"we'd like to see the "value-add" continue to play a larger role in land businesses"

My read on this is that they'd rather people bought on islands not because it was cheaper but because there are 'value add' services which makes it wortwhile paying a premium over regular land.

And that premium becomes the profit for the land baron, not the tier arbitrage.

What say you? Is this realistic?

My interprestation is that they'd rather people buy land (any land) and improve it in some way before selling it. Simply buying it from LL then selling it to a player does not add any value... it is a transfer that could be accomplished by the player buying from LL in the first place.

Improving the land, whether aesthetically or otherwise, does add value and is not the same as a direct buy from LL.

But i'm not an economist, obviously.

buy auctioning full sims, land traders now take one the full role of adding value by redistrubuting land to enduser tier needs. LL no longer needs to add this value before the auctions.

They want land resellers to provide an actual service by creating communities, creative parcelling, landscaping, and things like that. I think they're hoping that by switching to auctioning only full sims it will eliminate many of the small time barons who are only looking to jack up the price and make a quick buck in favor of more serious resellers who will be developers rather than just middle men.

people want to build their own stuff. people want to hire their own architect or shop for their own prefab. it's all part of the nesting experience. if LL wants players to landscape, they would allow for more than +-4m

it is you opinion, chip, that land traders don't provide an "actual service." it has been discussed ad infinitum on this forum how wrong that opinion is.

I read it to mean that if the themed islands really are as desirable as many of their residents claim, if what they are getting is indeed added value, then they may actually have to prove it by paying a premium over the normal tier.

This is perfectly consistent with the stated intention that actual tier will become the same per m, whether you own a lot or a little. At the moment, of course, a sim owner pays only a third what his small tenant would pay LL and therefore pays now to him as rent. This two thirds is what funds the entire operation, and provides the profit.

It implies that in the new situation, small tenants would face rises of about 60% in their rentals, to maintain their landlord in an unaltered position.

This would be a very severe test of their loyalty. I think they may well leave en masse and return to the mainland.

Even if the Landlord halved his gross profit, which would surely mean reduced services unless profit is currently excessive, even the resulting 30% premium over mainland tier levels would surely make most think twice.

Check my figures, someone. I'm a little drunk........

"value add" has to be more than just dividing a parcel and slapping a price on it. You can certainly do that but I have a feeling you'll soon be competing with people who are offering more than that. I think LL is banking on it.

i can't believe you would say that with your long history on this forum. but perhaps the land threads never caught your interest, which is understandable.

land traders fill a very important niche in sl. for one, they provide liquidity to the land market. with enough land traders looking for oppurtunities for undervalued land to be sold and market value, land traders regulate the market price and prevent erratic dips and peaks. players can feel safe knowing that they can try to sell their mature land for 7L$/m2 in this market but if all else fails, they can count on a land trader to gladly pick it up for 4-5 L$ before tier day.

land traders holding large amounts of a variety of land in various sims allows players to request exact amounts of very specific type of land from a land trader, something the open market can't easily provide, and something LL definitely could never micro manage. you have very deep pockets in SL and would never feel the pinch of tier day that many other players might feel. i know countless players who've been happy to recieve this kind of service.

lastly, with the tier system as it is, land traders provide players with the immediacy of being able to buy land and immediately trading in old to the land trader. this is a huge service because as a leisure past time, who wants to spend their time waiting around to sell their land and miss the chance at the perfect land they found? why put the breaks on your second life?

this is just a few benefits of land traders. now as for providing content:

i have spoken to many other land traders who like myself have tried to provide development to land in the form of lanscaped ready to move in houses. by and large, after the sale this item would be returned, not purchased. with the ability to sell houses with land, i've visited sold property to find the player has removed the house from the land and is putting up a new one.

although we don't know the mind of all these customers, from our experience and from talking to many friends in sl, people don't want ready to move in houses. they have neough of that in RL. they want to shop for their land. tey want to shop for their house. or have it custom built. and many would like to try a hand at building it themselves. hey want to decorate their house. it's all a big virtual nesting urge.

developments do work, but my experience shows they work as rental communities or malls. examples can be found in some of the island sim projects, or on the grid under prokofy's ravenglass rentals.

the idea that people want to buy a rady to go house like american suburbia in SL is offensive to SL. why would anyone want to transplant the conformist lifestyle of RL to the consequence free utopia of SL?

anyone who can not see value added in the land business as it stands holds a very narrow and naive definition of what value is.

i'd like to note, i would LOVE IT if people wanted to by ready to go houses with their land. as a rl architecture grad, there is nothing i would enjoy more than taking a piece of land, designing a custom house for that site and selling it to someone who would keep it there and enjoy it.

my experience has taught me it's a big waste of time, and understandbly so. architecture in SL is data, not material. the economy of scale that forces people to accept previously built buildings and land as a whole when they buy real estate is not present in SL. buildings are worthless data. they can be done away with without a second thought because the real commodity being exchanged is the land alone.

one could attempt to make the architecture a compulsuroy component of the real estate deal, but that person would find they are losing a lot of business to land sellers who sell people what they really want - land. land where they can build their own secondlife from scratch.

I have nothing against land traders. I think you're reading between the lines and seeing some things that aren't there. I agree with you about conformist developments being anathema to the creative freedom at the heart of SL. That being said, I've been around these forums long enough to read 800 "griefer build" threads to know that not everyone shares that pov. I'm just speculating on why LL switched to full sim auctions only and the comments from the town hall. I think LL is hoping to see land resellers compete in more innovative and varied ways.

And this is a great idea, I just hope that LL aren't naive enough to think that people will pay more for this zoning and added value. Some would for sure. Most wouldn't.

I've followed the "long history" of threads about this issue since the first time someone started buying land from LL only to turn around and sell it to others. I've stated my own opinion on the issue in many threads, so I won't bother going into them here. But I will state that I have always seen division on this issue. I have never seen a "majority" say it was *good* any more than I have seen a "majority" say it was *bad* (except in the very beginning). I still see people divided over this issue. So I don't think it is right to try and claim one view is the norm.

Just my input on this.