Okay, Group Land - I'm Confused!

Let me tell you exactly what I want to do first so I don't get lost rambling.

A friend and I both bought plots of land right next to one another. We would like to link them together and (hopefully) share prim limits. I created a group and we both are officers of that group now. We both set the land to the group (we didn't deed it).

As of right now, it doesn't appear to be doing anything out of the ordinary. Looks exactly like it did before unless you pull up the "about land" and then you see the group name in the description. Our friend in the group can set the land to home, so we know we did this much right.

The biggest thing we'd like to do is share prims but still retain our land as our own because there will be other members in the group and we don't want to accidently give anything away but we want to jointly make a kick ass house and gardens. Is there a way to do this and how.

We're a couple of newbies with big dreams, help us out - LOL

You need to right click the land, go to Edit Land. Drag a box on the ground so that it encompasses a piece of each plot, then click the Join Land button.
Hope that makes sense!

makes perfect sense, now if i can just get in there to test it...thank you

Nope. Not the problem.

If the lots are in the same sim, then they share prims, BUT only if they are owned by the same person or group. It's not enough to set the group to be the same. The owner of the two lots has to be the same.

So, you could deed both lots to the group. The lots would then be owned by the group. But you'd need to trust each other because then you could sell each others land (assuming that you're both officers of the group).

And if anyone else was an officer of the group, then they could sell your land. So, watch out!

If you really need to share prims, then deed both properties to the group, but don't do it before you totally understand the implications.

I'm sure others will post more, but this is the quick explanation.

You don't get more prims out of sharing 2 pieces of land of say, 117 each, they still add up to 234.

But putting the land in a group enables you to get a discount, or ten percent more tier available to cover land. So let's say if you have 1024 pooled in the group, you know have 102 more to play with beyond that and you could buy more land in that sim and acquire a few more prims that way.

Once you deed the land, it's gone. It's no longer yours. You cannot get it back, unless you sell it back to yourself for $0. Any other officer can take it and sell it out from under you.

Group land isn't worth making for the few extra prims you'll be able to buy if you can't imagine how to break it up rationally. Plan for the break-up. It will almost certainly come.

I agree that group-owned land is a dangerous thing, but I think you miss the point Prok. They want to the lots to share their prim allocation. They aren't trying to get more prims, they just want to pool the prims.

So, in your example, they'd like to be able to put all 234 prims on one of the lots. Rather than 117 on each lot.

At least that's my understanding of their general goal.

thank you for all your help in understanding all this. honestly, i totally trust her - couldn't trust her more, but why play with fire. looks like one lot gets the house, and the other gets the garden. granted, its gonna be one freaky ass huge garden - lmao.

thank you again

It is possible and practical to do that, but the major obstacle is usually having enough allotment to do the shuffle to group land. Should you ever change your mind and want to do this again...

Here's the problem. Say you and your friend each have 512 (on paid accounts with no tier upgrade). You're each maxed out owning 512 each. In order to deed a plot to the group, you must contribute part of your allotment first. But if you're maxed out you have no more to give to the group and can't deed it.

If you have anything left over (i.e. your plot is smaller than 512) then it's possible, but time consuming. Subdivide the land into chunks small enough to fit in your leftover. Then contribute that leftover to the group and deed one small parcel at a time. After the first, you'll have about the same leftover, then contribute that and repeat. When you and your friend are finished, join all group-owned parcels together for one plot.

The other (and much easier) option is to bite the bullet and tier up for a month. A one-time $5 fee might be worth it.

But to simplify things...

If you want to leave the plots as-is, set them both to your new group, and set your house and garden to same group. It won't really matter if part of the house is crossing the plot edges, as long as neither of you return each other's builds.

LOL, this is true! Maybe the original question was a red herring!

Practically speaking, it might not matter if the two lots combine their prim allocation or not.

If both lots have their group set and all of the prims on both properties are set to that group, THEN even with autoreturn turned on, you can each put whatever prims you want on each other's land without fear.

The only gotcha with this is if you have a house that is linked. If the house were linked, then the lot containing the root prim of the house would be responsible for 100% of the prims in the house, even if the house were 50% on one lot and 50% on the other. This could be a problem if the # of prims in the house is greater than the allocation of either of the lots individually.

If you are building your own house or if it is a prefab with modify permission, then it isn't a problem, because you can unlink the house and each prim will count against the lot it is on. But if you bought a prefab without modify permission, this could potentially be an issue. Also, if you want the house to be more on one lot than the other, this could be a problem because you could run out of prims on the lot that has the biggest part of the house.

Edit: But if you have modify permission on the prims, you could always try to mitigate this last point by linking prims on the prim heavy lot to a prim on the prim light side. If the root prim of this linked object is on the prim light side, it would shift the allocation of those prims to the prim light side, even if most of the prims are physically on the prim heavy side. Probably didn't explain this well, but it's a *really* useful technique.

And isn't there a requirement for three people in a group? I believe that is one of the reasons that some people use Alts ... to make up the third for a viable group, and still maintaining control.

Or do I misunderstand the group requirements?

Yep, I think so. I've never pushed it to see, but when you create a group it tells you that you need 3 people or it will disappear in 3 days. Would be an interesting experiment to see if it is really so aggressive that it deletes a group that has land. Except I don't want to be the one who performs the experiment.

I beleive they fixed this by adding a "contribute land tier to group w/ deed" (something like that).

Schwanson, that does not fix the problem, it only misleads you into making more mistakes. Try it on a group with 64m as an experiment.

The fact is, unless you have double tier to start with OR you are willing to force the tools into overdrive and neg out the tier (which induces a warning sign and can lead to you losing your land not covered within a certain time span after a Linden warning) ---

you will get double-billed. I know, because I made this "mistake" as a newbie, although the mistake was partly induced the second time at least by the failure of the group land to update. This was recognized as a bug later in a subsequent patch where it was listed among the fixes.

I don't see their advantage in making a group. Shack explained the whole thing very well if they just want to draw prims out....I think...except Shack, I think you're wrong maybe. because both parcels would both have to be separate parcels within the group-owned land list, i.e. already deeded, for any one on one parcel to draw down prims from the other parcel.

Oh yeah? Nice There were many occasions I could have used this. Well, not that many but very annoying occasions.

Depends on what we're talking about i guess. I've used one technique many times for a totally different purpose. It's the way that people build bridges over Linden land.

You put prims over Linden land and link them with a prim on your land. If the prim on your land is the root prim of the link set, then the total allocation of prims goes to your land, even tho there are a bunch of prims over the Linden land. Since you hold the prim allocation, the autoreturn on the Linden land doesn't phase them. Now, of course, your neighbors can complain and force a Linden to come down and manually zap them, but ... well, that's another story altogether.

But this technique doesn't require anything about ownership or groups.

Edit: You do have to be careful tho. Because if you ever unlink the prims, then you are subject to autoreturn and the other lot's prim limits. But it seems that it won't return prims that are being edited, so you can move them around safely, but it's tedious.

And dont forget that all members of the group (if you ever chose to add others) will share in the proceeds from the sale of any land. This applies to ALL MEMBERS, not just officers and not just those who donated land tier.

Kiefer