Public land will go to auction

Currently, land that is released by a resident without reselling it converts to "public" status. This status means that the land can be purchased by anyone who clicks on the parcel and pays a standard L$1/Meter fee. Scripted objects that look for such land have made this quite a race - the first resident to the public land gets it.

Land prices for auction and resale are now much higher than L$1/Meter, making this highly sought property.

Given that the intent of the auction system is to establish a fair price for land which is desired by multiple residents, the correct feature change seems to be to make land which is released in this manner be automatically sold at auction, rather than being changed to 'public' status.

There has been considerable suggestion and discussion on this topic, and we think this seems like the right direction.

Comments?

Thanks Phil for your Excellent! response time!

I'd like to see a spilt - instead of all public land going to Auction, how about, if possible, the majority of the public land (51/49, or 60//40) being for sale ONLY to new members who upgrade to premium accounts from the 7 day trial.

Intent is to make a percentage of public land go directly (somehow) to new members as an alternative to the 512 Land for Landless program.

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Edited to add !

I like the base idea with no strings attached. Put it up for auction without restiction.

Now will land owners ever be able to put their OWN land up for auction?

/me runs to his room crying, slams the door and turns up music real loud.

Merwan, while I agree that the land for the new residents is a great idea I dont know if its a good idea. There are so many people creating new accounts that it might promote more alt accts just for the special land deals only to turn it around for a profit.

If there was a way to monitor this then yes I think it would be great.

On another note I have a question about previous public land. Our group picked up a small parcel that had gone public. Paid the public price and put the land in our group allocations.

Several hours later when checking this parcel we found that it had been taken away from us and put into a Lindens name. When inquired about it we were told that it was a mistake that it was released to the public and will now be put up for auction. I belive this was a 512^m parcel.

I'm not even sure if our group member got reimbursed for the land that he paid for to begin with. Why was it this paticular piece of public land that was decided to be auctioned off and not other public land released to the public?

This wont stop land baroning, but it will certainly work towards making it less profitable.
You will still be able to buy cheap land off of someone and resell it at twice the price.
But at least we wont have to put up with people placing scanners on our property
I dont think public land should be given to noobies, though. Imagine if your neighbor left the game, and all of a sudden it was given to someone with a last name of Chaos that would rez a spinning flashing tower of prims
You should be able to buy your neighbors land at an auction and expand your build into it.

Drift, this is a feature that isn't implemented yet - so the problem you are talking about must be something else. Maybe IM Haney?

It would be REALLY neat if the system could detect who the neighbors of the formerly public plot were. Give them the option of first refusal to expand their plot at the "current average going rate"... shoot them an email saying "land next to yours available!" You have 7 days to purchase it (first come first server for the neighbors) or it will go up for auction and you'll have a NEW neighbor!

Just an idea.

-Flip

I don't like this idea.

So now we will see tons of tiny 16m2 plots for auction?

Auction prices are inflated beyond belief. In world resellers inflate them beyond belief but are lower than auctions.

I like the option of releasing land I no longer want. But if LL is just going to auction land I released, then I want the money for it otherwise they are blatently benefiting from me beyond my land fees.

I guess this is a good thing, sort of sad to think public land is a thing of the past. But, I guess it sort of has been awhile now already.

Have you thought about all the 16m and 32m plots you will have to list in auction? What if no one bids? Will the auctioning all be automated? If there is much leg work to do by humans, it might be cool to let the adjoining neighbors know it is available.

Maybe the solution then would be to auto-auction land that is automatically released (due to somebody dropping their tier, somebody leaving SL, etc.. ), but give those who really want to release to public land, the option to make it public or release it to Governor Linden for reauction by LL.

The only issue I can see, not sure what to do about it, is the occasional and inadvertant release of land to public, where you scramble to rebuy the land. Or situations where you are forced to make land public for a min or two to juggle land between you and a friend, and for whatever reason the land tiers just won't hold it.

Great idea Camille, maybe "manual" releases of land to public should give people option of public land, or release to LL for public auction.

But, definately auto-auction land that is forced to be public by LL.

I think it would be a better solution too everyday set pubic land prices to the average sell price of the auctions the day before, this would keep the auction pages from getting clutered and keep prices fair.

I think it is an excellent idea Phillip. Then if something in my neighborhood goes public, it goes to auction and I have a chance to bid on it too along with everyone else.

The days of all that public land was fun, but it is long gone. Now we have to learn to live with and better the new system.

Land needs to go to auction, yep!! But also... residents of SL need to be able to put their land up for auction!!!

Thanks Philip, I'll IM him.. I'm aware that this is not a new feature was only stating that public land has already been taken away from us and put up for auction after we purchased it as public land.

I guess my point is that some land that has been abandoned is reclaimed by lindens and reauctioned already. So if this wasnt part of the plan before then why was it done to us?

I like the idea of a sim's residents getting first crack at land that automatically went public (or in this case, to auction) that someone else suggested in the original thread.

Feature change for the auction page: Make it sortable! By Region, By Size, By Current Bid, By Time Left. That would make using the system a lot easier (especially with these automatic auctions). Also I'd suggest the public land be in a different page, with alphabetically indexed links (just the A - B - C - [D] - E kinda thing) so it's easy ot find the sim you're looking for, rather than hit the Next Page button 80 times.

I endorse this product and/or service! Thanks to the Lindens for acting on a user idea like this.

An important point: This will cause a lot of small area auctions. To alleviate this, we should be able to sort auctions by lot size when viewing them.

Public land at L$1/m2 probably should still exist if an auction gets no bidders. This seems saner than making that land completely free or Linden-owned.

Adjacent lots that get abandoned should be joined together. There's potential abuse here, otherwise. Large blocks of abandoned land parhaps should be split up into smaller auctions before being made public. (This is probably a rare enough occurrence that it could be done manually.)

This is kind of an off-topic tought, but since this change will create more live auctions, so perhaps this would also be the time to allow users to auction land for L$?

Edited to add: I am strongly against the suggestion that neighbors / sim residents should get special treatment in these or any other auctions. This would be an incredibly unfair advantage for land barons, who presumably already have lots of land for sale in many sims. They would then be able to bid against a narrowed field, winning the land at an artificially low price and immediately turning around and reselling it to the public. Ignoring the baron issue, I reject outright the notion that someone has more of a right to land than I do just because they own land near it.

mmm, interesting point. I started to agree, but maybe just keep recycling the land in the auction system until it is sold?

I think a plot in the auction que shouldn't automatically get a "time left". That should happen after the first person bids. If you do a time-left sort then those plots that haven't been bid on should be at the top, in a collapsable div so you can see them first or hide them at your discretion. This would also put those plots in the buyer's field of vision and possibly get them sold more quickly, like a point-of-sale display at a RL store.

I would like that feature too Taun, but in good conscience would vote against it. It is much fairer to all to be placed in the public auction.

As much as I would like first crack, it just doesn't seem fair.



PShad to edit as I couldn't remember how to spell conscience!

Public plots will need to be hand-edited by a Linen representitive before being places on the auction block, so the turn around time won't be speedy. This is because a plot may be (for some reason) a group of single squares, or in several scattered peices joined together, or half the sim. Also, the picture of the actual land for auction is VERY nice, and would need to be taken by a human.

Restrictions on who can buy a plot will only encourage people to bend the rules or make nuciences of themselves to get a better deal. Land barrons would buy a single square in every sim, just so they could get a "neighbor discount", or alt accounts to get newbie specials.

Having auctions be timeless until the first bid is places IS a great idea. The fact that there ARE land barons mean this probably will never be an issue, but it will keep plots from raching the end of their auction with no bids.

Even without the timeless-start feature, this will be increasing the number of items up for auction. A much better web interface (or even one IN-game) that can be sorted and filtered will be a must.

To add one more feature idea up for discussion, if filters are available for display, it might not be difficult to create custom filter sets that email you when something comes up on the block that matches. So if you ARE looking for more land in your home sim, the SL Auction House can notify you when some land there becomes available for bidding. Size, location, rating, at least.

Great idea, Tiger! I support this whatever we're supposed to say thingie

Good policy change, good comments, good proposals for refinement. The way forums are supposed to work; thank you all.

An automated system that gives right of first refusal to owners of bordering parcels would be superb. If more than one bordering owner wants the property, a private auction would be appropriate.

Lots of people would vastly prefer to enlarge existing parcels--even at a higher price--to buying random parcels at a low price.

I agree.

It's a form of discrimination which can have very negative results...