Private Island SIMS: Rental Questions

Hi,

I have purchased a private island sim, and I want to start a rental business, and NOT sell any land.

I have subdivided the sim into a 4x4 grid of 16 plots of 4096sqm, and erected a beautiful furnished Skyhome above each plot, starting at 300m high, up to 700m high.

The land has no buildings on it at all, except for a beach area for the resident's use, and is composed of lots of little sandy islands, which is great for sailing or jetskiing in and out of.

I am now looking at the About Land options for each plot:

ACCESS
I cannot let the tenant set avatar limited access, as that would prevent the other residents from using the land below the plot, or have I go that wrong? Is there a distance limit to access either above or below a Skyhome, located at, say, 400m high?

What is the point of having Group Access? The tenants do not want any of the other tenants getting free access to their homes, only their friends.

What is the best way to handle access for tenants (rather than owners of land)?

BUILD
I want tenants to be able to create anything they like within their homes, within the prim limit of course, but restrict what is built on the ground, i.e nothing at all. Can this be achieved by any setting, or do I do this by Covenant and police the situation?

GROUPS and DEEDING
Are there any situations where creating groups, or deeding land, can be of use to a sim owner, or his tenants (remember, there is no land sold here, only rented, so there is only one owner, me)?

Any other advice welcome

Rock

Access

If you allow your rental avatars to set either limited access or ban lines this usually extends from ground level to around 60 meters high (or around 60 meters from natural ground level) Group access allows avatars who own/rent to ban general avatars but allow access to a specific group or named avatars, usually a group they belong to and/or named individual friends. In addition avatars could allow general access to all but ban named avatars and/or groups

Build

Once the avatar takes possession of an area of land they can build from ground level up to the natural height ceiling allowed by the in-world physics, this is usually 760 odd meters from level 0. By way of guidance here the default level for the ocean surrounding your Island sim is 20 meters, however as an Island owner you have the ability to change this, although I have been told odd visual effects can result from this change. You cannot restrict ground level builds except by covenant and manually enforcing this rule.

Groups and Deeding

In general you need to do this to allow your avatars to build on individual plots you sell/rent. However you need to consider other variables you control as Estate owner, such as the ability to raise or lower the land (and set limits for this), subdivide the land, sell on the land to another avatar, an enhanced or reduced prim count, and other options which may include allowing some avatars enhanced Estate powers.

General comment.

As an Estate Owner you are effectively God over the Island, however a successful rental business is run by common consensus rather than by a dictator. I suggest you visit some other private Estates such as Dreamland, Otherworld, Azure Islands, and Caledon to gain some insight on this point. Desmond Chang the Caledon Owner puts this very nicely when he states within his covenant “If we start to examine all the small print line by line, we are already lost”

I suggest you (as a business) only have two hard and fast rules which you never change, the first being no refunds on rent paid ever, and the second is when the rent runs out you take possession of the land and NEVER play favourites. As for everything else let it evolve around you in a spirit of goodwill and remember if you start getting pissed off log out and revisit it in the light of a new day.

Hope this helps

Regards

John

Many thanks John, a very useful reply.

I have now had a tour around other private sims, and have noted the settings in the About Land boxes. The settings seem to be the following:

General Tab
Owner: Group Owned (but a few instances of an individual here)
Allow Deed to Group: Unchecked
Owner makes contribution with deed: Unchecked

Objects Tab
Autoreturn: Mixed settings here, some have 0 (off) others have a time set

Options Tab
Edit Terrain: Unchecked (always)
Create Landmarks: Checked (always)
Fly: Checked (mostly)

Create Objects: All residents (50%) Group (50%)
Object Entry: All residents (50%) Group (50%)
Run Scripts: All residents (50%) Group (50%)

Land Options: Only one checked is Safe

Most have a Landing Point set

Media Tab (self-explanatory)

Access Tab
Most have the Group and Avatars boxes unchecked

Ban Tab
Most have the Ban these avatars box checked, and names in the list


So it appears that for Access, a whitelist is not generally used, but a blacklist instead.

Everyone is allowed to create objects and run scripts, but if this is abused it can be restricted to the Group only (which is either the owner (as opposed to the Estate Owner) or a tenant).

I think I now know what I need to do.

So, thanks again

Rock

Yes I think those options seem fair, two points though.

1)Options Tab
Edit Terrain: Unchecked (always) - Not quite true, most private Estates allow their avatars the ability to shape the land BUT reserve the right to veto. On an Island you can raise or lower land but +/- 100 meters and clearly you (as Estate Owner) want to avoid unsightly land design. Suggest you make that point clear to tenents in your covenent.

Remember what you are seeing is the individual avatars land settings AFTER it has been deeded to them by the Estate Owner. To gain a clear picture click on the Estate/Region tab and see what the Estate Owner allows.

Best of luck