Donating or Deeding

I hope someone can clear this up for me.

I have over a quarter of a region and would like to keep it but the tiers are high as you all most probably know.

Can I in anyway reduce my tiers and keep the land is my first question?

I am confused as to the exact amount of land that can be donated by anyone person to a group, as I understand "DONATING" to a Group does not incur monthly tier charges. Right or Wrong?

Next, if I deed to the group (without contribution) does the group get billed for tiers and if so, who pays the contribution?

If I deed with contribution do I have to make sure the group has money to pay tiers or is that automatically billed to me on my SL account?

I understand all the rules about the group and members so that is not my question here, it is just to clarify the donating and deeding and what would be best.

Another question, long term, would it be cheaper for me to have 3 or 4 Premium Account AV's and donate the land so land tier would not apply, this is where I need to know what the maximum land donation would be for each member.

Since nobody else has answered yet... I think I can give at least partial answers and hopefully factually correct

It sounds like you can't do much to reduce your Tier, sorry.

If you split it between additional Premium Alts (assuming you can even make them just now; others seem to be having problems), the overall cost per month will still be more than $75 - check it out on: Landpricing and Use Fees.

Setting up a Group (you will need at least one other Av to do this with or the group will be disbanded and you'll lose your land; I'd suggest that the Av should be your own Alt) to 'own' the land won't reduce the tier, although it will mean that you could buy some additional land for the Group without going over your current Tier as groups are allowed to own an additional 10% of land for the same Tier price.

To your original question(s) - you can donate up to your current Tier level to a group, but *you* will still have to pay the Tier.

The easiest way to donate your land to a group is to use About Land and select the Group, then use the Deed button and 'Owner makes Contribution with Land' options (can't remember the exact wording, sorry, not in-world just now) to donate the land and the land credits to the group.

However, right now, if you don't want to buy any more land and/or make an Alt, I'd suggest you leave things as they are. That way if you ever need to sell the land, you'll get the money straight away (Group land sales can take a day or so to come through).

If you really can't afford the Tier, then I guess you have 2 options -
1) Think of a way to make more money in SL (either from the land or by getting a job) and sell the L$ on the Lindex to get USD to pay your tier
or
2) Sell enough land to Tier down to 1/4 region. Remember that there's a lot of land for sale just now so you will have to price it right (or have special features eg waterside) for it to sell quickly.

HTH.

Valentino

Thanks for that, the question was raised because when looking at the groups information in the Help menu, I find it not so clear as to what or if there any implications other than not having more than 2 group members and not setting the members correctly within the group.

The setting up and running of the groups is fairly easy for me but it was more to clarify the advantages or disadvantages

But still the question I have is what the differences are between, Deed, Deed with contribution and donating.

If at the end the owner of the group has to pay the tier then why don't we just have 2 options instead of the 3 and other than the 10% bonus what is the real benefit of donating, perhaps that can be made a little clearer.

But with donating land to group, the owner or group would still have to pay the tier?

Yes, the owner still pays the tier for the land when you deed the land and donate tier. At least that is how it works for our group. Each person deeded their land and contributed/donated their tier to the group. The group owns the land and each person still pays the tier but now the tier is donated to cover the tier for the group. We have about 1/3 of a sim and 4 members and it works well as everyone also can build on the land even when we have the autoreturn set to on for others objects.

I found it confusing too but its working well now. Good luck.

Normally on mainland property you deed to the group with contribution. That means you still pay the tier. But the group can hold 10% more land for the same tier level, so if you're just over a tier limit, donating land to a group you own, with contribution, just might bring you under that tier threshold. Of course, you still pay on peak land held per month, so the tier would not go down until the next month's tier is due. (Make sure, of course, that the group will always have at least two members. If the group gets disbanded, it loses its land.)

If you donate mainland by deeding land to a group WITHOUT a contribution, then the other members of the group must donate additional tier to match your required tier level, or the land will be forfeited to the Lindens. I think you have just 48 hours to do that, as well. Not much time.

So, for example, if you donated a 1024 M2 parcel to a group, without donating tier, and two other group members had never purchased land yet, they could each donate their unused 512 M2 of free tier, and cover the donated land.

Ceera

Thanks for that.

Just one question, deeding with contribution, I read in help files that you must set this up properly or you could be double billed.

Are you able to offer some input on that??

or possibly the other option of just Deeding?