Real life estate agent makes a move in SL

Will this new place be protected against robots I wonder? Other people have made me nervous about land buying, so maybe it is best to go with a trusted name.

Even if a sim can hold 100 homes, which i doubt (since they have many community space, roads etc) then they can get max 2000 US$ out of it. Since the auctions we are talking about happened last month they have paid much more. More than 3k at least and for some maybe near to 4k US$. So unless they are willing to loose 2k for sim, i think that they will rent maybe the land for 20US$ every month.

If each plot is for sale at 20US$, thenhave no doubt that someone will grab it and bring it to the current market price (not me anyway). And also, as it is now, it's really difficult to find SL land on these plots (so you can at least click and buy the parcel) as the whole terrain is covered by textures and boxes where they put the houses on. Personally I don't like them since there are so many houses stacked in one place. But that's another issue

As for their marketing purposes , they do it just right.

Arden, the only problem with buying is the price. Once you click that 'buy' or 'pay' you're safe .. relatively.

Like Weedy says, go and look, pick what you like and buy it. Owning land is fun! Renting is an option well and better covered in recent threads.

It's a huge exciting world out there!

It's a shame they didn't attempt this with private islands.

There is plenty of demand for estate parcels, and a real world company renting or selling estate land with an actual - enforcable by both sides - real contract would actually offer something unique which would be a nice change from current offerings where the sim owner gets to evict people at will with no recourse.

None of the parcels seem to be up for sale - I suspect the way this is going to work to avoid bots is that buyers will meet directly with a Coldwell agent, be shown around, decide "hey I like this one"... and the agent will put the lot up for sale to that individual. Smart way to do it, and I hope that will be the case.

On a side note, I can't wait to see how skilled these folks are at flying customers by helicopter to the various parcels. It ought to be pretty comical inside that cabin..

I'm sort of pulling for them. Not in the sense that I actually care if this works out for Coldwell, but I am considerably heartened to see that increasingly RL companies entering SL are actually engaging with it on its own terms rather than treating SL like a simple billboard for their ads, and this is another example.

They're not really interested in the SL land, just in meeting new clients, so while it makes sense for us that their way would avoid bots, for them it's about the opportunity to interact with a potential customer of their RL services, or at the least image and brand building.

I would bet most of the conversation with the agent is about RL, rather than the actual SL land. "So where do you live in RL? Do you own your own house? What neighbourhood? If you're interested, we can check some property in your area, just give us your name and address and we'll send you some more information". Etc.

On the part of Coldwell, it's a low-cost, low-risk advertising venture with a potentially very high upside. (Especially considering that there are a lot of real estate agents with a lot of free time on their hands right now, who could be directed into this kind of marketing activity.) For Linden Labs, it's a possible alternative to the First Land promise. Good business moves.

520 parcels is actually quite a small start. I think those will go in a day. Giving Coldwell and Linden Labs some credit for good business sense, I'm guessing they are going that the plan is to start with something small and easily managed, before getting into bigger, more customizable parcels.

I suspect you are right. But all that will do is require the land flippers to send in an army of alts to buy up the land... It will slow it down, that is all.

I believe Desmond hit the nail on the head. They don't care how this works out inside SL. They are hoping that at least some individuals will remember their name favorably because of this, and that it will result in an increase in real-world real estate sales for them. It may well backfire though. Depends on what it does to those sims, and on how badly their plan fares. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence for me that they are willing to lose money in the SL Real Estate game, when in the real world they should be savvy enough not to lose money on their transactions.

I agree mostly with this. Same reason any RL business would invest in Second Life. I doubt seriously however that CW will be so forward as to skip dinner, movie, coctails and foreplay and pull you right into the sack. This is an investment of real money, lots of it, and if I "get" what they're trying to accomplish here, they will have a vested interest in being successful in the "virtual" sense as well.

This just in.. CNN article was incorrect - they launch today, they open for business on Monday. I'm there in the main office in Ranchero..

Since we're just predicting at this point (their office doesn't even open for another hour, right?), I'm going to predict two things about the terms of the deal when we find it out. One is that I bet Coldwell is going to have terms and conditions on their land to prevent cheap resale through flipping, easy griefing, and unused plots. Second, is that I bet Linden Labs will be lending their full power of authority to assist Coldwell with whatever rules and conditions it asserts. The third of my two predictions is that Coldwell is getting the sims from Linden Labs for significantly less money than any of us could buy them for.

Zaphod and I were there just now, talking to one of the people there. Going to be restricted to newbies, they claim to have an extensive database of land holders and alts. Getting land requires a deposit, refundable after 60 days, after which time land can be resold without penalty.

The person we talked to was very open and friendly, was was just an employee so couldn't provide many of the technical details behind the checks they intend to do to applicants.

Sadly, those sims were bought long enough ago that they no longer appear in the completed auctions list. I believe though (from their position in the grid) that they were bought just after the Black Thursday dump of 40 sims in late January, hence they would actually have been quite cheap.

5 sims is hardly an "extensive tract of the mainland" though.

Not without a complete re-write of the TOS. According to existing rules, as soon as someone buys the land, they are free to do as they please, and can tear up any 'contract' from the realator as null and void, and CB can't do squat about it.

That would be a 180 degree turn-around from LL's track record of "Hands off" management of land issues. I'd actually welcome that, if they did it. It would be the first sign ever that LL could agree with the idea of zoning on the mainland, which they have steadfastly refused to implement on their own.

I believe the sims were purchased through the regular mainland auction process. One could check the auction sale results to be sure on that.

If Coldwell Banker sells virtual property as well as they sold our house, the land barons have nothing to worry about.


Rox

Sounds like a good start. But at best, they could only restrict each purchase on a "one to a payment method, and no one who has any other accounts on that same payment method" basis. Because LL has no valid identifying data other than the payment method used to buy the Premium account. That would involve disclosing a lot of personal premium account data to a third party, or LL doing a heck of a lot of background checks for the realator.

I'll admit, with enough effort, it just might work. The 60-day deposit may make it unprofitable to create premium alts just to buy these parcels. Guess we will have to wait and see.

Still... As soon as the 60-day limits start going into effect, a lot of those land owners will be selling to anyone they please. No way LL or CB can stop that, without a TOS revision.

Do you have to give them your RL information in order to participate in their land programs?

Didn't say. They did say there would more information on Monday, when they start business.

"Stodgy name goes into cutting edge virtual world."

This PR soundbite picked up by the media is the reason for the exercise. It costs little to them to take a stab at changing their image and getting their name out there. They don't care about profiting in-world or covering their tier. In fact, they probably have no idea how to go about being successful in SL real estate.

LL has access to your payment details, which they could use to restrict First Land if they chose to. This company don't have access to those details.

I don't think they realised that people will probably sell land on at some point - maybe not just after the 60 days to make a profit, but just when they want to move to somewhere bigger.

No. All the scary stuff about land bots stealing your land only applies if you set your land for sale to "anyone" for too cheap a price. Fear not. Land bots can't take anything you don't set for sale to anyone.

Did someone mention something about Mensha earlier??


Have a nice weekend folks! <waves>

The fact that there are 4 pages of discussion on this already is proof that they will get their investment back through the PR it generates. If it ends up making them a few lindens in-world they will just get an additional chuckle out of it.

I have to go create an alt, since they are restricting this to newbies. The day I get my deposit back, I'm going to see how many laggy scripts and campers my Caldwell parcel can hold.