Where to find free Premium Membership land?

Hi,

I'm planing to upgrade my account to a Premium Membership in order to own land. This piece of land must be without restriction in order to use llModifyLand() and video and audio parcel streaming.

On http://secure-web2.secondlife.com/whatis/landpricing.php I read that holding 512m2 of land is included in the premium membership, so the monthly land use fee is US$0. This is what I want, but I'm not sure where to find such a piece of land. Using the Search only lists parcels which cost >=5052 L$.

Can anybody help me in this issue?

There's no such thing as "free" land as part of your Premium membership. Even when the First Land program existed (which was done away with on February 20th of this year) the parcels were priced at L$512

The monthly land use fee (tier) is free, but you will have to purchase the land itself. Think of it as buying a house IRL: You buy the house from its owner but you still have to pay regular taxes on it as long as you own it. You're premium membership is like a tax break on the first 512 meters.
If you want land without restrictions, you'll want to be sure to buy land on the Mainland as most estate land comes with a long list of rules known as a covenant.

The land isn't free. You just don't pay a monthly tier fee on 512m2 or less. You still need a premium account to own that land though. Own more than 512m2 of land and you'll have to pay additional monthly tier fees as well.

Buyer beware: Make sure you buy mainland. Your premium account does not cover land purchased on private estates.

Your premium membership covers 512 sq/m of 'tier' (basically, tier is a recurring fee paid to Linden Lab for having a certain amount of land). You still need to buy a parcel of land from the current owner - that part is not free.

Quotes from the Land FAQ (you can drill to this by going to http://secondlife.com/support) :

2. What is the ongoing cost of owning land?
To own land you must sign up for the $9.95 per month Premium membership. You'll be able to purchase a 512 square meter plot of land before any land maintenance fees kick in.
:
5. Does this mean I've got 512 square meters of land waiting for me in Second Life?
No, this means that as a Premium account holder, you have the ability to own 512 square meters. You still have to purchase your land.

There is more information available at the URL above.

I hope this helps

Thx for all your helpful answers! I think I'll have to look for a nice piece of land now
How can I be sure to buy mainland from Linden Labs? Is it enough to select the search option "For Sale - Mainland"?

When I buy a land with houses on it, am I able to remove everything without asking the previous owner? Is there any possiblity to rename the land?

I've also read that flat land is better for terra forming, building and so on. Does anyone know some good places or advices in this subject?

Hi Leony. You can quickly and easily make sure a plot you are looking at is indeed mainland by switching to map. If there are lots of joining squares(sims) you're on mainland.

If there are buildings on the plot, you may find in the 'about land' info that buildings or rather objects, are included. If so, ownership should transfer to you on buying. Otherwise, when bought, you as the land owner can 'return' any objects to owner. Delete is impossible now but you 'return' instead.

Oh, and yes, you can call your plot of land whatever you like

Flat land is probably more convenient for builds ... but I love my hillside view

You can _hold_ 512 m² for free in your premium account, but _acquiring_ such a parcel (or separate parcels summing up to 512 m² at most) is another matter.

I remember reading that in the fine print on the web pages concerning tier fees and the benefits of a premium account.

Thx! I now have found a really nice piece of land on the mainland.

Just for the future: Is it easy to resell the land or can I give it back to Linden Labs, e.g. when I want to buy another parcel or even an island instead?

leony you dont buy and sell land with linden lab (generally).
you buy and sell land to and from other players.

The only way to buy mainland from Linden Labs is to buy an entire sim at an auction. Anyone can do that, but it's expensive, and you have to pay the monthly tier fee for a whole sim.

You can return your land to Linden Labs by "abandoning" it, but they will not pay you back for it. Also, if you decide to buy an island, the 512sqm you have free with your Premium membership does *not* count towards your island - the island fee is separate from tier.

The usual way is to sell the land to another player, in which you have two options.
a) Sell it at market value and run the risk of it not selling for a while; or
b) Sell it to a land trader for less than market value, but get the sale immediately.
If you are paying tier for the land, b) can actually be a better option because you lose less by selling your land slightly cheaper than you would be incurring another month's worth of tier fees because the land wasn't sold in time. But if you're only paying Premium and want to carry on doing that, you may be better off waiting for a market sale.

leony is suggesting he may later want to buy a bigger plot, incurring possibly more tier. so option b would not be to his advantage. in fact leony might not be aware he can own multiple plots.

The Premium account land benefit works like this: Instead of forty acres and a mule, you get two bits and a pat on the back.

What are you planning to do with your land? I know a nice 512M Plot in a fairly decent mainland PG area, full rights, and cheap. Though the only down side is no room to expand, and it's not owned by LL, however IMO this is not so bad. I own land on two sides of it, and the land on the other two sides are owned, though I am sure you many be able to work something out with the neighbor that owns the land in front of me as well as she is very nice and reasonable and offered to sell me some of her land.

Bare in mind that 512M Plots are not very big, they are really 32M x 16M and not nearly as big as it sounds.

Congratulations!

One thing that might not be evident is that you can actually squeeze a little more land into your free 512sq.m. tier. There's a 10% "bonus" for land deeded to a group. So, for L$100, you can create a group, thereby becoming the Owner of that group, get some friends (or an alt) to join in a minimal group membership role (to keep the group from expiring), then Set and Deed the land to the group. When everything is done, you should have a little tier left, enough to Buy For Group another 3 little 4x4 parcels from abandoned ad-farms, for example.

Now you may well ask: what could I do with these tiny parcels, with a total prim allotment of 9 (or 10, I think, if they're contiguous and you join them)? Well, if it happens to be in the same sim as your 512 parcel--hey, it's extra prims--that 117 prim allotment gets used up quickly! But if you're in any kind of business, one or more tiny parcels in another sim can be useful for remote or standby servers (e.g., "Magic Boxes", for when your home sim goes down.

One thing to be careful of with Group Deeded land is *selling* it, without distributing the proceeds among all the group members, and without incurring extra tier. It's do-able, but you want to be careful the first time you do it.

The parcels were 512, but LL paid you back 512 as well right then.

I'm planing to do some scripting tests for a project (audio- and videostreaming, terraforming, connecting with offline applications, etc.) which is unfortunately only possible when being the owner of a land. If all the things work like I want, I'll buy a whole island. In that case I'll not need the 512M plot anymore, so I'll sell it that I don't have to pay for it anymore. I think I don't have to be a premium member to own an island, do I?

Thanks for all your advices also concerning groups and so on! I think this will be interesting when I have my own island.

paying $10/mo isnt an issue if youre paying $300/mo for an island.

You do not need to be a premium member to own an island, although many island owners are premium members.

The 10% group tier bonus doesn't apply to land on islands.

I too would like to find a cheap 512 piece of land... location is irrelevant, though somewhere without sex-sims all around would be nice