Final Base Price for Land?

I thought I would start a new land thread with somewhat good spelling and punctuation.

One thing I find interesting from my watching of the land market is that there is a group of about 30 people who are dropping a ton of money into SL with auction purchases. Not all of them are flipping the land either. Of all the action over the last few days, only a few sims were bought by a name from the "old guard" of land brokers.

I think what LL and many people did not count on is this new generation of deep pockets who are keeping the prices high or, if prices drop, quickly buy and relist higher until we are above 12 a meter again.

The other thing is, the less experienced the broker, the more they tend to pay for the land. This is a generalization but it points to the fact that a small population of new blood is doing a lot to keep prices high. And in my opinion, it is counteracting LL's attempts to get prices down, especially at the rate they are releasing sims currently.

I also don't think LL really wants to lower land prices. It might just be the party line, when they actually would much rather get $3400 per sim than $1000.

I think we are in a new era. An era where L$11 per meter is the new rock-bottom base. If it dropped below that for more than a week, without a huge, unrelenting flood of new sims, I would be shocked.

Your properly spelled thoughts?

" I also don't > thing<< LL really wants to " ... Thing ... or think ?


naff off

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

That is the problem. For every big baron they ruin by dropping prices, there is a whole rash of new baby barons jumping in to try and make a profit. Unless they drastically change the way land is bought and sold in SL, like they did with the exchange of $L, there will be nothing they can do to stop it. I think the player greed will win out no matter how many sims LL drops onto the market.

**Hopes he dotted his i's and crossed his t's well enough for the OP**

Thanks for trying, Raymond. It is appreciated.

I agree that with the influx of new residents, there will always be people entering the land market ready to take up where others have left off.

If land ever drops significantly, it will be either because LL starts dumping 50 sims at a time on the market, or because SL stops growing in population. Considering the global reach of SL, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Jeez Raymond, I dont know if i can spell properly at all, they dont have a Tagalog forum yet so I'm stuck here!
Theres alot of big money investors here, many already hold quite a bit of land, so them purchasing the sims is a matter of protecting thier already exsisting inventory. I would also think from a business point of view LL wants the land value to be as high as possible, while still appeasing the masses of complaints about high prices. LL is walking a thinly threaded line, trying to do 4 major things at once.

1 Attract stronger business and corporations


2 Satisfy the "little guy" with releasing as much land as they can without toppling the market. ( just because they posted that they are trying to bring prices down dont mean that they are really trying)

3 Satisfy the larger land holders that are concerned about protecting thier investments

4 Maximize thier amount of profits while trying to accomplish all of the 3 goals above


Taking these 4 things into concideration would explain 100% of what LL is doing right now

They cut out first land, and started releasing more land on auction, makes perfect sense, why give out for 512L$ what you can auction for L$6000. They scaled back the amount of land they at release one time because the land market had a small crash when they put out too muchland. They got rid of the "public complaint " forums (Land Managment, and Linden Answers) And lastly increased Private Island prices and tier fee's.

In the future and im predicting it now so you know, your going to see:

1. Higher mainland tier fee's (to match Island tiers)
2. $15.95 or $19.95 per month premium membership fee's
3. An eventual slack in auction listings, and subsequential rise in land prices per meter to level off somewhere near but just below the peak price of L$17 per meter

Jackson, with astute observations like that you can misspell all you want! I agree with everything you wrote. We can close this thread now.

Jackson, I think higher mainland is an inevitability - regardless of what island pricing is. And higher island fees are also an inevitability, though not in the near future.

A rise in premium fees? Also inevitable, but that much? I don't know. I think it depends on whether or not they get more traction with the lower fee. The fact that SL is becoming a more global community (Europeans make up over 50% of the player base) also matters, and will influence the rate. I don't know what Europeans are used to paying for games such as these. But LL will take that as close as they can to the limit.

And the slack in auction - that's going to happen. They can't keep going with 20 sims per day unless the increase in income is commensurate. Another island order spike will take care of that.

If LL is serious about bringing the price down, they should stop this auction and sell SIM to people at a fixed rate. Let's say at $2000 per SIM. Also they should avoid giving two SIM to the same individual within a week or a set time length. They should keep adding new SIM based on the population growth. I am digging my own hole with this one but I think that's the only way I see them bringing the price down to about $10/sqm.

Well, here are my thoughts.

I have been quite surprised by the number of new baby barons coming up. I'm not sure what's causing it because the good times ended somewhere around Jan 5th and although there's been money to make since then it's been pretty grim. Of course, I don't want to discourage any of these baby barons either. They're propping prices up and that's great for me and great for them too I guess.

As for LL. I forget the exact quote but I always avoid assigning to malice that which can be blamed on incompetence. I really think that LL want to drive prices down but they just can't do it. It's not easy to commission new servers and it really looks to me as if 8 per day is the best they can manage for now.

As for future prices, well, I'm tired of people making predictions about the future as if they know for certain what's going to happen. What I will say is this though. There will be dramatic unexpected changes and a fair number of people will spout off claiming they totally knew it would happen. Other people will be sufficiently poised to take advantage of the changes and still other people will find their SL experiences destroyed or massively changed. But either way it's going to be a fun ride!

And one thing is always certain: the smartest survive. I suspect you'll be around for a long time, Elanthius.

Only his bot will outlive him!

I see the prices leveling off at about 7l/m. Once they are at that price, islands and mainland can be sold for about the same amount and at that point everyone will be happy. Well, everyone but the people that bought their land to sell at 17l/m.

Amen to that.

I don't know about that. Islands cost about 7L per sq m. Mainland will always command a premium to islands (at least until the next paradigm shift), because of the added risk to owning island property. When they dropped 40 sims on the market back there, prices plunged to 6L/sqm but very quickly came back above 10. I see strong support for land at 10L per sq m.

On the other hand, prices could be a factor of supply and demand. If prices are set by the Market, then the Market will find ways to get those prices regardless of such actions. For example, fixing the price at $2,000 per sim would mean the problem becomes who gets the sims when there are more interested buyers than sims for sale? You suggest some sort of rotation. Someone for whom that sim is worth $3,000 will then simply offer $3,000 to whomever's turn it is to get the sim for $2,000. Instead of LL getting that extra $1,000 profit, now all the baby barons will be jumping in line to buy sims, saying, "Ooh, my turn comes up in June!! Who wants my sim? $3,000 to old-school Land Baron A! Do I hear $3,100?"

Your last suggestion is the only one that can affect prices, as it actually introduces changing to the "supply" side of "supply and demand." To keep the price for land steady, LL needs to match the release of land to demand. And demand is some fraction of the total population, however it's figured, along with other factors.

BTW, if LL manages things right (not guaranteed in the long run, but if not some other company(s) will learn from their mistakes), they should be growing years and years from now. When the Internet first came out, a lot of people weren't too excited (andybody remember Archie, Veronica, Lynx, Pine, etc.?). People gave it a look and didn't buy. Then the Netscape came out...more people joined, and some who'd passed before jumped on then. Since then, each time a new business or school or resource goes online, it's another reason for the remaining holdouts to sign up. Meanwhile, more and more parts of the world are getting jacked in.

I just based that on the former lower end that I have seen in the last few years. If LL can flood the market so that sims go for a lot less then they are now, prices will follow. I think the midrange will fall between 7-10, with the "dumped" lots goes for about 5-7. It could be wishful thinking, but that is what I see for the future.

Sorry DM, It appears all the press has unleashed a new breed of baby baron who ain't afraid of a sim dump. They just keep bidding and buying and keeping land well above 10. I'm guessing LL is a bit surprised by the resilliency of the market. Surprised and delighted as they collect their auction cash.

I think the real test will be how the market handles another 40 sim dump. Last time it recovered in a week. I say next time, it takes three days to rebound. Bring it on, LL, folks need more blah Mainland to put their rotating signs on.

Don't think people are throwing more money around these days in SL? Go to the link below and click on "all" under the Lindex volume. The increase since '05 looks like the side of Mt. Everest.

https://secure-web1.secondlife.com/currency/market.php

Woah.

A land thread consisting of no finger-pointing, recriminations, crazy gibberish and minimal misspellings? It won't last.

For what it's worth, I remember pointing out after the Black Thursday auctions that many of them were taken by people I'd never heard of, enticed by the lower prices - and it stands to follow that they (and people like them) are providing a support level for auction prices.

However if you look you also don't see many of them buying again, which leads me to believe they see dollar signs in their eyes and massively overprice their land, or they don't consider their land tier. Or they don't realise that they can only sell so many L$ for US$ in a month. They seem to be perpetually undercut by the more established operators selling on lower margins and higher volume.

Perhaps over time, LLs sustained release of at least 8 sims a days will give all the guys wanting to buy one a month their fill, and they'll eventually stop providing the same support for prices.

Today's sims went for 3k or higher, up from the day before. So things appear to be trending upward again. Also the Today Show segment should put more future barons into the pipeline.

I miss the days of 3000 concurrent users and 300k total residents but they are just a low lag memory now.

Today's sims went for 3k or higher, up from the day before. So things appear to be trending upward again. Also the Today Show segment should put more future barons into the pipeline. Can't even get on the homepage right now...

I miss the days of 3000 concurrent users and 300k total residents but they are just a low lag memory now. As is finding a 512 plot for L$2500.

I miss the days of 1000 concurrent users and less then 100k total.

I don't miss the updates like 1.5(?) and 1.7 that really borked the grid.

You may be right, the days of land being under 10l/m may be gone, at least for a while. I think that once many of these minibarons find out that it is a lot of work and not a lot of money, they will start stepping out of the land market and go do other things, like running a casino. I still think that LL thinks that land values are too high and will continue to release land until the price is something that in more in line with what they think the price should be.

Well I miss the late Pleistocene epoch after all those pesky mammoths and sabre tooth cats were extinct.

But frankly, I don't miss the early days of SL at all because it's way easier to make money now on pure volume.

I miss the days when you could buy a sim and then actually double your money. Or better. I read that one NewbBaron bought a sim for $10 per m2 and turned around and priced it at $11.7 per. if you factor in the $.80+ in tier costs per m2, that ain't much of a profit margin.

Instead of carving and flipping, maybe the smart barons will try to add value now, with some nicer trees/landscaping, prebuilt homes, themed development, public park areas, etc?

That would be awesome, but most would rather flip as many as they can per month. And many folks want to put their own stamp on things with their own theme on the Mainland. The kind of improvements you are talking about usually happens on islands where the owner still retains full control. Still, it's a nice thought.

Agreed