Real Estate Crash

yippy kayey motherfuckers!

Hmm, interesting I listed my first land for sale last night since I got my sim. And I listed it for L$12K and I was expected it to take a while to sell (or not sold at all). But this morning when I went online, it is already sold.. and I didn't even post it in classifieds!

I had two 32m plots for sale and reduced them until they were the cheapest listed, except for one other. Still no takers so they are off sale now! 16m plots are down to 215L$ minimum as I write

Where is this 'new continent'? I can't find it on the map although I have found a large area of new land on the southern continent that is still not on the map

The one bad thing about prices coming down that I can see - every idiot in SL is trying to throw an ugly casino/club on their cheap land.

I've been checking out what's for sale, and I'll be darned if the big boys aren't using this as an opportunity to clear out their crappy land. There's not much nice stuff at the rock bottom prices. But this is definitely an opportunity for those who've felt left out to get their little piece of land, even if it's not prime.

Thanks for the tip. I bought the 16s at 215 and sold them for 240. Just a little diversion in my wanderings.

Haha, way to go Annabelle!

Someone has to win, why not me?

For the record, I don't like the idea of carving up 16 sq. lots as a matter of principle because they're butt ugly. But if they're already sitting there, and someone's priced them way low, I'm not above flipping them for a quick buck.

I tried to piece some of them back together into a larger lot once and put it on the market for the same price. No one wanted it!

It's been a looong week - and since I'm starting to veer off topic, off to bed I go!

There sure are alot of new sims with roughly 1 day left who's bids are under 1100usd... Who else here thinks we'll have a *very* interesting late Saturday/early Sunday morning? All things considered, should these sims sell for their current bids, we can likely expect to see land for sale for 5.0 within a couple days...

I took those 2 x 32m plots off the market but now they are back on - undercutting any others and at less than I bought them for. Why? To release tier I've paid so I can pick up a cheap 512 if need be.

Last autumn I actually made profits by buying 16m plots and joining them into 32s or bigger.

Some mature land on for average 6.2 now, it seems at present the land sell off is gathering its own pace

No sympathy here. Land dealers knew LL put new land out when they got into the business.

They gambled. They lost. They can stop whining.

I think it's so interesting that I might just loaf around for a while today and watch how things progress. Heck, if the bids stay that low, I might pick one up!

Interesting too - right now most everything's listed at over 7.0/sq.m. At least until the next land baron takes a dump. Wait... that sounded really bad. Need more coffee!

the whole thing is a gambling game right now. It all depends on what lindens will do next.
If they throw in the market after the close of the todays auction another block of 30-40 sims (today or tommorow it doesn't matter) then there is more movement for lower prices

There is also an upredictable risk that they reduce the starting bidding from 1000 to let's say 500. If they want to make money just from tier fees, they can do that also.

I don't say that it will happen, but you never know. At the moment I would be very carefull and personally stay out of the market since I have a feeling of things being a bit more stable.

As a result of the crash I could see though a movement of residents from old class 3 or 4 to new sims land. At these levels, even if it's 6 or 8 or 9L/meter it's worth trying to move to less laggy land

They could reduce the starting bid on auctions, but I thing they'll only do that if people stop bidding on sims. All of the sims released on Thursday have at least 2 bids on. I can't wait to see who's been bidding on them, some are up over $US2000 which is a risk even for waterfront. And of the 4 that finished yesterday, all had bids on them in the last minute, so it's going to be fascinating to watch what happens to prices when all these sims are won.

fascinating, absollutely right. We'll have to wait all these 40 sims in the market and how soon they get sold. Since Lindens are really unpredictable of their next move I just sit down and watch the movie. High risks and possible big profits or looses for the land resellers. For simple users that just want a small or big plot of land this period is really nice, and these are the big majotiy of SL residents.

I have travelled around SL today a bit and after a further look I don't discount the fact that a few larger land barons may have tried to either anticipate or move the market as most of the initial sell off that sparked this fall was due to the actions of two large land barons, although of course like any market others followed in their lead.

However I take the point that all the new Sims have bids on them, a few minutes ago one water plot on the old continent was up to nearly $25 per square meter, and on from that the new continent water Sims are now plus $L10.

Many have assumed the land sell off is in anticipation of loads of new Linden Sims flooding the market.

But another scenario is that a few people may have tried to drive down the general existing land market to decrease the auction prices of new Sims on confidence issues, and increase the overall profit generated from selling on the new Sims by working from a lower cost base.

Of course such a scenario would assume some are able to gamble on a small initial loss for a larger overall gain, will be fascinating to see who are behind the new bids, either the land barons we all know, or new avatars who may not be so new after all.......indeed to take it one stage further they (the old land barons) may just even have been cost underwritten to trigger the sell off.

Just musings on a market.

Regards

John

It will be surprising if any of the new sims auction for less than $1675 (though one did yesterday, at the peak of the panic sell-off).

At that price, you can not only buy a full sim for less than the cost of a private island, but you save $100 a month, every month, on your tier. And it's a class 5 server too. Sure, you can't terraform to your heart's content, you miss a couple of nice tools like "debug top scripts", and you have to live with whatever funky name the dope-smoking nomenclature committee at LL dreamed up, but still... anyone in the market for a private island should probably be taking a hard look at these auctions. And the economic statistics page shows that island demand remains very strong -- 25 islands a day in January.

Since the $1675 island setup fee corresponds to L$ 7 / sq.m. , and demand for islands is as strong as it's ever been, it's unrealistic to expect the long-term price of mainland land to settle anywhere below this level. Indeed, you'd expect people to pay a considerable premium above $1675 for the privilege of saving $100 a month... which was precisely the case before the panic sell-off.

I wonder how many future land barons began their careers yesterday!

Not very many. It was mostly mini barons going out and about buying the plots yesterday, with the exception of a few very large barons. I was tempted to buy when they hit 6.2 but decided I'd wait until after these auctions -- many of the corresponding bids on them amount to less than 6.2/sqm.

As for the island/mainland price argument -- it is flawed. Mainland allows the owner no control. A large percentage of islands are 'rented out'. Good luck doing that on a mainland sim...

On another note, I'm extremely interested in seeing if what John envisions plays out. I was thinking the same thing myself... We'll know soon

The price for mainland parcels seems to have to stopped dropping.

More panic please.

Ok, for all you who think you are going to predict the market moves without considering that LL is running a business here, let's do some math:

1 premium member sitting on ½ sim of land:
$72 membership fee + $125 monthly tier = $1572 a year income to LL.


16 premium members sitting on 2,048 each (1/2 sim of land): $1152 membership fees + $240 monthly tier = $4032 a year income to LL.

Land pricing at levels where regular end-users are not willing to buy hurts the LL bottom line. As long as end users are priced out of the market, LL loses money. You can sit back and go, "well, the tier is still being paid" but you aren't doing the math on the difference between your amatuer land barroning and value of end users holding lots of smaller parcels. It is in the best interest of LL to keep flooding the market with new land until the m2 price drops to something that end users are willing to pay.

So, yeah, I'm a little guy (at the 8192sqm tier at the moment) compared to people who buy and sell land.

And, yeah, I only bought my first bits of land a couple of months ago. So I paid at least L$17/sqm, and over L$20/sqm, for some of it.

In a sense, I suppose, I got "ripped off", since I couldn't sell the land for half of that now.

On the other hand, in the mean time, I got to use that land.

It's just like buying computers

-Rob

Prices are on the rise again. I picked up five 32m plots in diffrent locations to use as market stalls, each for under 400L$. I'll keep them 'not for sale' for the time being.

If you're not a big-time land dealer, it would seem sensible to buy cheap land and keep it n.f.s. until prices are higher.

I'll second that.

Funny that now all these auctions for the first batch have ended and they're being carved up and put on the market as I type this, prices are holding at a good $3/sq.m. higher than they were during the panic a few days ago. Were the barons just dumping land so they could have more tier free for their new sims?

Maybe I can win a sim of my very own next time around!