Sick of SL land prices being too high, cannot afford higher tier.

The land you are looking at is way overpriced--12.2L$ per square meter. I've seen flat mature land in nice sims for less than half of that. I've even seen mature COAST land for around 7L$/m2. The person selling that land is dreaming--or hoping for a sucker.

Look around. You can find nice land for much cheaper than that.

Gee, so in your world there should be no government oversight on anything? Just let a total freemarket economy boom!

Got news for you, that just makes the poor poorer and the rich richer.

What would *I* do?

I'd charge a percentage of the asking price per week on land advertised "for sale". This would stop eternal holdouts and people using the for sale option to advertise their land for 9,999,999 as free advertising.

I would allow people to buy more than 512m sq at first-land rates if they pay yearly. Say allow them to buy 4 first land plots per year paid. (or some other similar bonus).

Would I put on a cap? no, but I would make it harder for greedy folks to hold out for big bucks.

Too little to manage it? Linden labs has turned the new land spigot wide open and is spraying out new sims left and right. Open the Map window and select the "show land for sale" checkbox. The gid is a sea of yellow overlays and price tags.

It sounds like your problem is that you need land in a specific sim. That can suck. Especially if the sim is fairly well established, and land rarely comes up for sale. You said you need the land for an art project.

Consider doing this: tier down in your current sim to just what you need to support your existing shop. (Thus preserving the LM links to it.) Take advantage of those insane prices and sell of some of your land in that sim. Then take that money and buy the land you need for your art project somewhere where land is reasonable.

I think land pricing is right where LL wants it.

By auctioning off only whole sims, they are in fact counting on resellers to parcel, market, and distribute the land. They expect these resellers to be able to make a modest profit for taking these risks and doing all of the work.

LL does do that. It's called Tier--and it can be quite expensive.

Unless your proposed "listing tax" is punitively high, it's not likely to make much difference. Most of the people listing land at high prices for weeks or months are not acting rationally in economic terms. The cost of tier each month degrades the margins on land the longer it's held. You have lots of people falling victim to the "sunk costs fallacy" and trying to make L$ while loosing US$.



I think you would find that counterproductive. If a person can buy First Land four times per year, the economics of "farming" Premium account alts for First Land purchases (and tier) suddenly become a lot easier.

Except for you of course right Jamie? I mean those houses and vehicles you are selling for near 1k cost you nothing!

Right, so unless you've got several thousand dollars to risk you're left at the mercy of the market.

Glad to know it's not bias to the rich or anything.

Yeah, total crap, man.

You know what else sucks? Audi is so expensive. Goddamn. Audis should cost me, like, 500 bucks, tops. But they're tens of thousands of dollars. I can't afford that. Audi needs to manage its cars after-market value better. As in, the value should plummet after six months. Or they should just sell them for a few hundred dollars.

Yeah, I mean the only choice you have is to either buy or rent an Audi. Nobody else makes any cars at all.

That's nothing like SL where we either buy at the going rate set by a totally free market or rent.. hrrm..

One less Artist is the future I see for you. Don't worry,
somebody will fill your slot. Bye Bye... Otherwise, PayUp.

Deal with it. This is the reality of life.

All Hail The Land Baron!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I nominate February as Land Baron Month.

Except you don't want the options that are available. You don't want a Ford Festiva, you want an Audi. You have a very specific purpose in mind, with a certain size of land and in a certain location. It is not a matter of getting any old spot in SL, say a small 512 bought reasonably from a n00b looking for cash or a cheap rental in a low traffic sim. You want the works and you want it cheaply.

SL land is a luxury. Expect luxury pricing.

Many features in Second Life resemble some similar features in RL. If you compare the prices for "buying" land and "owning" land in SL with RL
* buying land is dirt cheap
* owning land is terrible expensive

In the country where I live in, buying a piece of land and placing a decent house on it, costs at least 50 to more than 100 times a monthly income (after tax) of an average family income. It's cheaper in the US I have heard. But still a factor of 50 might not be too unreasonable. The cost of "owning" the land is negligible.

Even, if you are only "living on stipend", as a premium account resident you only pay 15 times your monthly "income" for a very nice plot of 4096. The relationship is much more favourable to SL as soon as you are making just a little money. But you pay a whopping 7,000 L$ every month for the privilege of owning it.

Over the course of just one year you have payed 30,000 for "buying" the land and 84,000 in "property tax".

Sorry, I wonder which part of the "cost of owning land" is "outrageous".

I agree with Dana. The current ratio between purchase price and monthly fee is very problematic and raises the question if describing this as "ownership" is even appropriate.

24 months tier should not exceed the purchase price. If buying one sim, however, 6 months tier already exceed the purchase price and for small land parcel is even more extreme. Instead of 1250$ purchase price and 195$ tier maybe 2400$ purchase price and 99$ tier would justify the term "ownership".

While this might bring the relationship between "price" and "tax" more in line with what we consider normal in RL, I am sure LL will not switch to such a model.

Nobody "owns land" in SL. This is a pretty illusion important only for marketing purposes. We are all renting server space. And hosting servers in a co-location leads to monthly costs for maintenance and traffic. Costs for setup are negligible in comparison. LL is simply passing on this cost (with a markup) and passing on the cost structure to us residents.

I did not want to criticize this. I just wanted to bring to attention the simply fact, that

Considering an initial payment "high" and considering "low, easy to afford monthly rates" as "cheap" is a dangerous attitude that has driven many people into bankrupcy in RL.

So the old Sheep says to the young sheep, lets go Blah Blah them all

It would DEFINATELY make a difference, just not in the way that the poster intends. Personally I'd just consider that "listing tax" a cost to be passed on to the end user, exactly like the cost of purchasing the land and the existing tier tax. I would likely tack on some multiple of the listing tax to account for the additional risk and slower turnaround associated increasing prices. I would probably increase my pricing to somewhere around:

old_price + (listing_tax * 4.5)

Additional taxes on land beyond the tier tax will NEVER HAVE the effects intended by those who propose them with some regularity. They will definately have the same effect as the existing tier tax though, which is to push the cost of land up WAY higher than it has to be.

If cheaper land is what it desired, the solution would be to LOWER the tier tax dramatically (or perhaps remove it entirely) for those who have multiple sims worth of land for sale. Land traders would then have MORE room to work with and would thus LOWER our prices in competition for the consumer dollar.

All of that said, I guess that as a land trader, I would be FOR experimenting with a listing tax or other land related taxes. This type of thing may give me an excellent chance of increasing profit margins and better monetizing my efforts. Higher land values are good for the overall economy too, not just for me!

The old problem... the seller wants to make the biggest profit, the buyer wants the best deal and lowest price.

*shrug*

I want more land, but unless I move I have no opportunity to expand as I am on a sim boundary, with a road on one side and the remaining two sides locked in by a neighbour who doesn't seem to have any intention of moving.

So I stay put... and just get frustrated by lack of prim space.

Lewis

*Picks through L.Nerd's post for things to jump all over.....confuses self and goes to bed....

Sleep well.

Lewis

How many months of taxes and interest was in the price of your house?

I fear this would allow landowners to hold onto their plots nearly forever waiting to get the price from their land that they desire.