Home ownership and deeding-urgent~

I bought a ready made home and the land on a island-and it seems I only have ownership of the land. I have no access to making any kind of change inside the house and cant make changes to the exterior property or landscape. Im having trouble with the home security system that I bought a Depoz, because I have to deed it to the property and I don't have that access. I paid $700.00 real us dollars, for this home and property. And there sits a box outside the front door-I thought that was for rentals -but the people I bought from say thats a new way of paying the monthly fee's. Im new to this- and I am wondering if this is all kosher???
When you click on the house- it shows the peoples name that I bought it from as the owner.
I'm soooo confused----
Any advise plezzzzzzzzzzzzz!
THX-Sher

Bump~

Sounds like you're on covenant land. Any issues you have with your parcel or objects on your parcel would have to be discussed with your landlord (sim owner).

HOW HUCH??

How much land did you get for that?

Gomez

All land in secondlife has monthly fees associated with it. On mainland the fees are paid to LL, on estates it's paid to the estate owner. All this however should have been explained to you by the estate owner prior to your purchase and laid out clearly in the covenant they wrote for the land as well. If it was not, they need to work with you to make the situation right via refund or a deal you both feel is fair.

Did the house come with the land you're renting?

If the parcel of land is a rental (as it seems to be, since there's a rental box out front), you would be paying either weekly or monthly Lindens or you'd be paying cash on a regular basis through a system like PayPal. At least that's only ways I'm aware rentals are done.

If the house wasn't purchased by you (with Lindens, in an SL store), the chances are good that you don't have modify rights on the structures or terraforming allowed on the land on your rented parcel.

Even if it's a house that you, yourself, purchased, some are sold with no modification rights. Each creator has the opportunity to allow or disallow any or all of permissions at their discretion and for their own reasons.

If you rent, I'd talk to the person who owns the island about it, or try left-clicking on the box that you rented from. It may give out a notecard with information and/or FAQs.

US$700? For what, exactly?

You say you 'bought' the land and the house...ask them to 'give' you the house if it was included in the sale of the land. Then you will be the house owner. If it wasnt included in the sale of the land then it damn well ought to have been at that price.....but.....if it wasnt included in the sale of the land then ask them to take it away or 'return ' it to them and go get a new house.

Id need to know the class of the SIM the land is on, the size in sq mt but most importantly the number of prims you have allocated to the land before judging a price fair or not. Tho basically most times you get what you pay for with land.

And no matter what...there are always monthly fees for all kinds of land.

It sound like you bought the land from a third party (not LL) and it has a covenant--a set of rules that tells you what you can and can't do on the property. Maybe the covenant says that you can't alter the landscape.

If you have "bought" land on a private island, and there is a rental box on the land and your landlord is telling you that it's used for paying your "tier," then, what it amounts to, is you are RENTING land from the owner of the private island. This is OK. . .as far as it goes, but you have to understand that they still have complete control over the island, and all the land, including yours. If they decide to build a club next month, or sell the property, they are perfectly capable of taking back your land and returning, (or for that matter, deleting) your possessions Same goes if they just stop paying tier to LL and the island gets repossessed and sold. You're RENTING.

Before you can rez items on the land, you probably have to join a group and have it active.

Concerning changes to your house--What perms does the house have? If it was sold as "no mod" you won't be able to make any changes to it.

Some items, such as media players, or security systems, may need special configuration before it will work on group land. It may need to be set to the group, or even deeded to the group. You may or may not have the capability to do that in your group, and you should DEFINITELY make sure you understand what you are doing before you try it.

*trying very hard to not label it a scam*

A lot of houses in SL tend to be "no transfer", which means you can't transfer ownership of the house to anyone else. Right-click on a piece of the house and at the bottom it will say "Next owner can", if Transfer has a litte check in front of it, they'll be able to give you the house, if on the other hand Copy has a little check in front of it, the only way you'll have ownership of the house is to go and buy your own copy.

That said, making a group, inviting them into it and having them set every piece to "Share with group" should let you do most of what you want or need, save making large scale alternations to the actual prims.

A security orb doesn't necessarily require group-deeding, the owner of the orb just has to match the owner of the land (World / About Land will tell you who "owns" the land). If you own the land, then just rezzing the orb is all you have to do. If a group owns the land, then it will require group-deeding, which means someone in the group with the necessary rights with have to deed it (if it's your own group, you can just do it, if it's a rental group, check with the rental owner).

As far as land goes, in the general case you'll have an up-front payment for the land, and then a maintenance fee to keep it, so it's perfectly normal that you'll have a continual cost past just buying the land. The only reason you should ever pay for land is if you're owning mainland (you buy land from another resident, but you pay maintenance tier to LL). It seems you're in a rental and got conned into paying for land you'll never own (the owner can kick you out anytime they please) without a proper explanation of how everything works.

Considering the way island rentals work, it's never a good idea to antagonize the people you're renting for. If they decide to kick you out, you're done, there will be no refunds for anything, nor do you have any option to seek reimbursement. If they're willing to work with you to set things right, all the better, if they're not, there's little point in fighting it and you'll have to accept that you made a seemingly very expensive mistake.

I am in a similar position to you and unfortunately I can not address the issue of how to modify the property without getting the original owner of the structure involved since I am still new here and still have tons to learn. I am guessing (please don't flame me if my assumptions are incorrect) that the reason why neither one of us is allowed to modify the structure is because we lack the permissions to do so with the various object primitives? I honestly do not know why ownership of these primitives could not be transfered in SL ... but that appears to be the case. Now I like my house as it is and it was because of my house why I decided to buy the property (well I was okay with the price as well). The land is also a nice parcel, but it was the house which won my heart. So I am under the impression that if I want to make changes to the structure that I would need to get the original owner involved.

But I might be able to address the box on your property and why someone else's name is currently listed issue. As soon as I purchased my property from the original owner, my name showed up on the "About Land" deed. But the covenant for the island estate stated that I had 24 hours to contact the estate owner to set up for my monthly tier payments. Well the estate owner came by and installed a tier box and took temporary ownership of the land until I made my tier box setup payment and my first monthly tier payment. Once I paid these additional fees, the box disappeared (I am assuming it will re-appear next month when my next tier payment is due) and the "About Land" deed was reverted to my name. Contact the estate owner if you are unsure of your situation. But you need to address any additional estate payments ASAP so as not to lose your property outright.

Once again, if I am wrong, please someone correct me. But I view land owership on these island estates in a very similar manner to owning a condo in RL. We may own the land parcel on our estate island (just as the RL person owns the internals of the condo). But the estate owner (the person who setup up the island to begin with) owns everything thing else. If you want to make structural changes to your house, try getting in touch with the original owner of the house. Maybe they can help you. Or maybe I am out of touch of how things really work and I need to do more homework in this area.

Good luck ... but the ball is in your court as far as the box on your property is concerned. You need to address this ASAP if you do not want to lose your investment.

When a builder sets something they've made for sale, they have the option of whether buyers can modify, copy or transfer it. Most of the things I sell are no mod, no copy, no transfer. It's the choice of the maker.

I can't understand what you've paid 700 dollars for (unless you've bought half the island) - a house on a modest plot could easily be found for one or two percent of that figure!

Wow, I keep reading and re-reading all your replys(thank you) its sooo complicated. I did buy on an Island, and I do believe its an estate. And alot of what you all have written, applys. I do own the land, in a group with the lady I bought it from-which by the way- she is lovely and helpful. But I just am not following, why I can't own the house- I did buy it. If I should want to sell the property in five years, and there not around what happens? I do show as the owner- in about land-
You have explanined why a can't modify the land, I will check the covenents when I'm able to log back in.
Its on a quarter of an island-with I think 3700 prims-

Its a very big leaning curve in SL- I'm sooo greatefull for these forums.....

Any other advise or suggestions would be soooo wellcomed-

Sher

Hmm I own in mainland area around 13800m2 and I have more prims and paid about that much.
I personally wouldn't have rented especially if you know so little about land and object permissions or what is good or bad deal.
Also you don't have any real land ownership protections and choices are only what the owner gives you.
The reason why you can't own the house is the owner can't transfer or allow you to mod it without giving you her modify rights and most likely has no interest in doing so because you could change, delete and modify everything she owns.
The learning curve and doing things often is still overwhelming to me even after 8 months.

Ah - quarter of an island - that explains the price - might be a bit high but order of magnitude OK!

In five years your situation in SL could be so totally different that it's pointless to speculate on it! By then you might well have built your own range of houses and be selling copies to others! By then you might have your own island!

I don't know how much your house cost your landlord, but lots of houses are relatively inexpensive in comparison to the cost of land. So don't worry about the value of the house - it's probably negilgible in comparison to the cost of the land.

US$700 for 16,384-sq.m works out to L$11.84 per sq.m (for covenant land).

I am always very careful to explain to new residents, especially the ones who do not already know the difference between owning land on mainland versus owning land on a private estate sim, exactly what the good, the bad and the ugly are in *both* directions.

On mainland, you have no middle man with regards to tier; you have no rules as to what you can or can't do on your property ; and you're relatively assured that as long as you pay your tier bill and don't get yourself AR'd for griefing or whatver, everything you own will be there tomorrow. The ugly, of course, being that a) the purchase price up front is generally higher, and b) you never know what will be next door tomorrow be it ad farms, club, casino, mall or camping hell. Look for reports of folks who can't even tp home because a casino or club is so full there's no avatar room left on the sim.

On estates, you have nice little rules and regs about what you can and can't do. These rules apply to your neighbors too and as long as you approve of them not being able to do those things, then you're likely happy not to be doing them yourself. You have a middle person with regards to tier. You have generally better aesthetics on a private estate and the aforementioned rules will be set to try to keep it all looking nice.

The estate owner pays either 195 (old tier and equiv to mainland for a full sim) or 295 (the current going rate on a newly purchased private sim, $100 more than the mainland equiv) and then charges tier per property on the land they are selling/renting out. I would expect that a no buy-in situation the rent would be higher than if a purchase price is set up front. I've noted the pure rental sims seem to set the 'purchase price' to be the first week or month's rental payment(s).

A well written covenant, a well designed sim, an approachable sim owner are all things to be looking for. Your sim owner should be available to deal with issues, such as griefers, the current rash of phantom prims you can only clear by restarting the sim, and even to help answer questions like these (before or after the sale). In other words, for the profit the sim owner is making on tier, they should be there to provide some customer service.

There have been noted instances of owners having to shut down. Not everyone has business skills or strong ethics. And some of these have left their residents with nothing but their things returned to lost and found.

My own covenant states that if I am ever forced to sell out, I will repay my owners on a per meter basis until their original buy in price has been repaid or the proceeds of the sale are distributed, whichever comes first. In other words, I won't take a dime from the sale of my sims until I know my residents have the money they invested up front so they have something to work with to find a new home or business location. Can I be held to it? Only by my own ethical standard and if I don't, only if a resident wants to figure out how to handle a real world lawsuit and the money they initially invested is worth it, but, frankly, my reputation is worth more than the sale of the five regions would amount to.

As for the house in question, the original poster needs to contact the estate owner and/or the person who the lot was purchsed from depending on if the estate owner in this case was the seller (it might have been resold). If the house is transferable, the person can come set the house to sell to the original poster, though it may have to be done one linkset at a time. If it is transferable, though, the original seller should have set the land to transfer ownership of the items on the lot, potentially a bit of ignorance there, though the presence of a rental/tier box on the lot would complicate that method.

Also, with regards to $11.xx per m2 for a 1/4 sim... My going rate has been 6/m2 for normal prim count land in my estates, $12 per m2 for double prim land. If I was charging that much for regular prim count land, I would definitely be including a lot more with it (house, first couple of weeks worth of tier tier, maybe the whole first month of tier, whatever).

Char

i think part of the confusion is that people arent differentiating between an house owner and a house creator.
most house creators/builders sell houses with two different permission options:
no copy/transfer - owner will buy one house and be able to sell it later
copy/no transfer -owner buys infinate houses (usually to rent on your own land) and is never able to sell them.
if they sold thier house as copy/transfer then people would make hundreds of copies of the house and resell them.
you will likely need to buy another house from whomever created the current house. the upshot is that it will likely only cost a couple of thousand lindens at most.

also keep in mind anything that you deed to group will in essence be owned by the group, and be able to be controled by the group members, and if you take something back out of the group you will be stuck with whatever permissions the object had in the group. you can even lose mod/copy/trans permissions on objects you have created this way.

Wow, thank you for all the replies, I have leaned something from each of you!
The lady I bought the house from is very nice-and it is an estate -not on the mainland.
So I will continue to work with her, to try to resolve things to my satisfation.
Thank you for clarifying my perspective!

Best Regards to all~
Sher

Sher, you can't "own" land on a private estate (island) unless you own the entire sim. What you are doing is renting land from the owner and you are entirely at his/her mercy. You own nothing.

As far as your house goes I have never heard of any responsible house seller selling a house with no permissions at all. That must have been a mistake on their part.

Again, this depends on the estate owner and how they view their responsibilities to those who reside on their estate. I just bought back land from someone who had to move due to a covenant change. I paid him back every linden of his up front monies though I had long since lowered the price per m2 of buy in on the sim he was in. In other words, when I resell, I will lose my shirt, but he wasn't moving by his choice alone, but by mine, though he totally understood why I made the changes I did, so I gave him back his full investment, not today's market value. I also refunded his prepaid tier. I don't do 'no refunds ever'.

My residents paid damn good money to own their share of my sims and I respect that investment and will NEVER treat it lightly.

It may all be a semantics game, but its an important distinction to me. I feel that folks who pay a buy in price take their lives here a bit more seriously and are less likely to be cavalier about their stay and their behavior. Plus I would have to charge more per week/month in tier to be able to afford to do it as a straight rental with no prepaids. Over the long term, the residents save money, especially with resale rights, where they can recoup some, all or even profit on the land when they are ready to leave.

Char