What is the advantage of owning land?

I am new to Second Life and I am trying to understand what the reason is for owning land and building homes with furniture and all in it. The avatar obviously does not get tired or anything, so there is no real reason for having furniture and couches and chairs and hottubs and a house.

Also, how hard is it to own a house or buy land? Is most of the property on the game owned by someone who is looking to make money?

I really would appreciate the input...

hehe. there's a million dollar question

Does it appeal to you to build something in a particular location you can call 'home' on a semi permanent basis? Anything.. not just a house?

If not. No, there is no advantage to owning land. If yes, then yeah! There's every reason.

And as to your second question, I have my own opinions on that. I'm best off not sharing them in a thread you'd like to keep productive

What I will say is have a look at the 'land for sale' tab on the map. You can sort it by size, price, location etc. You'll quickly see what's available and where there might be some, um, recurrence in sales details.

Like primfood, there may not be much of a practical advantage, and humans do confuzzle me to a great degree, but... I think while watching the virtual representation of yourself -- the avatar -- it helps to have certain familiar metaphors that you can relate to from offline experience. Too alien an environment and you will find most people cannot relate to it, and obviously, on the flipside, too banal and someone will scream "WHAT'S THE POINT OF SECOND LIFE THEN!??" and as Flip has graciously reminded me, in here, we can FLY. Express yourself as you see fit, Jay, and if you don't want to own furniture and want to live in a giant wet noodle and smack yourself around or even in a rolling piggybank on a sloping hillside, these are viable options available to you.

Sometimes you just want something cuz you feel good about it... and it's COOL. ^_^

I don't have a house -- I used to live in a dumpster inworld -- but I hope you'll get help with these questions soon enough.

Cheers.

Humans by nature are nesters ...we want a place to house our junk. But having your own place to build and socialize has its merits

land allows you to have a place inthe virtual world were your content will remain persistent even when oyu log off.

it can be used as a way to share your creations, either as a place to dwell, a build to admire, or items to purchase.

my advice to you is to hold of on buying land for a few weeks, even if you are on a premium account. the reason being, once you have had a chance to make quite a few friends inworld, learned some building techniques, and generally a good idea of what SL has to offer you, then you can make a good decision on what kind of land you want to buy and where.

keep in mind, mature land is worth more than pg, so if you don't have a problem with mature content, it is best to purchase your "First Land" plot, which is a LL subsidized program for 512 m plots for first time land buyers, in a mature region. this way you will get the best resale value.

as a new player you could very easily purchase a mature first land, sell it at market price, and find yourself a pg land of twice to three times the size at a later date.

Please get back to the trhead i was posting in... I'm not in a sharing mood today.

I think you should just fly around for the first few weeks or months or maybe forever just getting a feel for the world and seeing what you like or don't like about it and where your niche might be in terms of occupations or activities. When you find what you like to do WITHOUT land, by just going to events and hanging around, then you'll understand better what you want to do WITH land.

You're going to feel the pressure to make money somehow and one way to do that is to use up your once-only 512 tier privilege and buy some "first land" which costs only $512, but is rarely in the best spot (and usually surrounded by lots of other 512s so you'll find yourself in crowded 512-land). Still, if you keep a watch on the Find Land list daily in game, you'll find something. You could live there. But you can eventually flip that 512 you only had to pay $512 for and get about $3000-4000....which you can use to buy ANOTHER 512 somewhere else that somebody ELSE moved from and marked up....and hopefully you might then get 2 of those next to each other to make 1024s....lather, rinse, repeat, and you are playing Monopoly. Try to land on Boardwalk. Try to avoid Jail.

It's nice to have a place to perch your avatar and put your goods, kind of like the trunks in some games like A Tale in The Desert, so your inventory isn't cluttered. It's nice to make a nest, but on 512 it gets cramped -- few houses fit on 512.



Yes, and soon you, too, will be one of those people because you will take the 512 that you bought for a song (only $512) and sell it for $3000-4000 and then either trade up or buy yourself attachments or whatever you need to do.

My advice would be to donate your 512 tier (a separate thing than your land purchased) to a land group or a project group on land. This way you contribute your 512 tier, the level at which you have the right to own land for free (more and you start paying tier fees), which will be welcome by those having to carry tier, that gives you building and living privileges without having to lose your "first-land" privilege. You can also take out that 512 donation any time and move on, and you lose nothing, it stays with you whever you go to either tier-donate or buy land.

It isn't hard to own a house and some land. You can find a first land for $512 somewhere and knock together an easy newbie house or buy a prefab for $200. What's harder is finding GOOD land without ugly builds nearby, with good FPS (no lag), and with a good view.

All excellent advice, Jau and Prokofy

What they said!

You don't have to build a home.

You could build something uber-cool and beneficial to the entire community that you designed, and share it with the world.

I asked myself the same question when I first started. I figured a little 512 was plenty big enough for me. Then I started getting into landscaping and tried my hand a making a few things... then I discovered it's easy to feel claustrophobic when people start putting up large builidngs all around that little 512. Well, it's a personal choice. I LOVE having land to play with and always end up with a forest around me. I finally bit the bullet and tiered up a bit higher than I should. But now I have room for a castle! I love it!

what jauani said plus i own (i say own even though all my land is grouped) land for two reasons:

i love to terraform - that's why i own mostly core sim land;

and i enjoy feeling some control over the permanence of my builds. granted that anything can happen, especially with group owned land; but i've never been comfortable living in rented space or building in a free for all sandbox area.

oh i have a third reason now. i'm building a small nursery business and need somewhere to display my wares. people don't seem to want to buy trees from vendors; they'd rather see full sized versions. so i'm building some park shops around the map.

Your trees rock

How you choose to present your work for sale looks beeter than most as well even when you have to use vendors like at Luna Mall.

I like to have a quiet spot to work on things that i sell, and thats what my land provides me. I'm also a nester/decorator and i like to be surrounded in world with nice stuff. I'm always putering around my place, it's therapeutic.

Off topic but this reminded me of a conversation I had last night just before I logged out at Ahern:

thank you talen. i thought long and hard about how best to build those instore vendors. i'm seeing loads more sales from the tree vendors set out of the landscape. i'm thinking that my best move might be to build one large park somewhere and sell everything from there.

bank on seeing a fate gardens sim if the business does well enough to support it. i have no problem at all gomming proceeds and reinvesting the cash in linden labs.

thanks guys for all the help!! Now I definitely better understand the adv's of owning land.