Should there be a Land Regulation Committee in SL

Oh just for kicks, I think that its not against forum rules to give out this information

MY RECORDS
Florida
License Type: Real Estate Broker or Sales
Rank: Broker Sales
Name: Smith
Number Class Incident Date Status Disposition Disposition Date Discipline Discipline Date
No Complaint Information found.


Not bad eh? 15 years with an active brokers license and no filed complaints. Reason for giving this information is to illustrate that reputation goes a long way. In fact reputation is what really determines your success or failure in just about any profession you choose both in RL and SL though currently in SL its still possible for bad people to operate and succeed, because no one has taken the care to actually try and lookout for the residents when it comes to the land trade, its all been about making the most profit possible without reguard to how ethically the business is conducted.
Now I know many, many "land barons" that are reputable, I have yet to see a post in this thead by some, I could only guess they are reading them and deciding to stay out of the discussion since many posters are so against it.. I would say thats pretty encouraging!

eeep now quoting credentials you know i didn'tt hink it was a bad idea but as usual stuff is getting way outa wack

here is an idea go start your land business control thing and see what happens put the credentials there where it fits

colour me unimpressed but when people start spouting credentials on a general forum like this it makes me wonder why they are fighting so hard to prove themselves

go do what you are wanting to do for the land service area and see how it works you may do well or you may bomb suffice it to say that you wont know till you do it and find out

just to throw this out there -

Land in SL isnt land

The whole thread is about "Should there be a Land Regulation Committee in SL"

This is a question worthy of answer by other residents.
I'll choose to take the Prokofy reference as a compliment. Merely responding to the declaration that you were going to make a committee yourself:...and wondering who you were going to use to determine what was true or not.

Secondly,
Actually, the only party I'm aware of that could be in possession of the facts is our service provider. If you know of any other reliable way to know what went on between two parties: history of payments, IM's, open chat, notecards - I'm open to hear it.

You asked if there should be a committee, and I do agree with the idea. So long as the committee is in solid possession of the facts (only our service provider has those that I am aware of) and has a significant financial stake in fair dealings (again, only our service provider fits that bill).

That's my Resident Answer, given in good faith.

Everything you said there except for the last line was just plain offensive. AS far as credentials obviously you couldnt see the purpose or rather just decided not to recognize the purpose because it doesnt go in with your anarchy plan

THE POINT WAS REPUTATION. before you post, think if its a contribution to the thread please

People are going to be judged by thier actions which is how it should be. Do try to remember this before you flame someone

No its not LAND its Virtual land, there is a difference, but the common factor is they both cost real money to own

so does my refrigerator.

I dont need a realtor for that.

All I can say is that with the visiouness of the responses so far the "land bussiness" as you all are so proud of is nothing but a giant game of "get it while the getting's good". Ever wonder why "land baron" carries such a bad name? And I agree the only party that can do anything about it is the "provider"........but I'll name it as it is. Linden Labs. They have shirked their duty as an honest, ethical company and no one will even attempt to put pressure or try to take some control to make it right for the residents.

You guys like it this way...........that is obvious. You are killing yourselves in the long run and I'll laugh my butt off when you wake up and wonder how it all happened. Opportunists.......that's what you all are.

Just be aware this is a public forum and only a few readers ever post............you've shown your colors. Happy ripping off.

And your point being that your refrigerator is as valueable as your house on a resell market? LOL or that to protect your most valueable asset you are fully capibable and knowledgable of all real estate laws?
Lets put this into light about RE agents, those who dislike them, probably have never bought or sold a house. RE agents provide a service in a fudiciary relationship with their client, they look out for their clients best interest cause alot of bad things can go wrong when your sitting at a closing table and playing with your entire lifes savings. Anyone that wants to walk up to that table by themself with the ignorance of the laws is foolhearty

In SL i have been asked several time to provide guidance about buying land in SL, which, if i have time to I do without expectation of any payment, WOW thats differnt huh? well guess what, we go back to that reputation thing. When i open a new sim, I sell out in less than a day, you know why? REPUTATION

My point being Real Life real estate laws dont apply in Second Life.

You are renting computer power, not land.

I have nothing against Realtors.

Just as a note, Prokofy is well respected by me as a highly intellegent resident and a person with great reasoning powers. If someone would like to get his/her stance on this issue and post it, I would 100% welcome the imput..

but you are taking real money...............remember about 270 lindens equal 1 USD. 27000 equal about 100 USD. It's a game for most..............some make money. Nothing wrong with that but when it's more than a few USD (or a few thousand Lindens) you are taking advantage of people. In some cases actually stealing from people.

And recurring "rent" adds up to a good sum over time. But in a world with unrestricted crooks it not only hurts the residents the hurts the honest virtual business people. But I don't see any concern from those people............leads me to believe they are the crooks.

Add to that, maybe I don't want to give that kind information out to a person(s) where I am not sure of that I can trust them. Indentity theft is a big thing to be very careful for nowadays.

Morwen.

The whole Idea of real life idenities was taken out of context, . It was on the suject of accountablity, if a crook is a crook is a crook, then for sure the victim in the crime has a clear right to know the real life information in order to follow with legal matters. But RL idenities shouldnt be handed out like tickets to the pottery convention. Thier would have to be provable wrong doing before that information should be given out, and then only to the proper individuals effected in the matter and only for purposes of legal action

Jackson, I'm very proud of your amazing accomplishments as a real estate agent but do you have to mention it at every single opportunity?

Here's the difference between real life houses and land in SL: EVERYTHING. We don't need an iron triangle in SL land as well. Regulatory commissions are inherently corrupt and ultimately exist only to serve their own purposes at the expense of their so called customers.

i am thinking this is the point

first this is not real estate in SL even though people seem to like to abuse the term realtor its not real estate
second peopel have told you what they think including me
third your real life experiance as a realtor probably will not help that much because of the way SL works (could be wrong with that I dont know)
lastly if you want to try your free to try it just the reputation thing its kinda earned beacuse your behind a computer playing as a set of well arranged excited electrons nothing more so find out what you need to make it work and go go we will be watching
and as previously stated put it on a website where you will be running this business if you are going to use one

good luck with your SL endeavours

Elanthius.likely get the worst ratings by other land traders. Despite your unethical use of landbot making you one of the most despised residents in ccertain circles, You have have done a good and respectable job in always getting out good inexpensive land to buyers, I have not heard of any unethical land deals inwhich you are a seller. DId you hurt my tiny land trading business when I was on the mainland? YES, but i dont fault you for it. I have no bias against other land traders even if they are more savvy. One thing you said to me made sense. and now I'll return that good advice to you as a favor returned. "Adapt to survive"

Maybe regulatory commssion was a bad choice of words, Who knows Im not the brightest resident in SL but there is a problem with the land trade in SL, most particularly in private sims. And its needs to tamed.

Oh Yah I almost forgot, its BROKER not Agent

The only thing that really needs to be looked at with SL land is a secure escrow system to transfer Private Island Estate Sims between vendor and purchaser. On that point alone (and if Linden cannot devise such a system) there may be a case to involve a third party with verified first life ID as a middleman, to take money from the purchaser on the sale, and to pay the vendor when completion happens after Linden Labs has transferred title

NOTE. I am talking about transferring SIM TITLE to another person, not an more ordinary Island land sale.

So Jackson, here is a role for you.

If you ARE a first life US Real Estate Agent, put up a link to your real life name, address, telephone number, and Real Estate qualifications so we can all check you out, and offer to supply such a secure escrow system (with of course an insured client account to hold funds)

Charge a modest commission for your services (say 2% on sales which the vendor pays via the sale price) and I am sure if all you say is correct many US citizens would consider supporting you as they may have legal redress.

I may even consider doing the same for UK subjects -

Regards

John

That sounds like a really good idea, John. It's certainly worth 2% of the deal to have a transparent escrow system for entire sims. I'd say it would be worth more, even.

If you made a name for yourself doing it, I won't worry if you were in a different country, either. Your motivations (financial) would be clear enough for me.

So the problem you see the most in SL is with sim transfer? I have bought sims privately on 3 differnt occasions. All of which have gone smoothly, but i do see a point when the buying party has to place thier faith and trust in the selling party. Once the money has been paid to the sim seller, the buyer has to take on faith that the seller will proceed with transfer.

This service is offered to certain extents already depending on the method of payament. For example, transfer of funds with paypal. On a couple accasions i have had to request a refund, this can take months to get money refunded, but from what I have xperieced, thier review committiee is pretty good and an top of things, of course the seller is due to pay paypal a minimum of 2.9%. Along with paying LL the transfer fee of $100 or around 4% , Done for the sellers obligations with a total of about 7%of the sale price. Now also figure that the buyer is paying for the sim with Linden Dollars he made in world, conversion fee is 3.9% along with the lowest market sell price when converted is about 5% less, Buyers obligation is is about 9% of the sale price

To sum it up if a sim sells privately for say 2000 USD the seller can expect to recieve about 1860USD and the buyer can exppect to pay about 2180 USD

There is already a rather large chunk of money being made by Paypal, and LL on this transaction.

It is worth mention too that the escrow company I use charges a fee of .7 per $100 which is usually split equally between the buyer and seller. Sadly I doubt they are right minded enough to consider Virtual land as a viable and insurable property

I personally am not licensed to preform escrow, therefore could not perform escrow services. Futhermore with LL and paypal both getting thier share, there is little left of any other party to make commission

Jackson is missing the point Desmond, he would have to do it personally and accept the risk inherent in such a business, limited by due dilegence I am sure. It seems he is not willing to do so.

On the basis you only accept Linden dollars for the deal from the purchaser, and pay the vendor the same Linden dollars minus your own commission it could work. I sat down and worked through a fairly detailed business plan on this one once before.

There are 5 main risks, fraud by the purchaser, personal error, Linden data loss, Linden dispute leading to a bar with an uncompleted transfer, and personal death with an uncompleted transfer. These can be mitigated from low to zero but only with Linden Labs support, I would not do this by myself. Let me know privatly if you are interested

Linden Labs can help mitigate the risk of personal death, wow, maybe they do have too much on their plate at the moment

No It's not that Im unwilling, remember we are discussing some sort of order in the land business. Jackson = Fem not M

Land escrow would be a good idea, but currently its not the real problem as thru LL or thru paypal sim transfer disputes can be resolved, where LL is refuing to get involved is idividual ownerships on sims NOT technically owned by LL, but owned by others

First off, the Company does not serve as an escrow service for sim transfers. There have never claimed to do that, either.

Any payment for a sim external to $L, such as person to person paypal, is not information that the Company is ever privy to. They merely follow instructions as per email or letter.

John is very much right about the pressing need for a good escrow system. I think we'll see one someday. I've had friends risk over 2000 dollars on the basis of an email with someone they will never know.



If you want to have a committee that can resolve issues for private island land, you'll need one that is in possession of the facts.

First a contract mechanism by which it's clear who paid what, and when, and what was agreed is needed. Other than that, it's all he-said/she-said.

Plus you'll need someone to interpret these facts fairly - because obviously if a dispute arises the two parties can't interpret this for themselves.

So if you want residents to set up such a thing (presuming they could get the data) what you are looking for is essentially grid-wide resident government.

I'll let everyone else chime in about the joys of grid-wide resident government.




Ratings don't work very well. There used to be a simple 'ratings' system in the game. People got 'points' for being good or bad; you could rate someone quite negatively if you liked.

It was abused *so* badly that the Company removed negative ratings from the system.

One slight to someone in a 'mafia' could earn you a dizzyingly low reputation overnight, for instance. There were 'ratings parties' where everyone attended merely to raise the reputations of everyone in attendance (amazingly, reputation was *paid* back then).

That's how badly reputation systems are gamed in here.

I agree on the inworld ratings sysem, but a rating system can be dramatically improved offsite.

As I said about LL or paypal, money spent with either comopany can easiely be tracked and fixed, of course LL cant track USD spent privately between two parties thats why I also included Paypal. Sometimes your counterpoints you raise are pointless, either that or I am not conveying my statements properly. I was saying that sim transfer was not the most pressing issue. the more pressing issue is land purchases on private sims that will not be looked into by LL themselves because LL has sold the sim to the sim owner, and a sim resodent has no outlet to file wrong doings thats relevant.

I would ask this of those who are interested to message me with a structure of a ratings system they thing would not be vunerable to the problems of the curent ratings system found inworld. Dont worry able coding, coders and designers can be bought