Land Sales Pointers?

I recently purchased my first property in a new sim area (Brouwer). I've been having fun playing with the terrain and so on but I am interested in moving to an area where a number of my friends live, so I've decided to sell the property.

I have a 1024m plot (my first 512 plus a neighboring plot that I purchased) that is on a slight slope. It borders on a long stretch of Governor Linden land that I assume will be a road some day. The sim is generally residential at this point although there are some larger plots that may become commercial.

So, on to my questions:

1. Setting price. I am currently asking L$18000, partly based on other properties in the area. A neighbor is asking L$20,000 for a 512 plot! On the other hand, I see that 17.6/m2 is a bit higher than average. Am I pricing myself out of the market?

2. Marketing. I see my property showing up in the search. I've added some descriptive text to the land's properties and name. I've also placed a fairly generic For Sale sign up (nothing huge or tasteless). Is there more I could or should do?

3. Showing. I have a nice Freebie house on the property as well as a number of landscaping plants. There is also a platform (very basic) at 500m where I've been playing with making scripts, objects, etc. Should I leave all of that in place as an example of what can be done with the property? Or should I level everything so that that the potential buyer can imagine what they'll do with it?

Thanks for any help you can offer with these newbie questions!

The problem with a plot like this is that there are a bajillion other plots that are almost exactly the same. Your land will sell at L$18,000 but it may take a week or two to do so, maybe longer. If you want to sell it in under an hour set it for $12000, if you want to sell it in under a day set it for $13000. The market is bouncing up pretty hard though so by the time you read this you may be able to get away with even more.

If you had a really pretty or unique plot you might want to post on the forums or make a classified ad but to be honest a 1024 in Brouwer isn't going to get anyone very excited. If you are near the protected strip through the middle of Brouwer that might be worth advertising but even that is pretty dull. It's probably not worth advertising anywhere else.

You've basically got two potential customers. People who are using the search tool who will never see your plot at 17/sqm on page 30 and people who live in the sim around you and want more prims. Those people may actually pay 17/sqm or possibly even more if there's not a lot of land for sale in your sim. Unfortunately I looked around and quite a lot of your sim is for sale so this tactic may not work.

I find that 90% of the people who buy land delete everything on it and start fresh. Most people buy land of this sort of size so they can build stuff on it. Nobody wants someone elses crap all over their land. However, I would leave your stuff on the parcel if it improves the appearance but doesn't restrict the view of where the plot starts and ends and what the terrain is like.

Thanks for your response, ELanthius!

The parcel is off of the protected strip and I was hoping that was a selling point. OTH I am worried about one of your points; a small parcel in a new sim may not be that attractive to a potential buyer.

I think for now I'll watch the market and see what it does. I'm not in a frenzy to sell but I don't want to hang around forever either. I also want to at least make back what I put into the parcel with hopefully at least a small profit (not a lot -- I'm not under any delusions about being a land baron!).

I wonder if any of this is covered in that new book LL is advertising. I'm tempted to write about my experiences as a newbie because there doesn't seem to be a good comprehensive guide out there so far.

There have since my introduction to the forum been a number of informative and at times, amusing stories of peoples settling into SL. Alas, each gets to a last post and thus slowly disppears into the archive. It's a shame that such insight and wisdom just fades away.

Circe Silvera, I think position next to a protected strip of land should be of interest and justifies a higher price.

Many people look for land in the same sim just for prims (i've got 2048m2 but have built on 512 alone), so go and ask around if anyone is interested in your land. Start from those who have the bigger chunks of the sim.

Good luck.

Hmm. Could be an interesting project to try and pull such stories out and compile a few of them!



Thank you! I've set the price at 16 now, which is still a little higher than average but hopefully justified by the location.

The odd thing is that I don't think it is showing up in the search anymore. I made that change a while ago but it's not showing up. Is there some limit on how often you can change the price?