Renting Land

Thot:

In another thread, someone mentioned that they bought a great deal of the sim, and then rent it out.

I'm sort of thinking of doing that, to keep my sim clean. I might even buy out the ad farm area... *ugh*

Let's say I do this. My tier will be horrendous! How does one rent, and how much should you charge? I would only be interested in covering the tier. But to me, that seems like a big risk for a lot of real money.

How does this sort of plan work for those of you who have done it? I have been a landlord in RL and I never ever want to do that again! HUGE headaches. IS this much the same?

You can either do it with rental boxes or have the renter pay you directly (which is what I do in Carlisle). Once you create your group and find your renters, there are very few headaches. Talk to Skye Whitcroft or Elanthius Flagstaff about mainland rentals. They have a ton.

Section your land into reasonable, nice plots that people would want. Charge more than the tier costs you, but use your tier discount so that your tenants don't feel it unless they get a LOT of land from you. Charge a little bit up front - otherwise you effectively just bought free land for a dozen strangers.

Don't do it for the money (obviously).

If you love dealing with people and are very social anyway, and completely immune to internet drama you won't notice too much grief.

If you are a normal human, though, it can take a bit out of you even when you think you've heard it all and are pretty immune to all 'drama'.

Finally... you might get rid of the ads, but clean up your sim? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Will it look good to everyone once you have tenants?

Prolly it won't, so... might want to consider what your goals are and why. Rental is no guarantee of a pretty area.

hmmmm..... all good points. my only fear is that all the land around me, for sale, will end up as ad farms.

that's wut i don't want.

but i was also thinking it would be nice to be able to set up the sim the way "I" want, and rent some residential and some commercial. or not... do they mix?

i dunno. maybe this is bigger than i am ready for.

at worst, i can always move.

I had the same fear when I first moved to Carlisle. So I slowly bought up every available plot until my tier became $125 a month. But you have to think about carrying all that tier. The renters I had only covered about 20% of it. With all the performance issues, I no longer could justify paying that price. In the end I was lucky enough to sell to a person who kept my builds and has taken over the tier. So really it comes down to budget. Assume you will only be able to cover 20-40% with rent. Would you be able to handle that tier? If so, then go for it. If not, hope for neighbors who don't want land to advertise no late fees for Blechbuster.

Patience is the key, do it slowly, don't buy land to rent out that takes you over tier because that will hit your prices.

Talk to your renters, take note of their requests. I'm finding that some of my renters like a small plot and then want to expand, it is worth having plots of land on a sim that are unused but give you the flexibility of offering extra prims when needed.

i think i will just buy more land and eat the tier. i need more prim allowance than 1536 offers!

So here's wut I've decided (did!). I made three 1536 sized levels in a mall type deal that I hope to keep generally PG-ish. I made a 4th level up WAY up in the sky (550 for mature stuff). I need to know how much to charge, how many prims to allow, and how to set up the TP for the changing studio WAAAAAAAAAY up in the sky (765) (anyone can use it. ANYONE).

I went and bought the rental box package, but I don't know how to set it up. I always feel so stupid when I open a script. Some people should just not be allowed. LOL It has lots of ? and instructions, but I couldn't seem to get it to work. I did try for about 1 1/2 hours this morning.

Is it possible to make an appointment with someone to get some live in-world help on my land, from anyone with experience in setting up rental spots? (i always seem to have lots n lots of mundane and stupid little nagging questions. when i say step-by-step, i'm not kidding).

I'll happily pay you for your time, because I do not expect services for free. Please help me. Thank you.

And, I'll be buying more land in my sim, to bump up the prim allowance, and to set up a little place for ME. right now, my crap is downstairs, and i'd rather rent that out for a serious store owner. i am not one of those. LOL

Feel free to contact me in world regarding your mall setup.

Char

3, I'm not in world right now, but try IMing my partner, Fatima Ur - she's got a load of hard won experience lol! Tell her I sent you from within the forums.... she'll understand

Thank you, Charlene for coming to my assistance.

Next time, I'll chat less and let you actually help me with wut i begged you to come over for. LOLOL

I want to rent out a portion of my "floor space" (8192M). Orignally, my thoughts were for it to be used for conferences, and such. Now, I wonder if there's a market for that. If there is, then why do people rent floor space to merchants, which would seem to beg for headaches.

In any case, if my understanding is correct, to prevent a renter's objects from being autoreturned, I need to create a Group; and renters need to join the group. But, since I'm only one person, I can't create a Group because a group requires two people. The renter can't be the second person because the group should be created before the renter "applies". Is there another way to accomplish the same thing and avoiding the group thingy (it seems a tad complicated and might scare of a newbie renter, anyway)?

Ski, use an ALT. If you don't have one already, just create one. It's free. It doesn't have to be Premium either.

Thanks for the input. I'm too inexperienced to recognize future problems so I must ask: Is that the best solution? Am I correct the alternative would only mean that the renter (or me) would have to "patrol" for Objects dropped by others (and then deleted)? Would that be easier than getting a newbie renter to figure out how to join a group (I'm not real clear on it, either)? Somehow, I get the impression that if I create a group and the renter joins the group, she/he will become partial owner of my land. How do I avoid that?

Born-confused...and it's only getting worse...

Let's see... First, I think it's always best to have an alt as one of the Owners of a land-related group, just in case one account gets b0rked. As for the "part-owner" thing, this doesn't apply unless you Deed the land to the group, as opposed to just Setting it to group. (There are good reasons for Deeding land to group, but that might be something for future consideration: it takes just a bit of care to get the Group and Land settings right--to avoid letting others set the land for sale, for example.)

If land is neither set nor deeded to group, then autoreturn would remove renters' objects; and without autoreturn, yes, stray prims would have to be manually returned or deleted, but only the owner is able to do that.

As for joining a group: this wouldn't be an open-enrollment group. The owner would invite the renters to the group explicitly, so all the renter needs to do is accept the invitation and remember to make that group active when they rez stuff on the parcel so the prims will be set to group and hence not auto-returned. Joining a group for rented land is pretty standard, so tenants who are scared-off from that will have a tough time anywhere, I think.

I can't thank you enough for your help. I'm still investigating the feasibiity of renting my floor space as "convention rooms". If that idea has any merit, then I suppose there will be dozens of people using a "room". Any suggestions? Would everyone dropping by the "convention" need to join my "group"? Likely, they wouldn't have "objects"; agreed?