell 9k --> profit is 1500L within my above guidelines. Profits are not higher than 2000L ever really on 512s. Nobody sells 512s under 7500L atm, actually it's very hard to find any half-decent ones under 8k. That being said, nothing over 10k is worth asking, I've tested that market out and, to say the least, unless you have a waterfront on a Class 5 sim, you likely won't get over 20/sqm despite the fact there are so many listing over this price which may lead you to think otherwise.

Seriously? 100 land barons are making more than 10k a month?

*edit: oh wait, gross, well maybe, but that still seems on the high end.

I know it seems high but I know more than I can count that are making 5 figures. Keep in mind LL's numbers for people making $xxxx/month don't count those in the land business since quoting them: "land theoretically represents an investment". Most of the real rich guys aren't in mainland though, alot of them are into PIs.

I know I'm a pretty oblivious guy but I doubt that there are more than a dozen or so serious players in the mainland trading business. There may be hundreds of traders but most of them are barely covering tier. As for PI, well, I know even less about that but at the rates those people charge I feel they're barely making a couple hundred dollars per week per sim.

No. This was confirmed by Robin Linden in the Linden Answers forum in October.

/me blinks

So, how many premiums did you create then toss, just to abuse the system and make yourself a little money?

The alleged "flippers" aren't using the "same funding source". They're using multiple debit cards, one per account. Limiting the number of accounts per funding source wouldn't prevent flipping.

Doing it the other way around, allowing unlimited accounts per funding source but only one First Land per funding source, would do more to discourage flipping... and in fact that's the direction I thought they were going.

Clearly you don't interpret statistics well, only when they fit your argument.

SL states that they retain only 10% of new accounts. From that 10%, only 10% of those accounts sign up for premium, which is actually going to be roughly 5,000 of that 500,000 you touted. A mere 1%.

Now, you can't dare compare this to real estate down the street? Why? Because RE speculators aren't buying everything in sight, and marking up, to sell to other specs, to sell to other specs for a total markup of 400%. Why don't they do this? Because on each house and/or land a percentage of sale price is closing fees, and seller fees (such as lawyers, appraisers, etc.). There aren't any fluctuating fees associated on TOP of the price of the land. There are also wait times in which many specs won't even be able to sell under 30 days, there's also differential demand in each area of the US. What I would pay for in Missouri, could be the exact same in California for 8x as much. Because of jobs, education systems, location to historical points etc. NONE of this factors into SL RE spec.

Now, as for your 'inflation' argument, it's rather deflated. Because inflation on everything includes food, gas, rent, house payments, insurances, etc. Inflation in SL is only on the Linden (which actually has gone up in value to add to this conundrum) and land pricing.

If you were to use a land price only model of SL versus RL, the market has cooled in the last 4 months by something close to 4% in the midwest, 10% in Florida (as noted by all the condo developers who set up more than 1 million to be built and now 600,000 are being shut down, and with exception to the developers who wanted that trailer park and bought everyone out for 1millionUSD), and roughly 6% in California.

So by your crazy bat theories of this is how RL works, it doesn't work that way. Maybe you have spent too much time creating alts and buying up first land to pay attention to the real world.

Having a no resale clause takes out the ones who know they can make a quick buck in no time. Most won't put up with that because it's quite a bit riskier and knowing they'd have to raise land prices like crazy, there's a market out there, but it won't hold paying 40-50k minimum for 512's. In fact, it could create a quite needed reverse effect where it forces the more skittish land investors to sell off before a deadline, creating pricing wars.

Another aspect is that, it's NOT supply and demand. Sorry to tell you but there are over 3000 parcels out there for sale. Mostly 512's, mostly what used to be first land and has been joined or even split. For two hours last night, I spent my time TPing to locations that were without covenant. I came up with only 4 land holders for all I went to.

If you want to get technical, if this were the real world, I'd be taking someone's a** to court for monopoly.

I've also closely watched parcels near my friends and next to mine slowly changing hands from one baron to the next. And in one case, I'm sure it was the same person with an alt to help drive pricing up. You're lucky this ain't the real world... or you'd be wearing a jumpsuit next to the Enron guy.

I agree, I wish we could name names, but in the time that names have gotten out, it's become more of a bashing sense rather than a consumer awareness sort of thing.

I wrote a story for the SLHerald (seen here: http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/12/is_first_land_f.html)

Here was the model I set up:



Plugging in the new average numbers of 512 plots, this is what you get NOW.

Cost of premium: 2698L
Cost of first land: 512L
Total: 3210L spent.

Premium receives a minimum stipend of 300L weekly: 1200L
Average price of a sample of 100 512m parcels: 8574L
Total gained: 5918L

Profit: 5364L or roughly 20USD.

In a month, the pricing has nearly doubled, and most of the land that's for sale is merely in another baron's hands. (In fact, I ended up visiting quite a few parcels from last time that are still for sale, just in different hands.)

Another thing is that alot of these barons are practicing dirty tactics to make a sale. While LL states that there's freedom to do on whatever you own, there are now rotating, flashing signs 60m tall, with boxes and boxes of useless junk stacked 60m right next to it, some with annoying sounds, some that change colors from neon orange, to blue to green, right next to people who have lived in thier spot all thier days.

So what happens? To get away from the ghastly sight and live in peace, they either pay the 'ransom' or put thier land up for sale to... a baron.

You're entirely wrong on nearly everything you said.

1. I don't buy up first land. I buy up land from people that incorrectly price their land. The same happens in the real world. Put your nice house in California up for $50,000 and whine when the guy who buys it tacks on a zero. The only difference is that most people in real life have enough common sense to get an appraiser or someone knowledgeable about the real estate market to assess the value of their house in RL. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not aware of any SL appraisal services. Maybe I have an idea there!
2. Actually, where I live properties have gone up 100% in the last 5 years, much faster than inflation and there are many people who own 10+ properties, renting them out will waiting for them to increase in value so they can profit -- it's only a smaller scale because as you said, costs associated with doing such in real life are significant. However that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
3. Last I checked, there's roughly 11,000 parcels per sale each day -- not 3000 lol (just check the stats).
4. Just because the person signs up for a premium account and quits the next month doesn't mean they don't have a statistical impact. Their land likely becomes protected land hence having as powerful of an effect as had they remained in SL.
5. Because it takes so little money (say $10,000USD) to have a considerable market presence in SL, a 30 day no resale clause would do absolutely nothing.
People won't pay the tiers because it's too financially draining? Anyone who invests $10,000+ in a game is not going to have any problems with $500 tier fees...

Here's an idea. Why not make First Land entirely free -- but wait, there's a catch. You wouldn't be able to join or subdivide the lots or resell them for that matter. Limit the prim count to maybe 1/4 of what's normal to discourage people from attempting to set up businesses on multiple First Land lots. It would provide new residents with an area in which they could truly "test" out SL for no cost but at the same time disable first land profiteering. The 512L fees really are statistically insignificant when you consider that mainland sims are going for in excess of $3500 USD which is well over 900,000L.

I don't know much about the real estate market but isn't it the case that prices are going up so much exactly because people are buying up homes to resell or rent out?



I can't even begin to explain why this argument is wrong. To claim that there is no shortage of land because there are lots of pieces of land for sale at high prices is absurd. You know what. I say paying $100k for a house is ridiculous! Hell, I saw some houses for sale for over a MILLION DOLLARS! ABSURD! And don't tell me house prices are high because of shortages. We all know there are literally millions of houses for sale right now!



Seriously? Monopoly? Are you just making stuff up now? There are dozens of land traders. You can't have a monopoly consisting of dozens of separate individuals. Maybe the word you were looking for was cartel?



Seola, stop! Stop! The same person is swapping land between alts and raising prices? How does that even work? It's nonsense! Come on Seola, chill out and try to think clearly.

Now whether prices are too high and whether they will fall soon is a whole different matter and we can all make our guesses. But please, try to apply logic and common sense instead of this silliness.

I totally agree with you. In some nice areas where I live, houses as small as 2000sq feet are going for $1 MILLION. Now I'm no architect but I'm pretty sure that a 1850 sq foot house (mine) which is worth, maybe $300,000 doesn't cost a full $700,000 less to build than that $1 MILLION house. What does the expensive house have that mine doesn't? Does it have a pool? A hot tub? A sauna? A big yard? Are they close to a good school? A good university?

Answer: All no. They are around a nice lake that has a pretty view of the city. Nothing more, nothing less. Now I certainly wouldn't pay an extra $700,000 for that but if you have that kind of cash, more power to you

In comparison, my parents used to live in a small time. At the time they bought the house it was $110,000. They sold it for $125,000 and 2 years afterwards it's now priced at $200,000. Now someone made a very good buy on this house. Why didn't my parents ask more? It was appraised at $150,00, why not sell it for $150,000? Well, my parents wanted to move to the city where the rest of our family lives as they're getting older and realize they may not have much time left and want to spend it with those they care deeply about.

Real estate speculators, both in SL and RL provide a convenience to sellers and buyers alike. My parents didn't want to wait perhaps several months for someone to offer them the market price and I didn't have the kind of cash lying around to buy them a house and try and resell their house for my money back.

A basic economic principle: Opportunity Cost --> Just because someone doesn't value mainland at L$16/sqm, it doesn't mean that others don't. Maybe some people value mainland at $30/sqm. Evidently some waterfronts have went for in excess of $30/sqm. Ultimately, land in RL, much as SL is worth what people are willing to pay for it, as Elanthius described so well above.

How is that any different than SL? Someone wants for example a nice waterfront property and chooses to pay a premium price. Is something wrong there?

I agree with the whole concept i took three hours looking for a 16K sqm patch of land that wasnt rented (but in the for sale items). there was one bloke selling a no covenant right size of lanf for $395 USD i nearly cried. I am saving up for my own sim now.

Landbarons who think they can get away with charing so much for tiny 512 specks of land need to remember that linden first land was only 1 linden per square meter and that the land barons are infact rip off artists.

It all goes back to why there are so many of them around. Remember the poster girl for land barons is the uber real life millionaire Anshe Chung. Shes been in real life magazines been interviewed in every context about how she has managed to maker her millions from Second Life.

With this sort of exposure for how much money and potential you can get from this game and people and real life corporations are buying these slickly advertising rented land in sales and attempting to b the next Anshe Chung.

I mean no disrepect to Miss Chung, I have the utter most respect for someone who was the first of them to find a niche market in SL and actually done quite sucessful for herself. What does annoy me id the hybrid advertising.marketing yuppies who have tried to make there millions from her idea.

To be honest i think the market has peaked for the high prices, someone is going to have to start cutting prices soon. As i said i am saving fr the set up cost of a sim not just because i will own the ground my avi walks on and i can control what happens and i can be a total prim w*£re just becase i fell like it. The main reason i am buying is that it is slowly becoming cheaper to buy a sim and have peice of mind that you can dance naked around it.

Landbarons and people who advertise in the for sale section for rented land are no friends of mine and i was happy with the news from Kely Linden that they are seperating out the people who sell land for genuine and thse who sell it really to rent it and pay them the tier fee.

Firstly, 4k sm going up by 10k L$ is pretty inconsequential, maybe a 20-25% markup. If you really want inexpensive land, then you should use the market to your advantage rather than complaining about it. You and your partner should both get First Land in a sim that already has casinos or other prim-intensive businesses in it, mark that land up to 10k-14k and shop it around in person to those business owners. Some may want to dicker, but never accept less than 8-9k L$ for a FL lot. Once you get your profits on that, put it in a reputable bank like My Second Bank (M2B) (Nangrim, Magritte, and Babiarz sims have branches, and their ATMS are proliferating). M2B pays 0.1% per day on deposits.

Then take about 6k L$ of your combined profits, and start looking up First Land lots again, not to buy them as First Land, but to buy the lots from those who buy them, offering 6k L$ for them. Many newbies will be happy for this profit and will take the deal. Some won't. Go with who takes your numbers, don't negotiate for a higher price. You're not interested in how pretty the lot is. Buy it and put it up for sale, again, for 8-9k. It will sell if not immediately, within a day or two. Repeat this process as required to amass enough funds to buy yourselves a larger lot, and keep at it to make enough money for your tier on your larger lot.

Once you've got a nice big pot of dough, move up to the estates. The Mainland is a hole. Land is cheaper and nicer in the estates: you can have islands like Surreal Estates offers, or well developed urban infrastructure like I offer in the Surreal BT estate. There are many estate companies out there you can go with. Research them all, then come see me.

You're ideas are absolutely right and I do know many people who do such. Unfortunately, if all of us go around buying up the land bought originally by newbies as First Land it has the same effect as if someone were to create hundreds of unverified accounts using multiple credit cards for example exploiting the system in the process. I believe from reading the posts in this thread that the author of this thread, as well as many of it's readers are also strongly opposed to taking advantage of newbies as described above. But yes, your strategy does work no doubt.