How Low Will It Go: Official Edition

LL has finally decided to give us a bit more disclosure in regards to sim auctions:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/08/14/rates-of-mainland-supply/


Rates of Mainland Supply
Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 11:21 AM PDT by: Jack Linden

In recent weeks we have maintained a relatively high level of mainland supply, between twelve and sixteen regions at auction per day on average. This has caused the average price per meter for mainland to slowly fall to the current level of just under L$8 per meter. In order to provide better information to the community we would like to begin announcing our rates of mainland supply in advance whenever it makes sense to do so. If the many land and economic metrics that we track show the need for a change in supply, we will attempt to blog this information as early as we can, to provide more notice going forward.

To that end, I am announcing that our mainland supply will be reducing to an average of 10 regions per day from tomorrow onwards. If we do not auction 10 on a given day, for example due to hardware levels or grid updates, we will catch up on subsequent days. This rate of supply will hold until at least the end of August 2007. As we approach the end of the month we will blog again with our expected supply rates for the first half of September.

We will also display this information on the Linden Estate Services region, in the foyer of the office building there.

----

Wow, communicating with your customers. What a concept. Guess a lot of burned barons who thought they were timing the bottom finally whined enough to get LL to reveal more up front.

Burned, maybe. Recovery? possible.

I think this is a good thing and a signal at the coming growth we will see in Secondlife.com.

Exciting times!!

I'm not sure I understand the implications of this to the typical, non-baron resident.

Does this say that we should expect land prices to stay near the current going rate?

I am curious what the fallout will be too. I assume this means we are close to the bottom on price? Or is 10 sims a day enough to stabilize it where it is?

That said, I agree that things are exciting!

If I understand correctly, they're slowing sim releases, but not halting them, so expect some stabilization in the downward drop at the least. I'd expect the market to keep dipping for another 24-36 hours and then to slowly rise a bit as the folks trying to take advantage of the bottom barrel prices dive back in.

We'll probably see the new baseline develop in a week or so now that people know the going release rate and can price accordingly.

what it means that there are atleast 150 more sims being auctioned this month.

That's kinda what I thought Capella but I guess I'm (still) confused on why prices haven't dropped more. Are we really getting enough new premiums & commercial stuff to justify adding 10 mainland sims per day to the grid? Seems like a lot to me...

well yes, I got THAT far.

I don't know where it'll stabilize, but this has to be a stabilizing force since there's less speculation on how many LL will release tomorrow, with volatility increasing near the end of the month before the next announcement is due.


My entirely baseless prediction is bottom-of-the-barrel land for 5-6 L$/m. for the next 2 weeks

Just making sure

It all depends on how many buying barons there are to absorb the supply and if the baron who has been buying most of the sims will keep buying them and what his plans are for all the sims he already bought. Do you buy that?

I think the new base price for mainland is going to end up at L$7.0. So we have seen a long-term 30% drop in mainland prices at the low end. This will not stop people from asking the moon for their plots and sometimes getting it. You only need one buyer for your land.

Thanks to the leggy Nimue for tipping me off to the blog post.

I refuse to buy lindens to get land but I don't mind shoving my tier up a bit.

one could argue that I'll spend more so much on tier each year that I might as well buy the lindens for it, but that takes the fun out of earning them in game.

the lower the better as far as linden labs is concerned, the sale of land does nothing to support SL rather the tier does.