Land Barons

I too sold off for a total loss of 624 linden. Even now, pocket change. I have an island and the majority of a fully terraformable mainland sim (my only neighbors are lindens and the railroad, which increases value a slight bit). I'll be renting till mainland recoups, that is if the bots are banned. If not, I'm gonna concentrate on my island, my sim, and a new club I'm likely to start (not 100% sure, still researching that, but I think I will).

Still, if the bots are banned, I think mainland will make a come back in a few months, most likely April or May, and here is why. Not everyone is technically or artistically savy in SL, and it is one of the few lucrative professions for those who are smart, but not gifted in coding or building, within this game. Yes you have to have some know how to navigate and move objects, but that's it. Many folks come here for fun, but there will likely be the allure of making money in real estate, especially when prices get really low. Also, after tax season, I think more folks will feel confident enough to try their hands here. And the revitalization of spring, in the northern hemisphere, where most of SL residence hail from, will make them more optimistic. So long as there is real money to be made, that is the bots are gone and the playing field is less slanted, a bumper crop of baby barrons will emerge, and prices will rise again. Again, all contingent on the possiblity of a human being able to compete with other humans for land, not a series of bots serving a small number of Coder/Scripter/Uber Barrons.

If bots are allowed to continue, I see rental becoming the norm. Land ownership will be like in RL, hard to come by. To me this will sink SL possibly for good, if the Lindens don't find a way to reign it in, a way which will likely be much, much more difficult and expensive to implement in the long run. In short, this is entertainment, when having a second life becomes 'too real', who is gonna 'play'?

As for islands, they carry a bigger risk than mainland in that private owners can and do sell at the drop of a hat, leaving the 'buyer' homeless and lindenless. The more reputable island owners will start raising their prices to 'buy', as mainland drops during the crash and recession, and I dont' think they will come down much after. So the little guy will have to either rent, buy from a newcomer to the island game, or not keep a home here. This will also revitalize the mainland market. but only for those with enough linden to buy in a limited monopoly from the Uber Barrons. No negotiations. No accountablity to peers (and trust me, the land barrons keep each other in check ethically) or customers, extra leeway from the lindens to stomp on smaller land owners like bugs, when they want to consolidate sims (SL eminent domain, anyone?). In short, SL real estate will become 'too real', and crash under its own weight. Entertainment requires wish fulfillment. Nobody wants a mortgage in their 'second life' Their first one is bad enough.

Hilarious. When you personally are propping up land prices with out of control speculation, well, that's the free market baby! Capitalism at its finest! But when someone else does it then it's some kind of heinous crime against the poor helpless people of the world.

Aside from what happens with bots picking up land set for sale cheaply, along with the revised land sale search making it clearer to buyers what a fair price is, the other side of it is the auctions. Obviously you can't bypass the auction queue using a bot, so it will be interesting to see what happens to prices there.

I think a lot of the baby barons will either lose out trying to time the bottom of the market or simply get spooked and pull out over the next few weeks, which might reduce some of the frantic bidding for new sims - just as Guy Linden ramps up output of new land.

I think I'm going to sit it out while it drops, as I planned. I'm comfortably in profit so I don't need to chase the market down trying to make a few pennies. I'll concentrate on my scripting for a few months - although easily my best selling scripts recently were those inside the For Sale signs on the land I sold

I agree with your reasoning Stephen. I myself will not be investing in mainland sims unless prices crash into the single digits. If that happens, I'm planning on just buying a couple of sims and holding them as investments, waiting until prices go up. In the meantime, I'm planning on looking into setting up a business, maybe getting myself a private island also, although I'm not 100 percent sure how the PI market will react to a crash in mainland, so I'll certainly wait a bit and see what happens.

Mountain lots are THE BEST! Flat land is *boring*.

Crash or adjustment?

Things have been stable all day. Many of the major barons are still holding and still buying. The initial bot panic has subsided and we have plateaued at 14-14.5. The selling price of the auction sims should keep us there.

One thing I do know, there are next to no real customers. We are selling to each other. So why wait for single digits? Buy buy buy!

The major reason I've been getting out of the market is exactly as you say it -- there are no real customers, only barons buying your lots for 14.3 i.e. and reselling them for 14.5+...

Quite honestly, I doubt it will take much longer for people to realize this, at which point I'm expecting prices will further level off. As long as regular players aren't buying, this really is nothing but a Ponzi scheme and many people will eventually have to bite the bullet so to speak...

Okay... i read this entire thread and still don't know.... What are thse BOTS you speak of?

I thought the bots that snatched up the cheap land were just an urban myth? I can't recall the other thread that discussed this.

I'm not a land baron, just a normal run of the mill user. I picked up a a big chunk of land today at 12.2L/sqm by doing a search. The lots were listed for a good while and several people came to look at them. I was thinking of flipping it but I kinda like it - I think I'll sell my other land instead.

Yes, the bot is real. It's not nearly as effective as some initially believed however. For example, the bot has no common sense -- if prices were falling all week for example and the average price was now 12L/sqm, the bot would sense 10L/sqm as being a good deal -- when in reality it may very well not be. Also, the bot doesn't exactly distinguish between waterfronts and grassy mainland or mountain ranges. Would you pay 15L/sqm for an ugly mountain plot? Yet a 15L/sqm beautiful waterfront is actually quite the bargain, yet the bot won't pick it up because of it's price. There will still be opportunities for those who know where to find them

Just because a plot is cheap, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily a good deal and I'm sure in the weeks to come we'll see people attempting to take advantage of those using the bot to sell their lots for more than perhaps regular users would be willing to pay.

If you want to catch the bot out make a long thin strip 4m wide by 256m long and price it cheaply for a 1024sqm plot, and see who buys it

Lol, that's a nice way to send them a message

For those that think the bot is the 'end all', it isn't. I made L$60,000 profit yesterday by just being careful what I bought and reselling quickly. Just because prices are crashing or there are no buyers, it doesn't mean there isn't money to be made by those who know where to find it

Certainly money to be made at the moment, it just doesn't fit my risk/reward profile to attempt it right now. It's interesting that many of the upcoming auctions will be for waterfront land which will prevent a true auction figure from forming for a while.

Having watched many of the recent lower-priced land sales, I know exactly who's buying right now, and more importantly who isn't. I predict interesting things happening from Tuesday onwards.

I had several 'noob barons' (I call them this because they wish to engage in price fixing) ask me to raise my prices today. Such simplistic thinking that if we all raise our prices, everything will go back to how it was before. All I can say about that is that it is utterly pathetic and downright laughable. Some of these 'noobs' were calling me crazy for pricing my lots at what the market will bear when in reality, who will be looking 'crazy' when prices crash further and they're still thinking they can recoup their money?

To those who IM'ed me, and no doubt countless others asking us to raise our prices, shame on you. If it weren't for narrow margins, I'd lower my prices even further just to hinder your sales.

That being said, I'm interested to see what materializes in the next few days...

The bots are real. A friend of mine got caught by one earlier today. See my proposal thread for some ideas on how this can be preventeed in future.

The market is the market. Nobody has the influence to change the value of land and it's stupid to even try. Unless you can release 4 sims a day for a month like LL does how do you think your piddly little amount of tier is going to affect anybody? Yesterday I spoke to someone who thought that he personally was going to cause a crash over the next two weeks. Alternately I've heard people claim that they were the ones that caused the price rise over Christmas. It's pure folly to try to control the market and pure ego to think that you can.

and how the bot works? does it buy automatically? or sending a message to somebody?
Just curius, how can just with a script someone can buy land.
I couldn't imagine this

No, the simplest solution is this: If the land seems unreasonably high in price, don't buy it!

The reason that land prices keep rising is the same as the reason house prices keep rising in real life. People insist they "must have" some land, and even if they think the price is unrealistically high, they glibly say "Oh, Ok then....we really really want land, so we'll pay".

Don't pay. Go without land for a few months, its not essential to life to own some land is it? Once the general trend moves towards people refusing to pay unrealistic prices, then the prices will tend to come down again.

It's not a script, but something more akin to copybot, I think.

Whoo, okay, I just read all about the land buying bot at the Second Citizens Forum, which names names, and now I know why I was able to buy my land for so cheap despite the bot. Am I allowed to post links to other forums here? It names the names we aren't allowed to post in the Linden Forums, and people might like to know the party responsible for this. I'll remove the link later if I'm not supposed to do this.

http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showthread.php?t=8071

Interesting article.
Confirms my suspisions of a modified client doing the work.
Like his group name though, hehe.

You aren't going to believe this - I just beat this guy to a land buy, and I met him in person! I found it on a search and we got there at the same time - but I clicked on it faster. I tried to get his secrets so I could share them with you all - but he wouldn't tell me.

Excuse me while I try to wash my hands clean of the slime.

BTW, if I had any doubts about this scheme before, they are all gone now!

I just noticed that the party in question has previously posted on this very thread. I must say, your evil genius is quite impressive.

Really, Warda? And what was the outcome for your friend?

http://secondlife.com/vote/vote.php?get_id=2783

The only way to protect from bots is that SL will implement captcha's
(A CAPTCHA (an initialism for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart"

read more about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

Someone has other idea's besides making it "illegal"?

If the bots are "illegal" they will adjust it to behave more human like, so if you agree with this they should install captcha's when you click buy or sell on the land.


please vote for it herE:
http://secondlife.com/vote/vote.php?get_id=2783

BUT the party in question and his group are physically showing up on or near the land to buy it, apparently after the bot sends them there, from what I can tell - the buying is not automated. This is the reason I was able to buy one lot first, even though he was right there with me - I clicked on it first. And yes, this person was physically present - we were chatting.