Land Rental Management Solutions: What Works?

My company and I are starting the process of aquiring our first set of sims. Over the coming weeks we will be starting our first 20 sim phase of the creation of a new continent

Straight to the point: We need to hear input from residents concerning their thoughts of the current land management options available to renters and landlords. We are eager to hear from tennants, landlords, sim owners and frankly anyone else interested in either renting or owning sims.

Specifically: How are you getting things done and do you have any ideas how to do it better?

We are interested in generating discussion on these key topics.

1. How are you getting money to change hands (do you have a better/simpler idea?)

2. What are you using for management? Scripted land boxes? Faith and friendship? Web payments?

3. Do you have an idea if you are doing things the mainstream or minority way?

4. Do you have the ability to setup a better system? If so, feel free to contact me with a project proposal. We are eager to get into business

~Lefty

This may seem to be a really offbeat angle, but I'd make sure you had as *few* hands in the pie as possible, and love what you do with insane passion.


Why:

Forget about the 25,000 USD purchase price for a moment for those 20 sims - pretend they were free.

They are free, if you ask for about $L 6 per meter up front from people to get in (not that you'll get it, but just assume you do).



Then say you realise 150 USD / month profit from each sim for a year: 36,000 USD. That's what you'll make at a realistic, almost-full capacity at competitive rates.

You can make that, if you suddenly have 300 people instantly and quietly move in when the sims appear.

And stay without a peep without lag issues, griefers, feuds, and IM's coming in to you faster than you can type or talk.

It won't go down that way, of course.




The reason there aren't that many with large themed continents right now is that it's barely worthwhile except as a passionate hobby.

If you have inexpensive "offshore labour", only then does it make any serious RL business sense. Failing that, customer service will eat you alive.

A corner deli would be less money down and more profits for the trouble.



All that said, I may be as crazy as you are.

Good luck, and I'd love to have another friendly voice out there to compare notes with.

Someone calculated that to make any real money in the land sales/rental business you need to have at least 50 sims. That of course assumes you pay yourself and the other workers a salary and are ready to constantly rinvest to grow. I'm sure you've calculated the IRR and the right payback period. The best run organization on SL today, is at 80% of capacity. Not because they can't sell all of it, but because the owner has to constantly reinvest in new sims to stay ahead of the curve. So be ready to wait a long time to see any positive results if ever.

If this is a hobby then none of this applies. Go ahead, enjoy your hobby and play fantasy land baron. This can be great entertainment. But be ready to keep sinking real US$ into this game with no assurance that SL will be around in 6 months or that the L$ will slip no further into the monetary abyss.

Good Luck

Mr Q.

I saw that post and thought it had to be a wind up.

Unless he has inside information about either the currency position or other Second Life business ventures that to date have passed by the horizon of many residents.

Unless he has won the UK National lottery of course and is looking for a harmless hobby.....or maybe he is an off shoot of some new Microsoft venture as after last weeks results, appear almost desperate for new business ideas

I know Master Quatro in-world - and for what it's worth I think he is absolutely right.

In a way, he does have inside information. Anyone doing what he does in-world is going to gain a lot of insight into the land business, and fast.

Talk to him in SL Paul, it would be an interesting discussion I'm sure.

I have Desmond, he is a helpful guy, trouble is for me this is a hobby and for him it is a business so I do not like to trouble him too much

Hey gang,

I appreciate the input from those who wanted to lend a concerned thought or two. It is my pleasure to say that our company is on track and doing quite swimmingly.

While my company appreciates the opinions of the few who posted here, we were not seeking advice on how to structure a secondlife company nor what the investments were. We assure you that we have a solid business plan and are executing it as we speak.

The purpose of this post, in case it has been buried by now, was to survey people's thoughts on the many systems land owners use for management. We hope those with off-subject opinions have not hijacked this thread forever. We anticipated allot of input since these forums are quite famous for helpful and plentiful discussion.

We can start the post off with a question to get input flowing: What do people think about the land rental control boxes? Are they helpful? What could be improved?

Thank You in Advance,
~Lefty Belvedere

You can't really expect us to instruct you on how to best compete with us... My advice in general though, would be backing up a step, and keeping that $25,000.00 USD in your pocket until you are ready to go. This means, not only should you decide what type of transaction system you will use in your own business and make it a part of your rock solid business plan (how did you manage to create a rock solid business plan that included no consideration of how you will bill your clients?), but you should have that transaction system ready to go, or one week from ready to go, prior to ordering your 20 sims.

Obviously it goes without saying that every element of your plan should be ready to execute within 7 days of ordering, not just the billing platform. Keep in mind that the $3,900.00 per month tier starts right away, and that with the low margins you will see, effeciency is EVERYTHING in this game.

I just set up a small-scale, simple little rentable apartments area so here's my thoughts on my solution:



For this, we have a scripted box which a user can 'buy' by paying in at least a week's rent, it then ticks down the amount they paid each week. ie if they paid in L$200 and the rent per week is L$50 then it goes down to L$150 after week 1.
Once it runs out of cash it IMs me as the creator so I know and can do something about it.

Me and some other group members will then simply patrol the land now and then to check that rogue objects aren't about the place, to deal with any user complaints about objects and so-on.

In the case of full-fledged land you'd have the extra step of handing over parcels (if that's what you intend to do), or keeping people from encroaching on each other's area (if it's a single plot rented out (not a very nice solution IMO but people use it).

I think that due to the limits of what a script can really do vs the work required to do it, it's better to have active people helping in as many aspects as you can.
For example, scripts that check prim limits can only detect up to 16 objects if they are stationary, meaning they would have to patrol a parcel/area in order to enforce these limits, which is a lot of work, not exactly fun to code and prone to potential issues/bugs anyway. While if prims are getting scarce a person can have a look and see what's up.

Just my thoughts solution wise, active group for management, script for accepting payments at any time with little manual work

Thank You, Haravikk for contributing. It sound like you get it.

Your combination of scripts and personal presence sounds like the most efficient way. We were debating simply handling everything in person, Including IM reminders and payment handling. I suppose we will see what is more realistic.

hehe I like your cander, Shaun.
Again, my company isn't looking for advice and we aren't keeping any money in our pockets at the moment. We were simply opening discussion on the topic of managing your land. Quite frankly, we can all benefit from the discussion equally. Even more frankly, so far I've been the only person in this thread who hasn't discussed anything business related. There is no competition in this thread. We should all be working towards a dialogue for the sake of LL and what aspects of the world they should be examining. From a business standpoint, we all benefit when one of us learns a good way of doing things. Efficiency, yes; operating in a vacuum, no.

~Lefty Belvedere

I have never used scripts, nor other staff, everything is done moi-to-resident. Just a small amount of effort invested creates an excellent relationship with the residents.

*grins* Well, I have to plug my own rental management system here (LeoRenter, just do a 'place' or 'classifieds' search in game and it'll show up). Grab a free demo and see if it's what you're looking for.

My own experience in the field is limited. I run a small-ish mall, where those rental boxes are a -great- idea. If that's all you're looking to do, it's probably all you need. If you're looking to actually rent out parcels of land on an island (I have experience with this too, but as a renter, not as a manager), I would highly suggest going the USD route instead, via PayPal. You're looking at $195/mo in sim upkeep, and if you're not collecting rent in USD, you're going to be at the mercy of the sometimes fickle LindeX market. The manager I rent from has essentially split half the sim into 8 areas and charges $25/mo for them. I pay him through PayPal, and it's slick and easy. Is he making significant money off this? Nope... as you can see, $5/mo overall from rent. But he's covering costs too, and that's -the- most important thing, if you want to survive for any length of time. The rest of the sim is his own area, and he runs various things there that net him a bit of extra L. Spending money in game for the most part. I'm not really sure how much he trades.

I guess I would suggest starting with a single sim and running it for a month or two to get your feet wet. If it's not working out, you can sell it used and not be out too much.

Actually, I insist on managing money only in USD for residences. This is only fair to both landlord and tennant. Residential zones should not change in value as the linden goes up and down. That market is better suited for unmanaged land purchases and the business sector. Homesteading is more static and can benefit from a slower changing US dollar since private places to haunt and gather can exist in a slightly tighter vacuum Business and commerce is a different story for sure.

~Lefty

Having 4 islands 3 of witch that i rent out exclusively as residential i have found that personal one on one attention gets you far better results.
what i do exactly is i have my rental agreement on each of the available plots i have for rent.
any one can come and take a copy read it over and then if they decide they want to rent or want more info they im me.
i then go to them and make the transaction in person. they pay me in US$ via pay pal or lindens at the current exchange rate. witch they can easily figure out and buy the amount of lindens they require by purchasing the amount they need to pay there rent. i do this in case some one does not want to divulge personal information or they are using lindens earned to pay there rent. in ether case they are still paying a set us$ amount regardless of how the linden in selling at the current time.

i then make a folder for them in my inventory i put there calling card in the folder and a note card with there information in it how much land they rented the amount they paid when they paid when there next payment is due and where they rented the land

I don't see how telling you how my transaction platform works will do anything for the sake of LL, or for me. I see no equal benefit in that. So really, let's be honest. We can all be friends, and in fact I have many friends in the land business. Regardless of friendship though, we'll still all be competitors too, in this thread or elsewhere.

I don't see how LL examining the rental business and providing a rental managment system would do anything for me either. It would likely be inflexible at best, and half done for 2 years at worst. I probably wouldn't use it if it did exist. I perfer to rely on LL's systems to the smallest extent possible, and do as much as I can in-house.

At any rate, I wish you all the best in your business. I hope that you will find a billing solution that works for you before you've paid too much tier on all those islands. Sorry that my advice proved less than useful.

This thread has made me chuckle since it was posted. If your company is about to plunk down over $25,000 on sims plus $3,900 a month to keep them, you'd think you could hire a programmer to come up with a solution all your own.

It gave me a big grin too, but I thought I'd at least attempt to help them avoid several consecutive $3,900 disastars.

Funny how you phrased that statement? We've already invested with a venture capitalist the money for 10 sims plus three months rent and incidentals. Why would we plunk down even more money for programming we don't need? why setup an infrastructure dependent on one coder's system when it might not be completely necessary? Talking this over is just good business. Go to any trade show, confrence or training session in any industry and you'll run into the same sort of conversation. "How do you run things?"

~Lefty

What he said...