Why are land barons so greedy?

Whilst waiting for Philip to get back into town and get back to me on something he promised to, I've been looking round at land, much of it owned by a well known land seller.

What gives? I'm seeing 8192 sq m plots for L$100,000 ... this is over L$12/sq metre, when it's well known that land "costs" about L$4.5/sq m when a new sim is bought.

That is an outrageous markup, yet for some reason such extortion is considered 'acceptable' by current rules. I say it is not.

Many of us wish to contribute far more to your world, and although we can probably justify to ourselves the monthly tier costs, most of us are unable to cope with the "up front" costs of buying the land.

I do not believe it is as simple as saying "the market will pay what it wants, and the dealers will adjust", given the huge glut of land on the market.

The players are there, the land is there, the cost is preventing people from building your world further.

I believe that it is about time that land dealers were made to work for their profit, rather than simply swooping in, grabbing land, putting it for resale at a huge profit, and sitting back to wait for it to sell.

Like many others, I know that I could landscape and parcel up land, just like all the other land dealers, quite possibly make a better job of it than some, and give a better service and fairer price. Yet we are unable to because of the up-front costs.

Land dealers are damaging your world, by snapping up all the land and then selling it at prices regular players cannot afford, thus limiting their creativity and frustrating their expansion, possibly causing them to quit playing.

Will Linden Lab ever tackle this issue, which is only second a problem to griefers (in fact there are many parallels) in my opinion.

Lewis

Well, it sounds like you should directly ask a "land baron" about their motives. Get it straight from their mouth, after all.

You have a complaint but I don't really see a proposed solution or creative way to work with other Residents here; which is something I'd highly recommend.

There's a lot of cheap land out there too--it's a very big picture. Although if I had the L$, I might consider snacking up parts of Da Boom (a joke).