Land Barons, Land Prices and The Effect On SL

Does anyone else feel, as I do, that when a relatively small group of people own so much land for resale, that it has a deterimental affect on SL?

I'm kinda turned off to some aspects of SL because land barons like you know who buy up most of the good stuff and then profiteer from it.

A week after first land opened in Pinastri, where my place is, 512m2 parcels were selling for over $1k. Now the going rate is $3k - $4k per 512. Nice parcels elsewhere sell for even more.

I don't begrudge anyone's desire to make a buck, but I really think it hurts the community when people can't get a decent amount of land for a reasonable price.

With the prim limits, landowners are pushed into a situation where if you don't have a very modest house, it's going to be hard to properly furnish it with buying more land to get more prims. But buying land for that is an expensive proposition and a huge tradeoff.

I should add that I'm not proposing anything, but rather just sharing some observations.

And to head off a certain type of comment. Yes, I know, that I'm not "entitled" to anything. I'm not suggesting that I or anybody else is "entitled" to cheaper land. I just wish people like you know who, who's initials are A.C. didn't have such a tight hold on land.

Bump

Nice job with the anonymity. Why don't you say, "A land baron who I won't name but they sound like 'Manshe Fung'"?

My personal experience: I have bought and sold land several times in my second life. I've never bought from "land barons", only private landowners; I've never sold to land barons, only ordinary people. I've always gotten and given good deals.

It's highly possible to avoid dealing with land barons if you want. If you dislike them, don't do business with them. If enough people feel like you do, it will make a difference. If people don't feel like you do, then it isn't a community affecting problem after all.

Land barons make baby Jesus cry!

no

I am in the same position. But I CAN'T buy the first land around me, having already bought my first land. Therefore, I am grateful that the land dealer (in this case, it was Garnet Psaltry) apparently bought it and then offered it for sale. That way, I was able to get a nice large parcel next to my little 512, and I sure didn't mind paying more for it.

That's much easier than having other First Land buyers sitting around you for a thousand years while you wait for one to move then hope you can purchase their land.

So the land dealers do provide a service.

coco

Of course they do. But at the same time, land barons prevent people from getting any truly good land at any kind of reasonable price, because they snap it up well before others can.

I can't tell ya how sick I am of seeing those Ansche Chung "for sale" blocks on so many parcels. Including a huge amount of land behind my place.

dogspot, thank you for sharing with us your discovery of the supply demand model. so you mean to say once all the land in the sim is bought up and players demand more but there is a scarcity because a sim has a predefined limit of supply, the price goes up? and you blame anshe chung to be the source of the supply demand equilibrium? i think adam smith will be jealous.

Linden Labs indirectly sets the price of land. At current rates, buying a sim wholesale from auction, a user pays ~ $6.5 - 8 L per m2. That includes the mandatory $195 tier fee one incurs when purchasing a sim. LL has made land more expensive, not the land barons.

I'm pretty indifferent to land baronry. But I'm not sure you can say that the land can't be gotten at a "reasonable" price. The market has set the price here, so there it is.

Conversely, if you didn't have people who spent their days and nights buying land, it wouldn't be possible to sell land with nearly the speed and regularity we currently enjoy, nor would we be able to sell for solid prices when that time came. Part of the service for which you pay the land baron is holding the land until your happy ass comes along and decides to buy it -- which isn't cheap by any stretch, at any scale.

So, the market has created what the market needs. I guess you could execute the people who are making the prices so high and naughty for you, but then what? The market would just generate new ones. You could create rules that forbade the existence of the land baronry, but then how would you get any sort of reasonable price when you wanted to dump your land before the end of the billing cycle?

Jesus?

He ain't buying your land.

Don't waste your land on some silly house! Use your land to build items for sale, create and empire, begin buying land for high, selling for low, and deflate the linden in the process by also selling lindens for like $1 USD less than everyone else. You can then drive the other land barons out of business and make SL a fun place again since RL $$$$$$$$ greed won't be on the table anymore. Then you will be an internet saint. It is ambitious but the right person can pull it off. I think the right person is you. Get started, the revolution will not be televised.

Considering that 4,750+ players own parcels larger than 512-sq.m (there were 95-players that qualified for the August Developer Incentive Award [which is based on 2-percent of landowners with parcels LARGER than 512-sq.m that got the highest Dwell/Traffic scores during August]) no SINGLE player actually dominates the real estate market. If "A.C." (otherwise known to the population at large as Anshe Chung [no need to play the 'initials game']) DOMINATED the real estate market no one else would have qualified for the bonus.

For whatever reasons, your First Land neighbors accepted what they were offered for their parcels and sold them. If Anshe is guilty of anything it's the ability to buy land at what's considered by the other player to be a reasonable price and then sell the land to another player at what they consider a reasonable price. There are two sides to the equation: Sellers and buyers. Anshe simply works the middle in an intelligent fashion.

NOTHING about Second Life, nor the existance of Anshe Chung, prevents any other player that is in the game now or arriving in-world in the future from working the middle in the real estate market and making a profit (and "dominating" the real estate market). Or a profit from renting land. Or a profit from making scripted objects. Or a profit from making clothes. Etc. Anyone that is so inclined as to be industrious, to be frugal (so they can re-invest their profits), and to make their own "luck" can get ahead in the game.

ANYONE can discover their hidden talent or cultivate the one(s) they already know about and go forward in the game. A big part of success in anything is persistance. That a certain percentage of players wave their fists and gnash their teeth solely because they're unwilling to rise to the challenge says more about them than the person they're complaining about.

Considering that less than 10-percent of the population now owns more than 512-sq.m of land when only a few months ago it was around 12-percent, players like Anshe are not "detrimental" to the game. Such players actually help cover the bandwidth costs of landless hootchie harlots and bling kings as they gad about from moneyball to free slot machine and then back to moneyball again (ponder for a moment or two how different SL would be if the same amount of time lingering under moneyballs was devoted to attending basic building classes and scripting lessons). Putting that sentiment aside though it's admirable that you've hung onto your First Land and I certainly hope that you take your focus off of what other players are doing with their parcels (notice how their property line begins where your nose ends?) and cultivate your own parcel using your own talents.

Brilliant.

edit:



This one, thanks to laughter, sent my drinking water down my windpipe. Worth it, though.

Knock if off already.

I'm trying to get an idea of what people really think about it.

I don't need smart asses like you giving me sh*t over it.

It's people like that make the forums a hostile place.

God forbid someone should post an HONEST question lest people like you stir the pot. Please STFU and get out of my thread.

I wasn't being a smartass. I was quite serious. I would do it myself, but my free time is dedicated to playing WoW Someone needs to step up to the plate. Don't complain, take action!


Let me teach you a little lesson. Public thread, anyone can post. Now you have just ruined your own thread. Wait for it...

There are a lot of people like me who aren't interested in the commercialization of SL. We just want to hang with our friends and do our own thing. Including having a nice house.

I deal with business stuff enough in RL, I don't need to be dealing with it in SL too. It's just not the way I want MY SL experience to be.

BTW, I only mentioned Anshe Chung because I see a lot of his
for sale signs. I'm well aware of the fact that there are a lot of other land barons.

I've been noticing, since you joined, that you're big in the personal attacks.

Might want to be careful about that.

Or maybe get a blog. Then it would be ALL DOGSPOT, ALL THE TIME. Then you can leave as many little dog spots on the carpet as you like with no one to scold you!

dude,

why don't you knock it off and search the forum before posting. land trading has been around for 20 months. there has been a lot of heated discussions on it. why don't you read that rather than restarting this old conversation from the usual point zero, in this case implied -"land traders are making money for nothing - anshe chung stole my ice cream."

implying land traders are the source of the land prices without doing the proper research on a contreversial topic, then naming names, and then telling me i make forums hostile. well maybe i do but so do you.

Uh, I wasn't talking to you when I made that comment. I twas OBVIOUS when I quoted. Hint: it wasn't you I quoted.

Let me teach you a little lesson: don't take me to task for something I didn't say to you.

As far as the thread being ruined, well, I think ol Juania or however it's spelled has already done that.

this thread was ruined before it was even an idea in your mind. go do a forum search on "anshe chung", "land baron", "land angels", "these people ruined my christmas", "something something fraud something something", "view blocker", "maxx monde"

Don't think of it as ruined, think of it as "modified for your protection."

No, I didn't do anything to make this thread hostile. I simply posited a question. No more no less. Many people in this thread were gracious enough to post their thoughts.

You, OTOH, had to be a real jerk about it. If you wanted me to search the forums, then you could have simply said that. But, oh, no, gotta bitch slap the poster, right, J?

Oh so typical for this forum. (edited)

Hahahaha, "these people ruined my christmas"

That one is fun no matter what. Should be required reading.

Always with the personal attacks. That's not cool.

No, it was ruined when you show up.