"Slash and Burn" reselling

One of the most frequently complained about practices in the land resale business, one that I've actualy seen in practice and am not too fond of myself, is the practice of removing trees and/or flattening land before dividing it up for resale. (I'm thinking mostly of you, Anshe, and a clear-cut stretch I flew over in the new sims not far from Netherbeck at one point, but this is meant to be a general critique of part of a business model and not a flame of your character/business or "land barroning" in general. Nor am I trying to imply that everyone does this).

My questions are: Is there actualy a point to this? Does clear-cut land sell better than forrested land? Why not save the work and let the next buyer clear cut or leave trees as they wish?

See, I think that in many cases (particuarly in some of the new sims), trees can be an asset, a selling point of the land. I can kinda see how this might not apply universaly (i.e. they might offer more benifits for residential property - trees offer beauty, privacy, etc - than on commercial property where clear views and flat land are considered important.) Are land resellers, without realizing it, creating a sort of informal zoning by this practice perhaps? Still, why not leave the trees and the terraforming to the buyer...or, if the seller still wants to do the work, terrafom by request only?

I don't think any of these things are likely to harm a land business, and they may even help it.

I usually don't remove trees. In many cases I actually add trees, grass or fields of dreams.

If you see deforested land I have for sale, chances are somebody else owned it before.

If a land owner gets rid of all the trees... can't a new buyer simply plant new ones?
If yes... then it doesn't matter too much

Elle, I know what you mean, and I, too, hate slashed and burned and pancaked landscapes. I, too, figured it was carelessness, neglect, heartlessness, making a fast buck, whatever. It's sad to go through old sims especially that look like slag heaps or the Sahara desert.

But, once you own land and struggle to develop it, you look at it differently, it's interesting. As you know, I've been dedicated to keeping Linden trees on the land I've owned and not terraforming, it's usually always the case that a sim looks its best on the day it is born and will never look better, as an excellent architect has pointed out.

But here's what happens. All those Linden trees remain Linden trees when you buy them. They hence show up as "alien objects" on your parcel, not yours as an individual owner, or not settable to group as a group owner, or as a group you set on there to save built objects.

To be sure, you can methodically go through and replant every Linden tree with one of your own. But this is time consuming, often doesn't look as good (yes you can save trees in folders but then you have to hunt through inventory, or try by trial and error to get the right one), and still leaves you with trees that the buyer will have to send back to you. So while you're selling land, you can leave all those trees out, but here's what happens:

-- architects and builders have a hard time building around those trees, especially because they sway in the breeze and invade buildings. They are awfully hard to delete after a building goes up around them, and you wind up deleting the building parts by accident sometimes.

-- if you leave Linden trees, you have no way of telling what is Linden tree and what is griefer builds. I've had several parcels where griefers put up all sorts of junk in the air, and also found all sorts of odd items in the sky that appeared to be some kind of "spyware" perhaps -- I'm not an expert. To get all this junk off the lot, you have to clean up the prims by pressing that "remove all objects" button AFTER the builder set his objects to group, and you set any of your own trees to group (you can't edit Linden trees to set to group). I've had this problem several times, when I show up and see a parcel where there are only, say, 10 Linden trees, and I see 231 objects mysteriously on the parcel, that I have to reluctantly press that objects clean-up button because I can't tell Linden tree from griefer objects. To be sure, in this situation I can go first replace Linden trees with my own, and I've done that, but it's time consuming.

I think there's a solution to this, which would help preserve more trees and plants. Just like the land becomes yours when you right-click and buy it, the Linden trees should become yours too. Or maybe some program has to leave just planters so at least you can easily in one swoop see where they are, and maybe that program someone developed (somewhat controversial I gather) to be "Johnny Appleseed" could then be used. I don't know the mechanics of this, I'm just trying to explain that you remove trees primarily to make ease of building and remove griefer wares and just stray objects floating in.

I have to say from studying many of Anshe's parcels to try to learn the real estate business from her, I haven't seen the "slash and burn" type parcels on her watch. I've seen her use field of dreams, and I've also seen her make attractive sort of landscaping or bouquest of even colored flowers around her signs. Her signs and flowers definitely leave the lot pretty, and not scarred. But those are mainly parcels she bought at auction, and if she buys from somebody after they've stripped it, I don't know if we could expect her to go back and take the time to landscape it before setting to sale, the volume is too large.

I'm always dismayed when I see people strip off land and pancake it or terraform it into big choppy blocks. It never looks good. But we all know the SL mantra discussed elsewhere, about the "supreme right" to do what you want on your land, even going ugly...

Exactly as Prokofy says

I am waiting since 9 months now that Linden Lab add feature that when you sell land you also sell the items on the land. It is not only hindering any forrestation efforts, but also other type of developing land and selling developed area instead of empty plot.

I used to put dozens and hundreds of trees, bushes and grass pads on land that I bought and set for sale. However, this shortly lead to my e-mail account get spammed with hundreds and hundreds of object-returned messages daily. And important IMs people sent to me were lost because the trees regularily triggered my IM limit. So I had to take step backwards and do less landscaping than I would wish to do

I stand corrected then. I still don't like the slash and burn practice.



Agree with the idea that Linden trees should transfer ownership with the land...or heck, for any objects desired on the land that you want sold with the land.

Still looking for an answer as to why some land resellers do this, preferably from someone in the business. I understand that they might be returned accidentily if you set autoreturn on the land for people's junk, and that at least some need to be removed/replanted if there's a tree where you want a building to go, but that still doesn't explain why a reseller would want to do it purposefully...it's extra work for them after all...

While I don't do it, here is some reasons why somebody might do it:

- avoid trees hanging in the air after flattening land
- avoid hazzle with people who buy one piece of the land and then complain about branches hanging over into their property
- using object auto return to avoid hazzle with junk left on the land and neighbours complaining about it

I still like trees, so I rather deal with the warranted requests, less warranted requests, ridiculous requests and neg rating for trees that cross border. Well, sofar one person was morron enough to neg rate me for tree that slightly intersected her land border

*giggles*

*hugs the trees*

All really good points, Prok.

It should also be noted that all properties didn't have Linden trees to begin with. If I remember right, Dowden didn't have any trees and it's a fairly new sim.

The Linden trees are created at least in part by script. Sometimes you can see the "generator" objects hanging around after the sale.

Does anyone know if the Lindens have made this code available? It's on my list to create something like this. Kind of a field of dreams that populates the land with trees.

But even if we had this. Manual planting is necessary.

if anything, my biggest beef is with some of the player-created trees that get thrown around everywhere. Ugly trees, trees with material set to light, and the like.

You don't even have to flatten the land to end up with this. If you do *any* terraforming at all, this will happen. Also, you can get the opposite effect. The top half of the tree sticking out of the ground.

Terraforming is hard. The Linden tools don't make it easy. Also, would be nice if Linden trees had an option that would allow them to move up and down with the land.

See this thread:
/invalid_link.html

Awesome! Thanks April!

Now, if I could just get into SL, I'd be golden.

I really wish I could have bought the Linden trees on the land that became Eucalyptus Grove (see SL Parks & Rec link in my sig). I meticulously replanted each and every Linden eucalyptus tree by hand, and then added more before removing some to make walking paths and such.

Stripped and flattened land is ugly. More trees! More terrain!! I love terraforming.

-Ghoti

I've seen that ass too woohoo!!!!

Would be nice if there was a quick way to restore the Linden trees that land originally had. Especially if it's newer land that's only recently been clear cut.

Haven't I seen a little green Linden owned thing on new land? Has that got anything to do with 'replanting' trees?

yes. yes. because the buyer will more often fly by.

selectively clearing some trees opens up peoples imagination to possibilities. creating some suggestive terraces on steep hillsides does the same. i do my best to do this in a nice way.

most people have a difficult time imagining design possibilities for a site. most people want faltish land to plunk their tudor house or castle. you need to do whatever it takes to spark their imagination so they can see how their house or castle or club could fit this unique site.

AMEN!

Yep, that's the Linden's automated tree planter.

what most people seem not to notice, is that they don't need completely flat land to build their estates, depending on the style they want to build in, they just need some kind of platform to build on, wooden or rock, or solid concrete, there are many ways to make it look good, like the foundations of your building, or maybe like a wooden platform that partly goes over a nice river. Actually in most cases your building will look MUCH better if placed on non terraformed land at the cost of very few well expended prims (that by the way increase your building options, letting you build cellars, garages and so forth).
About trees, i did remove all the ones i had on my land as soon as i bought it, but that had a very simple reason, they were in the way of my building, after the building will be finished, i will take in account the prims i have left and replant what i can

AMEN! My new favorite construction trick is to use the Linden-provided land textures and use them to disguise the sides of the building foundation that's sunk into the ground.

There are other times where I've needed the land flatter than I could build the platform high, but I've kept the basic shape of the land instead of having the whole thing pancaked.

Presumably can't be used by non Lindens? I haven't seen one in a while to try.

One won't mention huge swaths of hill'd areas terraced to make cutting and selling easier, [Name left unuttered] , nor the raising of shoreline lakebed in at least one lake I know very well, in order to make more dry land to sell.

Perhaps your methods have changed, but memories, like land, take time to fade. Green and humble? Glad to hear it.