When Did Land Get So Expensive????

Very well put!!!

The current situation regarding land sales is getting out of control. I went to find some land to buy today...and MOST of the listings in there was either for rent or had these crazy covenants. The little I did find that was actually for sale was priced WAY to high..or were little tiny plots ment for advertising.

What gets me is the practice of Teir payments. First you have to pay a massive amout for the land....THEN you have pay a monthy fee??? And sometimes to someone's paypal account?? If the Linden's are worried about fraud they should BAN this practice immediatly. If not for fraud...for the fact it messes with the SL economy. Monthy fees should go right nack into SL and not to some strangers Paypal accout.

And to those who simply say "stop bitching." My friends..im all for an open market....but an open market with some honesty. Listing land for sale when it's really for rent is not honest. A covenant that includes x amount of dollors per month is called LAND FOR RENT.

This is a some kind of a game after all. But it feels more and more realistic, when land is subject to money making. I know that if I want a game, I can go to a shop and buy one with like $50. And I would have my game. But in SL its harder to know how much you have to pay in order to have fun. If land is scarce, you may have to pay like $200 or more for the land of your dreams - that is, if you find a spot you like. But to many average players this is not possible, because they are often children and there is the land tier fee too. And the tier fee is not too small, either.

So SL is really more a second life than a dream life to many players. Lots of people end up on a small spot of land, and if they do not take care, they pay high over price to some land merchant. Well, such is life, and such is second life.

You can have really good time on SL and you _can_ build your dream on SL and make the dream a huge success with lots of web friends. But my opinion is, that the dream has been much harder and more expensive to achieve than I first thought. And I guess that is one reason why there is hundreds of thousands real registrations (millions, if you count them carefully and add doubles too), but considerably less amount of active players.

Is there a guarantee for this product called SL? Is this only a second life, or is this a dream life with a guarantee that every player will get a dream come true without having to pay lots of money? Should there be land, that cannot be put on free market? Should there be some Linden land for sale that is always the same price and that price could not be changed? Then it would be more like buying a game - or buying a dream.

I would like to suggest, that the land tier fee is reduced. That way you could get more land and have better dreams with more reasonable price. Of course you can always argue what is a reasonable price. But I think that if LL wants to get more players, the tier fee prices must go down. Also I suggest that more land is added for sale, and with land types like city, suburb, forest, desert with different prim maxes and tier fees. When more land is added, it would go down in price, so people could afford to buy it too.

And why cannot I buy a small 8000m2 island with no neighbours at all?

Or why cannot I buy a small 8000m2 forest plot? I think this would be a major good idea. The land would be divided not in regions but areas where there is roads and lots of wilderness where you cannot go too deep. On roads you could not build and they would not be for sale. Then people would have their land in the forest, but not too close to each other. If you want, you would not even see your neighbours but just some forest (where you cannot go too deep).

Some nice suggesstions there, Kratax. Especially as regards different types of environemnts / terraforming / topography. Sadly, I don't see it happening except on a few private projects that will prolly be closed off to the public. As for 'dreams', the land and tier costs to realise projects I'd like to see through are simply beyond my means.

Not foreign, just invalid.

Trade is a consensual transaction. If you are not pleased with the price or quality or any other attribute to any item, don't buy it. At the same time don't presume that other people who do value that item at that price, be they buyer or seller, are "Greedy" or "stupid" or "uninformed" or "newbies" or any other denigrating term you can think of. Just because they do not share your value judgment doesn't mean their wrong, could just mean you're a cheapskate.


... bet everyone who throws around "Greed" when it comes to free market discussions didn't much like that last line. Keep that in mind when you're insulting others. Thanks.

Um, you don't have the monopoly on capitalism. You should see what happened to British property prices over the past ten years. My house value has quadrupled in that time. First time buyers now find it difficult to get on the property ladder. I bet they feel as sick as those looking for First Land in SL. Well, um, perhaps more so because it's RL after all.

I wonder what would happen to land value if the Lindex was allowed to function more 'naturally'? (Ie. If Supply Linden wasn't stabilizing the exchange rate everytime it threatened to fly above $4USD for 1000L.) If fewer people could afford Lindens, demand for land would surely fall. Hardly a solution. I'm just pondering a subject (money markets) beyond my intellect.

I just want 512 sm of land to start a business on. Since I joined 2 weeks ago I've searched constantly for First Land and not seen any created, or maybe I'm just unlucky. I'm not willing to pay a crazy high price, either. Are there any indications in the wind when the Lindens will generate more land?

Any advice on WHERE I should buy land?

Points taken: stay away from "Covenants"; the mainland (Linden Land?) is more desirable traffic area than islands; red & white signs are bad; shoot land hogs on sight.

It is greed. Call it what you want, defend it how you will. Buying a 1024 property for 12k and putting it back up for sale at 20k(WELL above market value for a normal flat green sim) is greed, and hoping to take advantage of someone that either doesn't care because they never think about how much they are putting into the game, or hoping to take advantage of someone that doesn't know better.

Everyone has just as much of a right to complain about land prices as you do to complain about the complaining. Ever complain about the price of gas? If you don't like it, buy a bicycle.

I don't think buying out your competition counts as a free market .

If 5 people (including you) own a parcel, they can independantly put it up for sale for an amount they deem appropriate and whatever is the fair value will get sold first (assuming all the plots are equal in every way). However, you can buy the other 4 plots and suddenly you get to set the market price, since you're the only one who has anything for sale and everyone's forced to come through you.

Provided that you sell enough at your inflated price (or have enough funds), you can easily pick off every new plot that comes up for sale and reprice it to your standards which is what most of us are seeing.

It is natural, that if something gets rare, then that is valued like diamonds. But not everybody can or want to use money on diamonds, because diamonds are not necessary. If SL land owning gets so high priced, that people cannot afford it or do not want to buy it, then it is not a good thing in my opinion, because sales drop.

But of course, if I buy land, then it is my land. And I can sell my land at the price I wish. Now, if there is not enough land for everyone in reasonable prices, then lots of people will not afford and do not want to buy land, but they miss their dreams. The dreams are the point in this game, so I think there would be more players, if their dreams got some guarantee.

Tell this to a person by the name of Bill Gates...

How many people actually approve of MS business practices?

No, "red & white signs" are not bad. Somebody earlier in the thread had an issue with one particular reseller who apparently has a red & white sign. I also use a red & white sign and can assure you that I am not the reseller in question, I have never used an explot or an alt to buy land, be it first land, underpriced land whatever. Any land I have for sale has been purchased at the full asking price from a private resident at the time.

No shit, sherlock! Last time I looked the going price for 1024 was around the 7000L$ mark max. Now it's gone through the roof! I doubt I'll be buying any land until the prices return to sensible levels.

Good for you, you recognise that you have a choice - to pay the current market value for land, or to not bother if you think it's overpriced. Nobody is forcing you to buy anything or sell anything at a price you aren't comfortable with. If you can't afford to pay what people are asking, you'll just have to accept that the situation has priced you out of the market for the time being and live with it.

However, those prices are being set by a market which is undeniably being driven by a shortage of supply, only the shortest-sighted of people here would deny that. The accusations of conspiracies to push people onto island rentals, and cartels of land barons setting prices to make everybody else suffer are just that, conspiracy theories and deserve to be treated as such.

That's funny because I see quite a lot of "supply" just sitting there overpriced and have been for a month now.

By supply, i mean supply of new land. Obviously, as more people join SL, they want land and therefore new land needs to be created to hopefully keep pace with demand. Usually, the Lindens increase supply of new mainland land at about 1.5 x the growth in premium accounts. Over the past quarter however, growth in new land supply has been about half the growth in premium accounts. These figures can be derived from the Lindens own economic reports by anybody with a spreadsheet.

Supply of resale land is a totally different matter, and yes, there is plenty available at high prices. However, there has always been lots of land available at high prices, the current situation has merely removed the cheaper land which hid the more expensive stuff to an extent.

So? If some people overprice their land, it should stay there for many many months.
I have seen for over a month a land with 20L/sq.m unsold. Nice one with a very nice house. At the beggining was overpriced. With today's conditions , in a few days it will look a bargain.

I'd like to agree more with Stephen before

I am not quite sure that the problem comes only from land barons. And I have no evidence that some people just create alts to grab the free land and then resell it.

From what I have seen around, I can see many individuals selling their property for huge amounts (ex 16k of land for 400k) and so on. Why the blame should go only to those socalled land barrons? And if someone who bought months ago cheap land and now sells at market price, how should we call him? Greedy because he gets a 100% profit? I don't think so.

Actually I don't get why is ok for people to make money from the products they produce and sell and not from land reselling. Since , except from first land , all the others are getting into auctions (whole sims), then someone has to bid and finally buy it. From the time someone get a whole sim, I am quite confident that most of the time, they will resell some of this land. That's what makes them then land barons?

Since I have seen more than 25+ people participating in the latest sim auctions, I assume that is the supply thing that makes prices go up. If we have more than 5 sims at the same time in auction, then the prices stay under 3kUS$ , so the reselling price is more acceptable. If you have 1-2 sims every three or four days , then these same people will bid to take that land and the price will go higher than 3kUS$. (that shows a trend with data from last 2 weeks of auctions). If you buy a sim with more than 3k$ then you simply don't sell it for less.Period.

The market i think justifies the prices. if something is not worth the money, then nobody will buy. If someone buys the land then ... whom should we blame?

As an indication , right now, there are just 21 pieces of land in Mainland greater than 8k meters whith a price range from 14L/sq.m to 16L/sq.m
That's the minimum for this kind of land. Till one week ago you could find land with 11-12L/sq.m and 2 weeks ago it was around 10. These are the facts.

So my point is that we shouldn't blame here and there for what we see. It's not a conspiracy game (do these at least couple of dozens people are crazy and want to risk their RL money just for fun? Or can they manipulate the prices?). And how can someone stop some people from bidding on auctions , so the prices will stay low?

And even I said in another thread that we might see a land mini crash, under some conditions, I now think that it's not likely to happen and we shouldn't expect to see the prices dropping dramatically.More likely prices will find a balance which for the moment is unpredictable when it will happen since the supply is driven only by Linden.

sorry for the length of the post..

Oh, there will definitely be a correction of some sort at some point. I don't think we'll see prices dropping back to their previous levels - if the Lindens increase supply back to their former relative levels, it will only stabilise prices, not reduce them. It would need some sustained extra supply to bring prices down.

You raise a very good point, part of the problem isn't just the lack of supply at the moment, it's the unpredictability of it. About twice a week at the moment, we get a couple of sims put up for auction at the same time. Previously, there was a very regular flow, if you missed out on a sim at auction you knew there would be more the next day. Now, if you miss out, you might be waiting a week until the next one comes up. In a business where we pay tier on a fixed, monthly basis, that unpredictability can cause problems in itself.

At the current rate I'll be completely priced out of SL

I agree a correction is likely. And I've also used a red and white sign - they are everywhere and can't really be associated with one person or group

this is very true, there are over 7000 plots of land available, most of which are 8000 sqm and under (unfortunately a lot of them are 16 sqm parcels as well) The problem is that it's too expensive and nobody wants to buy it for $20L+/sqm

But some people want to make an unreasonable profit so badly that they refuse to lower their price hoping that someone who either could care less about $$ will buy it or some poor uneducated newbie. Seriously, for what some are charging for an 8000 sqm parcel one could put the downpayment on an island...

Define unreasonable profit in the context of a capitalist society.

Given that you don't know what the seller paid for the land, nor how long they have held it, you really aren't in any position to define a profit as reasonable or otherwise.

"Unreasonable" are the prices we're seeing now. An island ($1675) and one month's tier ($295) is $1970. An island is 65536 sq m, so at an exchange rate of L$270/$1 that works out at around L$8.1 per square metre, if you wish to recover your costs in one month by selling off all your island.

True, we don't know what a seller paid - but there will become a point where land is priced out of the market, especially if there is nothing special about it.

All it takes is for one of the big land dealers to decide they want all land to be L$25/sq m, and buy up everything below that as much as possible... then they could manipulate a huge part of SL's economy - much to the detriment of the majority of its playerbase.

Conversly, all it takes is for one big baron to suddenly decide that their 10 or so islands just isn't worth the bother, slice it up and flood the market at below the "normal" price... and everything could very quickly collapse.

The collapse and re-establishment of reasonable prices will happen - it's just a matter of when and how, rather than if.

Broccoli

Sorry, I was referring to the mainland. I don't have any dealings with private islands.

However, let's repeat your math exactly with mainland land, shall we?

A full mainland sim currently goes for say US$3000, and one months tier on the mainland is US$195, a total of US$3195. A sim is usually 65536 sqm (sometimes less if there's protected water or roads), so at an exchange rate of L$270/US$1 that works out at around 13.2L$ per square metre.

Now tell me selling that land for L$14 constitutes an "unreasonable profit".

Anyway, my point was not that profits aren't actually that high but that there's no such thing as an unreasonable profit in a capitalist society. There's only profit and loss.

Unfortunately or not, we know what the seller paid . start from auctions of sims. It is the starting point.

The last one went I think for 3300kUS$. Plus 1 month of the first month tier (which you will have to pay anyway) =3500kUS$.

By 270 as exchange rate= 945000 Linden$ which is 14,5 L/sq.m
And they take the risk that their land will go in 1 month.

That's the reality. At this rate , the auctioning price of 8192 plot is 114k linden. Believe it or not

From that point, everything is reasonable. The reseller would like to add a 15-30% on top , depending on the risks someone would like to take, since nobody knows if it's land will be sold or not soon.

Now why should someone risk for 3k$ a sim when the 1 month cost of a private island is less than 2K$, that's something that someone has to consider. But don't fool ourselves, there are some reasons.
I own an island, but I am not expecting someone to come and buy from me, since they will have to pay me every month their tier. And if I am gone, then you just forget it. On the mainland you trust that Linden and SL will be around for sometime.

Also , majority of players wants small plots of land, so they can't touch islands. So Mainland seems to be more secure environment even more crappy and with more limitations.