Multilevel Apartment Rentals

Hope this is the right section. Yes I did a few forum Searches before posting this up.

Does anybody have an apartment building w/ multiple (vertical) levels that you rent out? I have never rented Apts, but I know how ta do it on a flat piece of Land...I just don't know how people do the "vertical rentals", using the Rental Boxes.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks

My guess is through occasional policing of prims on a parcel per user (which is easy to check.)

Is anyone really doing this? I can see a few potential problems with this.

- The main problem is that chat is purely distance based and walls mean nothing. If you have apartments, people in an apartment above someone else WILL hear everything the people below them say and vice versa. If you were to build an apartment and wanted to eliminate this you'd need to build in a very thick floor-to-ceiling separation between each apartment.

- Also placement of objects can be a problem for neighbors. If you do not use very thick walls, it is possible for the back/bottom of objects to protrude through the walls into someone else's apartment.

- True privacy is of course impossible in SL but it'll be even worse with the standard follow-behind camera. The camera does not detect walls and will happily hang through the middle of a wall into someone else's space. If someone stands with their back to an apartment wall. Zooming in/out also doesn't treat walls as inpenetrable barriers.


....good luck

Lots of people do this, and the privacy issues are either overcome by very high ceilings or less $L.

There are systems out there that will auto police the prims on a per person basis. (Apez Auto Lease from memory)

I recently threw up a 9 Story Apartment to help cover the land tier for my parks, it's working out ok so far, I don't charge a lot and give plenty of prims because I'm not in it to make money, but I know some places that charge triple what I do, and only give 30 prims.

Some people also seem to like apartment living...

That's true...I have seen it done using the auto-rental boxes placed vertically though, and that's what I can't figure out.

For example:

Let's say it's just a 5-story apt building. One apartment per floor. Each floor has a rental box near the front door, so Residents can go in, look around, then come back out and rent the space, just by paying the rental box.

I have seen a few buildings like that in the past, when I was the one apartment hunting.

If I can't figure out how to do it with the "Hippo" rental boxes though, I'll just go ahead & do it the "old school" way & just keep a paper record of tenants, and check thier prim usage periodically. The only difference would be having to set up a time to meet w/ the tenants before they rent, instead of using the auto-rental. That's the part I'm trying to avoid, because we have all these different Time-Zones, folks sleep & work at all different times around the world. It would be more convenient for both sides to have the Rental Boxes by each front door.

Thanks for the input Aminom. Anybody else know how to do this?

Is there a market for selling apartment/condo prefabs? Always considered making one but figured I would never really sell enough to warrant the effort, and time would be better spent building stuff that sells. I suppose with the recent mass influx of new players players and the abolition of first land, the demand for rented accommodation will increase.

Sounds good, Geeky...I might PM you in-game & come take a look...sounds like you're doing just what I wanna do. Nice.



Yeah, I got that part figured out...just trying to speed up the rental process by using the boxes. Thanks for the input though Aminom.



Hmm...yeah you bring up a good point about the chat, I hadn't really thought about that. Thanks for pointing that out! As far as the camera, the apartments would be stacked vertically, not across from, or next to each other...so the only privacy invasion would be peeping toms looking into the apt above or below them.

Folks who rent these apartments don't seem to worry about that though.

SL is not designed to properly support multi-level structure rentals. There are some rental systems that allow you to control door access, but with rare exceptions, prim control is mostly a matter of the sim owner policing it. With only 117 prims per 512 M2 of land, the more you stack vertically, the more land you need around the structure or somewhere else in the sim ot allow a decent prim count per apartment. In general, you need so much land that you may as well spread it out at ground level as seperate parcels, where you can use parcel access controls...

Walls mean nothing in SL, and locked doors only keep honest people out. A ten year old can get into any 'locked' apartment, or can view what goes on inside regardless of what you do.

The only vertically stacked apartments I have seen that worked were some 'treehouse' units that were vertically spaced 30 M apart, for sound isolation on a really tall tree. And there, you had no access control other than a primitive door lock system.

Stacked units can't have different audio streams, can't have different access control lists, and the renters can't ban or allow access as needed.

I'm doing this in a beautiful highrise designed by Seigmancer Nino (the best skyscraper designer in SL, IMO). The building is in Da Boom, the very first sim ever created by Linden Lab. It's on the west edge of the sim, in the middle. It is sometimes problematic, because residents can leave their objects anywhere on the land, and it's hard for them to keep track of their prim usage. It's almost more trouble than its worth, but I wasn't using the land and didn't want to sell it. Go have a look for yourself if you'd like

I don't know how big the market is, but there are a few people who specialise in Apartment buildings, check out slex to see some.

I agree with you, although it does depend on what your trying to achieve, in my case I want lots of "empty" land around the place.

I currently "own" just under 30,000 sqm of land, and in total there are 3 buildings on that entire area, there are a couple of skyboxes too.

If I was leasing to make money then I probably wouldnt use an apartment building, besides the issues you raise the are others, like the amount of prims it takes to build a 30x30x100 building.

Of course there are people who want apartments, especially the top floor of a very tall building.

I currently rent my apartments out for $150 L$ (130 prims) a week. (Note: I'm very cheap compared to most Apartments)

The rent plus donations mean I just about break even on tier, so long as you don't include my money tree.

What you might consider is spacing actual occupied units at leats 30 M apart inside hollow shells. A much larger "tower" than the actual apartments.