Transferring Islands

Coming up in the next release, v1.5, private islands will be transferrable by the original owner to another SL resident, who will pick up the monthly payments on the same schedule that the original owner followed. The island can only be transferred as a single parcel.

Any transfer of funds, whether in L$ or US$, between the original owner and the new owner to cover the initial cost outlay by the original owner is between them. We aren't in a position to provide billing support, or to enforce agreements/payment.

It remains to be seen if we can change the name of the island.

There will be other estate features affecting access and other permissions that are being implemented with 1.5 which will be covered in detail in the release notes and in the island FAQ. We'll also be sure to let current island owners know about the specific changes prior to the release.

This is excellent! Thank you LL!

Is there going to be a fee to transfer ownership? If so, is it the original owners responsibility or the buyers?

I don't think there should be a fee. The Lindens has said that switching an island over to someone is just a little bit of database work that doesn't take a whole lot of time.

The hardware has already been paid for by the original buyer.

I say no transfer fee.

I disagree. It doesn't matter how easy it is. It's time someone has to spend working on the transfer instead of working on one of the multitude of bugs/features that affect more than just two residents.

There needs to be a fee to cover the time spent pandering to one or two individuals, AND to discourage people from transferring their sim every other week.

I agree Grim.

Although I dislike fees, the fact is, every minute that a Linden works on something like this, no matter how trivial it is, costs LL money, so I think it should be billable at a reasonable rate per hour. Bear in mind tho, if its too expensive, no one is going to do it

They said it was rather menial database changes. I am a programmer that works with Access, SQL, MySQL and ORACLE databases on a daily basis (well almost daily.)

I'm sure -- almost 100% positive -- a small utility could be written to handle the changes.

Would go something like this...

Run program.

In the Sim Name box, enter the name of the Private Sim.

In the Transfer To box, enter tha name of the person receiving the Sim.

Click Transfer.

At this point, the program would pop up a window saying, "Do you really want to transfer %SIMNAME% to %RECEIVINGAVATARNAME%?"

If the name of the Sim and the Avatar are correct... click yes. If not, click no and try again.

If yes, the program accesses the database, searches it and makes the necessary changes. Our billing info and land tier info is all in the database, so all that stuff could be changed too.

One thing I've learned in my 18 years in the computer/networking/programming business is that companies charge excessive fees for stuff that takes them literally minutes, if not seconds, to do.

I don't know how many times I've seen fellow employees working on a project, doing it the "long" way. I mention, you know there's a quicker way to do that, right?

"Of course there is. But this way we get to bill the client for 3 hours instead of 20 minutes."

I don't know LL's internal workings and I'm not suggesting they do that. I just hope that they don't.

Allow transfers, but charge a fee (not US$950) that represents the cost required to do the transfer. Charge a min hourly rate, or whatever seems reasonable. The full sim fee is way too much, but free transfers don't represent the actual cost.

we talked about this in the land discussion with Haney Linden and someone w=made a decent suggestion..

charge a 10% "re-stocking" fee.. so that it's $100 for the new owner to pay. however little work there may be, it's still chargeable work and it's always easier to set a fee that's the same across the board instead of going hourly.

this way it's a give and take, like how premium memberships allow for basic membrships. some people will only need the sim to exchange owners.. simple and fast, probably costs less than $100 worth of work. then there are others who might want the land reverted back to normal.. or re-shaped.. this would take more time and more cost. so it all evens out in the end.


..of course, i don't own a private sim, but who knows? maybe i'll hit the lottery and be able to someday.