The new "selling lands on island estates" feature needs to be reconsidered.

Here's my feedback for the "selling land on the island estates" feature...

I have never seen a better tool in SL for setting up a con job.

People are "selling" island land for hundreds of dollars, and people are paying it without realizing that they won't have anything even vaguely close to the same rights they get on the mainland. Oh, there's now what amounts to a "clickthrough" license on the land, but everyone who owns a computer gets those five times a day. That's not good enough: land that is "sold" on the islands thought the Linden interfaces shouldn't be "sellable" by the estate owner without an irrevocable right of resale, without an irrevocable right to re-partition the land, and so on... for all the rights one gets on the mainland.

OK, I realise that no land is really "sold" in SL, it's all rented whether explicitly or throught tier, but at least on the mainland you have the same ability to "sell" the land on that the guy you bought it from did.

At least 1.12.1 will (presumably) let an estate owner "sell" land with more of the rights that should have been in there from the start. But I don't think it's going far enough.

First... Linden Labs needs to provide a way for an island owner to automatically receive rent for land from whoever owns the land, without having to manually track them down. Allowing repartition is just going to make this more important, at least for "sold" land. Whether this mechanism comes in the form of "estate tier" or just LSL calls to query parcel boundaries and land ownership, it needs to be in there.

Second, it must not be possible for land to be listed in the Land Sales tab, or show up on the map, unless it's really for sale in a way that the island owner can't revoke without reclaiming the land... and if the island owner sold the land originally then they need to pay the current owner their part of whatever they sold it for to reclaim it. If the land owner owes rent, they should be able to go to the Lindens to ask for an exception, but otherwise if they're going to benefit from "selling" the land they need to really sell it.

Finally, if the land isn't sold under terms comparable to the mainland, then the Linden provided user interface needs to indicate this far far more strongly than it does now. Perhaps it can refer to the owner as a "renter", for example.

Unless this is done it's going to undercut the efforts of everyone who has tried to make land sales on the islands fair and reasonable. The current setup allows a sim owner to completely recover the cost of buying a sim and the cost of owning the sim, without actually giving up any control over the sim. They can "sell" the island without allowing resale and recover their costs and more within a month, and end up with a bunch of captive "landowners" who will lose their entire investment as soon as they realise they can't sell the land on or recover their money except at the whim of the estate owner.

The current island "land barons" have earned our trust. Yes, they have, no matter how much people may complain about folks like Anshe I don't think anyone's going to say that Dreamland land is worthless... even though Dreamland titles have never been actually backed by anything but Anshe's name. Before 1.12 it was obvious that you were putting your trust in the estate owner when you "bought" land, and it wasn't hard to see what estate owners had earned it.

But Linden Labs is now lending their reputation to anyone who can buy a sim. This state of affairs can't last.

Many people who move to islands do so because they want to live somewhere where they *know* their neighbours will be good people. On the mainland, anyone can move in next to you so long as they have the L$ to buy the parcel next to yours. This is why a lot of people don't like the mainland - they don't like the idea that, say, a club may move in next to them and there is *nothing* they can do about it.

On well-run islands this problem is avoided, because the island owner can accept/reject sales of land. In short, he can prevent the sale of land to people who would use it to run clubs, for example, if the sim is meant to be residential.

If this 'right' of re-selling the land was irrevocable, then it'd mean that island owners couldn't prevent things like clubs from being built on their land... which is the entire point of having an island for many people - protection of your low-lag environment.
Either you have a right of resale to anyone you want, or you don't. If you do, there is no protection against clubs. If you don't, then that's just the status quo.

In short: I'd support options for irrevocable rights of resale, etc, so long as these were OPTIONS on islands, and further, that these options were NOT the default. New island owners should - like new land owners generally, be protected from exceptionally costly mistakes when they first start, especially because they stand to lose vast amounts of money if they screw up.

So yeah, if we have an irrevocable right of resale on island land - it has to be an option that is DISABLED by default and which WARNS the island owner STRONGLY before letting him/her enable it. It should also do things like disabling land 'reclaim'. Or, better yet, have 'allow island owner reclaims:' as an option that is also shown to the prospective buyer when buying land.


Agreed. Speaking as an island owner, it is a pain to have to chase up residents about rent. IMHO, it should be automatic, and it should come out of their account on a monthly, agreed basis, at a fixed price agreed in advance. That would be fair, simple, and generally easier on everyone - island owner and resident alike.


I don't agree with this. I think more controlled parcels should still be listed on the map.

Maybe they should get a different 'land sale' colour - or they should show up as rentals, or something (when LL adds 'rent' options for parcels into the UI, as 'buy' options are now).

They need to show up on the map though. Otherwise it'd be a pain for people (and there are many) who want to live in themed sims to find such places.

I'd like them to show up green say, or maybe pink or orange or some other colour.... but they should show up.

Why not give people the choice?



Personally, I'm against using the terms 'owner' or 'renter' at all, anywhere.
Instead, I think they should be replaced with 'tenant' or something... and a summary of the actual rights the tenant has.
Different people will mean very different things by 'owner' and 'renter', depending on the country they are from and their legal system. LL and island owners may well mean different things too... it all gets complex.

Example:
I own a spoon. I can do most anything physically possible with it.
I own a book. I can do most physical things with it, but I can't, for example, copy it onto my computer and let someone else have a copy of it.
I own a car. I can do a lot with it, but when I'm using it around other people I have to obey certain rules or it gets taken away from me by the authorities.
I own some computer software. Actually, really, all I own is a licenced copy of it with miles of restrictions built into the licence.
See the difficulty in saying you 'own' something? It's a very vague term.

Do you own your land like a spoon? Or like a book? Or like a car, or like a computer game?

Instead of all this messing around with "owner" and "renter" categories, which are simplistic and not that helpful.... instead, just have a list of checkboxes listing what rights tennants on land have.

Covenants are a step towards this, but I'd like to see some of the basic, most important questions built into SL's code as visible checkboxes and options. For example :
* resale right
* terraform right and limits
* region time
* what type of builds are permitted (looks, theme)
* maximum height of builds
* ability to turn on/off push restriction
* ability to turn on/off "Run Other Scripts"




Yes, it does allow bad island owners to do this. Having said that, if a bunch of people lost out over 1250 USD to a bad guy/girl who did this.... they'd eat his/her reputation for breakfast. LL might not get involved, but the guy would be hounded *to death* on the forums.. he'd be exiled from a lot of the SL community once his/her name got around.
ARs would be filed. If someone did this several times under alt accounts, I bet that is the point LL would step in and kick the person out of SL for good - simply because they'd have so many very, very angry customers ontheir hands they'd risk a PR disaster if they diddn't.




True.



LL is not actually lending its reputation to island owners. Residents think it is - because they don't understand how the system works... but LL isn't - anyone can get an island if they cough up the dough, aren't banned from SL already, and don't have a history of previous billing problems leading LL to suspect they would not be able to pay their tier.

The ignorance is what cannot last : residents, through experience, will learn how things work and adapt. The question is how much LL intervention is needed to help that process.

Personally I'd suggest having *optional* checkboxes on the buy land screen that shows a bunch of common priviliges of land ownership and which you would get on the land you are buying. The exact list I'm not sure of, but that's answered by the question "what rights matter to you most when buying land?".

We definately don't want to force island land sales to operate similarly to the mainland. That would be terrible, it would destroy the concept of "island land" as distinct from mainland land entirely. It might be nice to have a more fine-grained permission system or at least permission indicators on island land though. For example: residents can get the impression that they cannot re-sell land at all on islands that turn off 'allow resell'. Often, it's a case they simply have to get the owner's permission or give advance notice. So, the current situation of terms with many meanings and wildly different covenants is a misleading and confusing one for residents.

I'm generally against crippling the distinctive features of island land that makes it different from the mainland. I am, however, for giving people more freedom of choice when it comes to how their land is setup. That's a good thing. Create a vareity and let people choose

Angel, I'm a BIG advocate of island rentals. I was renting on an island for a month before I went premium. This message has nothing to do with traditional island rentals, it's all about the new "purchase" scheme on the islands... which incidentally has made things harder for both regular renters and estate owners.

No, they could continue to rent as they always have. They just wouldn't have their rentals listed as "land sales" and backed up by Linden's land sale system.

That is precisely what I'm asking for. The pre-1.12 status quo to be restored, and for estate owners who want their estates to behave like the mainland to have to actually commit to giving up some control over "their" land in exchange for the quick bucks they get from "selling" part of their land.

If there is a search mechanism for land rental, it should be a separate tab. The status quo, though, is for rentals to be advertised in Places. Perhaps advertising parcels on an estate should be free for the estate owner?

I've never had any difficulty finding places to rent. Almost all my builds have been on islands, and I find them in the world the same way I find places to buy... by flying around looking for "sale" signs. You can't trust the map, because of all the parcels listed for L$100 a meter or more for advertising.


How do you figure the word "tenant" has any less of a problem than "owner" or "renter"?

Hardly anybody is a villain in their own mind. Someone selling land on his island for market value without allowing resale doesn't think he's a bad guy, any more than the guys buying 16m squares all over the mainland and setting up advertising parcels next to builds think they're "bad guys", or the people building laggy clubs full of camping chairs think they're "bad guys". They're just pushing the envelope, making an honest profit...

But even if he did see himself as a "bad guy"... the guy doesn't care if his "reputation" is ruined. As long as his profits from running his sims are more than the annual fees on his credit card, he can shed the identity and the account any time he wants. Remember the "Impeach Bush" guy? How would you know if he was back again, on another account, on another card, buying land? Not even LL could really be sure he wasn't, and not even LL can really be sure they'd kicked a con artist out for good.

Not in general, but in the specific case of island owners selling land through the Land Sales tab, it is.

That's not a given. Spammers have been making a profit out of abusing the email system for over a decade now, and they're still getting customers. There's no reason to assume that without Linden Labs intervention in estate "sales" this problem won't be as bad.

Of course, LL will eventually intervene... but in the meantime a lot of good people are going to get done out of a lot of money. I don't see any good reason for letting that happen.

Why not? Until 1.12 there wasn't even a Linden-supported mechanism for "selling" land on the islands and yet Anshe has managed to build Dreamland up into a viable alternative to the mainland. There's no reason that the pre-1.12 status quo couldn't have continued indefinitely, using resident-supported rental mechanisms. The new status quo, though, is unstable, can't last, and shouldn't be allowed to hurt people while we wait for Linden Labs to figure that out.

You were talking about the cost to a "bad guy's" reputation. Have you thought about what a few people pushing the limits here... not "bad guys" but people who are honestly just taking advantage of the rules that Linden Labs has laid down... can do to the reputation of all estate owners?

So am I. That's why I want 1.12's "sales" system reverted, or made completely distinct from mainland sales, or require the folks benefitting from being able to "sell" their land to actually sell it.

It used to be that islands were at a disadvantage compared to the mainland because their parcels did not show up in the land sales tab.
What should have happened is that a 'rental' system is added, as complete as the current 'sales' system. Meaning : 'Land Rental' as well as 'Land Sales' in Search, options in the pie menu for rental of parcels (with configurable priviliges for the person renting given to the person paying rent). In short, a full 'rental' system. It should also be scriptable as much as possible - so it augments, rather than replaces, the existing systems residents have built to handle land rental.

The problem here is that LL mixed up island and mainland land in the land sales tab, when they are different things.
I can understand why they did it - it's a first step towards putting both on a more equal footing. I'd love a 'rental' system as well as a 'sales' system for land... but that'd be a lot of work.
So, perhaps marking island land with a different icon in the land sales list... or forcing people to actually *READ* the damn covenant (and requiring certain policies to be set in writing before land can be sold). Perhaps...


If estate owners want to sell their land with these rights (and they probably will, as it makes sense in the market)... then they should be able to as it will help the land market by visibly offering residents choice in terms of what land rights they're going to buy.

The key thing is: instead of excluding either mainland or island land from land sales... just make the rights the land is being sold with clearer.


The word "tenant" is no clearer. The clarity comes from listing everyone as 'tenant' and then seperately giving them a checklist of rights in a visible format. Replace "owner" vs "renter", with simply "tenant with the following rights : X, Y, Z" then that is much clearer.
Replace "owner" with "tenant with rights of build, use, resale and posession".
Replace "renter" with "tenant with the right of build". Or something similar.


You're right.

Unfortunately, there will always be bad people willing to take advantage of others.

What can we do to combat this, aside from making transactions clear, recorded, etc... and giving residents advice to watch out for scams?

Is it fair to, for example, force all island owners to be unable to list their land in the land sales tab, simply because a few abuse this ability?

I'm not sure.

I'd like a solution which keeps "priced low just to advertise" land off the land sales and the land rental systems... but which doesn't stop anyone selling any land they want with any options they want.


Good point.



Up until now, island owners have been at a serious disadvantage in selling their land because it can't be listed in the land sales tab. Up until now, protecting the unwary seems to have been deemed more important than enabling people who do know what they are doing to do it better.
I hope that LL is bringing in a new system in stages - first this, then some way of telling the island and mainland parcels apart... then more support for a rental system or assignable 'rights' that parcels are sold/rented with...
I hope that this state of affairs is simply a stepping stone to something better.



Anshe has to employ a bunch of people to work for her to do various tasks (like advertising) that can be done automatically now.
The more support for flexible land sales/rentals is added to SL, the less Anshe has to hire people to do the grunt work for her. The result is that Anshe's costs are lowered, and, hopefully she will therefore reduce prices, either out of ethics (be nice to consumers, don't overcharge them)... or necessity (other land dealers will reduce theirs, and Anshe will have to reduce hers too to stay competitive).
Adding these tools reduces the cost of dealing in land and thus will help give residents lower prices for land in future. I hope.

Personally, I consider resident-based rental systems to be a hassle, because:
* I have to go around rezzing and configuring them.
* I have to trust the creator of the rental system that there are no backdoors, 'bugs', etc.
* If I become dependent on them, and they break, then I am stuffed, tech-support wise.

I'd much, much, much rather prefer to use a Linden-coded rental system built into the land tools.

IMHO, we should move towards a system for rentals which is built into SL, not just 'tacked on' by residents. It should be scriptable, and designed to make it cheap and easy to rent land out.
Resident-supported rental mechanisms are not good enough, IMHO.



I suspect that reverting it would be a step backwards. Ok, the system at the moment has some pretty serious problems.... but I suspect that the way to fix this is to move forward by adding clarity to it, rather than removing it entirely.

Put simply I agree that the system is being gamed and needs to change. I also think that the way to change it is not to repeal it, but rather to modify it to make it clearer.

Not sure about any of this
But... it's a first pass, and I hope by talking here I'll get some other people interested in this topic, thus a higher reply count, and thus, encourage the Lindens to consider *all* the ideas in this thread.

I think this is somewhat overblown. For people who wanted to operate on a "sales" basis, perhaps, but for renters islands had it all over the mainland because you could actually give renters full control over the land.

I agree, a land rental search would be great, especially since the new groups system allows you to rent land on the mainland on almost the same basis as you used to be able to on the islands.

None of these things are good enough. You can't force people to read and understand the covenant, and an icon doesn't help if you don't understand what it means. People who think they understand "land sales" are too likely to apply that understanding in SL.

Call it a "lease" rather than a "rental" if you like, but the fundamental distinction between something that you can in turn post for sale the same way you bought it regardless of what the guy you bought it from wants... and something that you can't... is pretty fundamental.

How would you feel if LL refused to let people re-sell sims?
It's no more or less fair than to allow people to "buy" land without being able to list it in the land sales tab if they want to get out of the deal. One ability goes hand in hand with the other.

Being able to list something in the land sales tab is new. It didn't exist a month ago. If it went away for a month while LL came up with a better scheme it wouldn't change things much.

And consider this. If someone pays $1200 for a sim, and then sells 1/4 of the sim to someone for $300, why should the buyer not be considered part owner of the sim? If they divide all the sim up into parcels, except for a few roads, and sell all but those roads... why should someone who is now a minority owner have control of the sim?
I don't think it was a matter of protecting the unwary, it was a matter of Linden Labs doesn't have the resources to implement everything and this is how long it took them to get around to implementing this, along with the improved groups.

And... remember... island owners still don't actually sell their land. They lease it.
But now she has to employ people to do various tasks, like splitting parcels, that could be left to the lessees before. THAT is getting fixed, perhaps this Wednesday (or perhaps not, this seems to be a very buggy update coming up and it's quite possible it's going to be deferred)... but the rest of the problems don't even seem to be on the table.

But you didn't get one. What you got was a Linden-coded advertising and sales system that actually made rental and leasing more complex.
If it's made clear enough, yes, but making it clear enough means not mixing up leases and sales. One or the other MUST happen, and it MUST happen soon.

I don't know that anyone is consciously gaming the system. I know the system is horribly gameable, as it is, and I have spoken to people who have run into problems and feel they were taken advantage of.

Ultimately, the solution is to add a Lease (or Rentals) tab in the Search tool, next to Land Sales. Why are there 'For Sale' properties listed for 500L for 4096M, only to find out that it's a 'deposit' on the land until the estate owner (or estate manager) can set you up as a renter? Simple, it's being abused by select estate owners looking to rent out their estate land. Now I have nothing against estate owners renting out land, quite the contrary. However it's being fraudulatenly used (ie: the land is NOT being sold, and certainly not for the rediculously cheap price it's listed 'for sale' at).

And why are there estate parcels listed 'For Sale' that are blocked from resale? I can understand the reasons for the estate owner to disallow resale in the land sales system to control ownership, however it's still essentially a rental with a expensive deposit and limited rights.

Angel knows I don't dispise estate land, heck, I 'bought' half a sim on one of Angel's estates. I'm happy with my decision to live there, even if I find several of the new neighbours a terrible burden on the sim resources.

However, I firmly believe the land sales listing are being abused by estate owners as there are very few, if any, that are allowing the buyer complete control over the land (with as much control over they would over mainland lots). You look at all the land available for sale in the land sales tab (using the For Sale filter), and first dozen or so are bogus estate 'sales' that are not infact sales (mearly a token 'reservation fee').

Two things need to happen, a rental/lease tab needs to be implemented allowing estate owners to list their land that a) is not for sale (aka pure rental properties) or b) not for resale. Secondly, only estate land that is allowed to be resold should be allowed to appear in the land sales tab which should end up policing all the bogus land sale entries. Afterall, an estate owner is not going to be selling land for WAY undermarket value as a advertising gimmick which it's currently being used as.

As for LL taking payments for estate owners, I don't see it ever being implemented. LL is selling the islands to individuals to manage (in all aspects) and do what they want with. They likely don't want to get into unnecessary abritration arising from disputes between 'renter' and 'owner' bunging up the support system more than it already is.

There are several decent rental systems out there including the excellent DK Rental System which adjusts the rent based on the current avg. lindex trading value in $USD. This system is ideal for estate owners who want US$xx and would like the renter to pay them in Lindens.

True.

True.

True.

True.
If something is a "fundamental distinction", then it seems logical to call it "pretty fundamental". The more serious point is that you're assuming that the distinction is fundamental here. It is a circular argument. That said, you do have a point, the distinction is important to many people.

Good point. In reality everyone leaves SL eventually (or will). Therefore, there must be a way to sell your assets if you choose to. Land for Sale being listed in "Land Sales" seems pretty logical too.


Your argument here has a great deal of force. Unfortunately, there are two confusions in it.
The first is the distinction between buying and leasing. Often, estate owners say "buying" because it is simple, when what they really mean is "leasing with a downpayment now which reduces future payments". I'd *guess* (total guesswork here, not sure...) that estate owners of repute will put a clause in their Covenants which states something like : "'buying' in this context is a term for 'leasing with downpayment' and does not conferr full property rights over the land leased'."
There are two points here :
1) Estate owners should be clearer about what they are doing when they sell land (they should say they are selling *deeds*, instead of the land itself).
2) If Estate Owners are really going to *sell* the land itself, not just some permissions to it... then your case for the people who buy the land having more say in how the sim runs (or at least, being immune from arbitary estate owner intervention) is compelling.

The second is the distinction between the land, and the sim. Put simply: when someone buys land on a private island, they are buying parcels. They are buying sqmage. They are NOT buying a portion of the sim, because there are other things that go into making a sim distinct from just a big parcel of land. One of them is estate tools. Another is independant resources (e.g. agent limit). Lots of people use "1/4sim" and similar as rough size indicators... but they almost never actually mean "1/4sim", they almost always mean "1/4 of a sim's sqm".
This is yet another mis-use of language (simplifying something so that residents can understand it, which ultimately results in a different meaning than the one intended).

So... to recap on language usage which needs to change (my own case included) :
* island owners do not sell land. They sell "deeds" to land or they sell "priviliges to land"... but the land itself is not sold.
* island owners need to make sure that it is clear if they are selling deeds to parcels on their sims... or... rather... a certain portion of their sim. (the whole "1/4 sim vs 1/4 of a sim's sqmage" issue).


Agreed.


Personally I would much prefer a system run by LL where I can automatically collect payment from resident accounts. I don't want to have to rely on residents to remember (many forget) to pay rent. I want it to be automatically taken out of their accounts until they cancel (and cancelling should be very easy). Ideally I'd like to see a system of land rentals tied to fixed, automatic monthly or weekly (or even daily) payments. Payments on these rentals would be automatically deducted from the renter's L$ funds - even pushing them into the negative if not enough L$ is in the account in the first place. That would make it a *hell* of a lot easier to automate rentals. It would also encourage clear, unchanging prices for renters (also a good thing).


Personally I suspect the reason that they don't want to allow island land renters/owners/tenants to pay tier *for* the island owner is that they are guarenteed to lose money if they allow this.
Consider :
1) Island ownership is denied to those who are deemed to have 'billing issues'. Having one person whom you've checked own the island results in a much smaller chance of having 'billing issues' when LL try to get that island's tier money.
2) Island residents paying the island owner in L$ or Paypal means that owner must then do an additional conversion of USD to L$ or L$ to USD in order to pay the tier in USD (or incurr bank charges which are even more costly). Since LL makes money on all LindeX transactions, it is not in LL's interest to allow direct payments of tier because that cuts out a large amount of LindeX trades on which LL earns a fee. In short : LL makes more money because the system is complicated than it would if the system was simple to use and allowed island owners to get their residents to pay their tier for them.

For both of these reasons, I sadly agree with you Teddy, such a system does not seem likely, even though (I think) it would be in the best interests of all residents.

Looks like between you two (Argent and Teddy) you've got the topic nailed down enough that I'd be better off watching. I think I'll wander off at this point and use the insights here (e.g. selling "deeds to land" not "land" itself, avoiding indicating that a parcel is "1/___ of a sim", etc) to improve my own service Thanks for posting them!

Ha! Sorry, my proofreader was obviously napping. I'll slap him around.

Not so much confusions in the argument, but in the level at which the argument applies. When I say "if you sell 1/4 of the sim for 1/4 of the cost of a sim, the guy who buys it should be considered a part owner" I'm not talking about the technical differences between buying and leasing as implemented in SL, I'm talking about social and ethical issues. When you buy in to co-op or condo housing in the real world, you get a part title to the housing. You've got a say (not as much as you'd like, usually, because you're only one of dozens of owners) in the operation of the property. In SL, if you buy (rather than rent) 1/4 of the sim, you should get 1/4 of the say in the operation of the sim... simply because you've got 1/4 of the money that paid for the sim "at risk".
That's really the bottom line, and the Sl interface needs to reflect this throughout... including distinguishing "leases" from "sales" the same way "sales" are distinguished from "auctions" and regular land is distinguished from "first land".

And as a renter/lessee I'd like that too, so long as it can't be changed unilaterally by either party... the lease could still be terminated (by reclaiming the land), but the rent couldn't be changed without the lessee agreeing.

personally to me, Land is land, I personally lovethe fact that I spent 2L per meter for land, My tier is a little cheaper than if I was on the mainland AND I have a built in support person. Not to mention that my neighbors are really awesome, I dont have "EVENTS" around the corner or anything else that is a lag monster and the beauty of the sim is unparalleled. THe few times a griefer showed up IT was promptly kicked to hell and banned from the entire island chain (11 Sims i think) I have all the rights that I had on the mainland and one MUCH MORE IMPORTANT RIGHT THAT DOESNT EXIST on the mainland. The covenant clearly states that ALL unapproved land sales will be voided and the land redeeded to me if a swooper DOES try to steal my land. I think thats pretty cool. Also Per covenant if i want to leave the island the owner said he will pay me the 2Ls per meter back soooo I guess the whole reason is that earlier it was said I dont have as many rights as I had on the mainland, to that I say YUP, I have more AND for cheaper dollars and on a superior server.

Now the issue I DO agree with is that perhaps a tab called ESTATE sales or something can be provided or even better just use a different icon to indicate island land for sale and keep it in the same tab as it is now after all having lived on an island for awhile I personally will NEVER live on the mainland or Linden Sim again. It boils down to this, Land is Land, get the best deal people and DONT THINK you need to pay HUGE upfront costs for land, that is just silly

TAKE the time to shop and check things out, IF you rush into buying land, you will make mistakes, trust me, I made plenty of mistakes when buying land esp once when i was on the edge of the world and had a beautiful sunset, till the lindens rezzed a sim and poof Instant Mall in my backyard *#$&#*($*(#$

Having rambled on and on, DO make sure you talk to the residents of an island if that is where you are going to buy land, they wil llet you know how happy OR unhappy they really are. Do the homework kiddies and find Nirvana

I'm not talking about people spending 2L per meter for land, I'm talking about people spending $4.50 or more per meter. Because they are.

Look. I rent most of my land on islands myself, and paid L$0 down and I'm paying less than Linden tier for my parcels. And my landlady is awesome, and there was never and never will be any possibility of a swooper stealing my land because I didn't buy it in the first place (and neither did you). This isn't a "mainland" versus "island" issue. It's not even a "sale" is better than "lease" issue, it's not that one's better or worse, it's that they're different.

It's all about truth-in-advertising ... by Linden Labs.