Where to get advice about successful property renting?

'ello. Short answer is, who do we turn to for advice in renting out our sim? Which board, what group, what people are experts?

...if THIS is the board, well, let me relate my tale of semi-woe. It's good reading.

A few weeks back, my sister and I pooled our cash and bought a sim -- Flotsam Beach. We wanted to design an EAST coast beach, instead of the polynesian/tiki style west coast / island styles we were seeing. We scanned the market, found that almost every beach community we saw was rented out, checked what their price per prims were, evaluated how many prims we wanted for our own projects, etc, etc. We did our homework, basically.

We opened up the island with a number of boardwalk shops and beach houses for rent. The idea was we'd kill the competition with great prim limits and great prices. We determined that L$3 a prim was below both the average and the median for rental properties, so we'd price ours at L$3 a prim, prefab buildings NOT counting against your limit, and set up like this:

256sqm / 150 prims / $450/week
512sqm / 300 prims / $900/week
1024sqm / 600 prims / $1800/week

Massive prim limits, with great prefabs! All our research including a booming, if smaller ski chalet business on the mainland indicated we had a sure thing. We took out an expensive classified, promoted it across several means including an SLX ad, etc, etc. Plenty of people visited through the ad, too. Our tracker says we get about 75 visitors a day!

...and we got about three renters. Two were friends of ours. We frequently got comments about how great the sim was, how nicely designed, but no renters.

"Okay, theory #2," we pitched. The problem was that while our price per prim was fine, we were offering too much and thus it COST too much as well. We slashed our prices recently, by making more rentables -- creating two apartment complexes and sacrificing some of our own space. Now, we're offering...

256sqm / 75 prims / L$225 a week
512sqm / 150 prims / L$450 a week
1024sqm / 300 prims / L$900 a week

Essentially, about half what we had before.

We're still in the process of converting over, due to the new prefabs and new lot chopping to do... but I have a naggling sense of doom. Time's moving on and we're not making any more than peanuts off the few renters we have. Will the revamp do the trick, or are we missing something critical here even now?

What are we doing wrong? Is the price bad? Prim levels bad? Do people just hate beaches? Why do we have such great positive feedback from visitors but no takers? Will the new scheme work, do we just need to set it up and wait?

Advice needed badly from subject matter experts. Anyone?

See if either Desmond Shang or Sarah Nerd can offer up any advice. Both have had great success with sim rentals.

Also, check out this thread: /327/e5/188670/1.html

My only advice is this: Be patient. You may have to eat your tier for a month, but eventually you will get the renters you are looking for.

Hi Seven! Been ages!

Let's see now.


Teh maths:

A fairly common rental rate on new, higher tier private sims is 30 USD/mo for 4096m standard, or 976 prims, and linear factors thereof.

So that's 7.50 USD/mo for 1024m standard - 234 prims... converting to $L / wk that's:

234 prims at 7.50 USD/mo * 266 $L/USD * 1/4.333 mo/wk = 461 $L / week.

You are offering 150 prims for 450 $L/week, if I understand your post. There's no right or wrong answer here, but seems a shade high.



The land itself:

Well, it's not really land. That's the thing. It's creative control. It's funny, but the very things that make for a beautiful sim can drive *away* people! Some examples:

Rules against plywood, construction, small signs = sim that comes off as VERY static, and pretty but not necessarily fun.

- Plywood is life.
- Annoying event signs that get in the way are activity and community.
- Whimsical variation from the norm = freedom!

Also, look at the sim - could people be intimidated? How many people would say: Wow, I can't build like Michelangelo, how could I ever possibly feel like I belong in this place?

You might not have this problem if prefabs are required. Instead, you may have people thinking: what if *I* want to show a little building style around here?

I haven't seen the sim, so I really can't say, but those things will definitely contribute to the vibe.



Community:

Is it just a place for people to hang out, in splendid isolation with the friends they already have? That's great, but it will put you in dead-on competition with desolate mainland, and every friend-of-a-friend's sim that the residents have.

Here's a magic bullet for community: a group IM channel. Not to spam people, not to pester. But to allow people to talk, wheresoever they may be.

I get an almost daily complaint: The Caledon group channel talks a LOT, I can barely think!!! So okay, it's not needed, just drop the group, mmm? But then they say: I can't, I LOVE chatting on it or just listening to the fun! Include friends of the sim into the group, paying residents or no; no requirements. Works wonders.

Also, people *really* pick up on how you feel about the sim. Worried? Your community will worry too. Excited? They will pick up on it. Having fun? It's infectious, they will often 'catch' the fun too.

Also, a big hint: every mama loves *their* baby. You may have the most incredible looking sim ever made, but if the sim wasn't built almost prim by prim from the dreams of its residents, there will be a distance... an aloofness that translates to a sense of "I'm just passing through" for anyone staying in its beautiful but immutable prettiness.

For perspective, 94% of Caledon's prims are under direct control of the residents. Yeap, that means I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and put my faith in others.

My covenant enforcement has been described as 'comatose' - I might point out something to someone maybe once a week, if even that. Proof positive that the beauty of Caledon is resident-created - not Desmond created or forced. They did an awesome job, and it's their dream more than it's mine.



Hope that helps... and to be honest, I'd be scared myself to launch a sim at current prices, with no existing reputation. 1675 USD is a tidy chunk of change, and 295 USD/mo is a new car loan.

I wish I could be more helpful, but to be honest any insights I'd have, I've already said here.

I wish you the very best, and should the seas ever open up, expect Caledon ships visiting your fine shores.

my veiws on this for what they are worth lol


256sqm / 75 prims / L$225 a week
is a good price, i pay anywhere from 150 - 250 per week for up to 25 prims


it's nice to see developed land but unfortunately thats not always what people want
you need something / a reason to draw people there, think to yourself why should people
rent from me when they can rent from any number of the thousands of other mall locations
which basically all it is a developed open air mall as i just see shop's to rent.

not everyone uses classifieds to search for things many use places search and i think this is letting you down, you need to capitalise on the land description as thats what places search uses for key words, also traffic helps hugely here and i notice your sim is cut up in to smaller plots so your traffic is divided.

just a few things i noticed

Thank you SO much for you advice here! Let's see if I can clarify some...

Desmond, 234 prim / L$461 a week is L$1.97 a prim. From our research that's VERY low; we saw plenty of folks charling L$3 or L$4 a prim and renting out. (Of course, we might've been looking only at special case examples!) I'm not sure we can even break even at that rate... but I'll look into it.

Our lands all come with prefabs, which are required. Other than that we have no rules beyond not having huge billboards or distracting event signs, or sexual content on public display. What goes in your own home is your own biz. So you don't need to be a Master Builder to rent here -- but we aren't looking to satisfy the market need of people who build their own homes, either.

We might make more rentals if we let people break theme and build whatever they want rather than using our beach houses... but since we're shooting for a high quality land with a consistent theme, it seems to make sense to require the prefabs. Otherwise you get the mainland effect of mideval sex dungeons next to space stations next to giant yellow phallic towers, etc...

That's what we (hope) sets us apart from other rentals. We have a theme, and it's a solid and reliable one. We have a number of social spots and good shopping. I hope that's enough... I'd like to avoid being Just Another Bunch of Rentable Empty Lots.

One thing I'd add is that in my experience renters accumulate slowly but stay a long time. So I may gain 1 or 2 new renters every month but each of them stays for many many months.

If this is a general trend then it means you should be prepared to stay mostly empty for 3 or 4 months. Changing your strategy around every few weeks is no way to get your business off the ground.

As for rates, I'd say L$2 per prim is about the right rate to target. At full capacity it's going to get you somewhere around $488 and you can afford to be only 60% full which seems more than reasonable.

On the Fair-Isles Estate (Sukka Mire, Swey and Hoini) renters get 900 prims for L$1700, fabulous SkyHomes, professionally designed interiors, and awesome beaches.

I think you are charging way over at L$3 per prim, they are charging less than L$2.

Vi

I'm not sure how our research led us to $3 a prim, then... we scanned almost a hundred rental ads to check for average prices. I guess we can swing $2 a prim, but there's a problem...

We are not renting out the entire sim. Why bother owning an island if you're not actually going to make any use of it? That's half the point, we're using some of the prim budget to landscape and produce really good prefabs -- and some of it's also set aside for our own projects, namely my arcade and our shop. Plus, we were told (is this correct?) that having 1000-1500 prims spare is a good idea to cut down on lag...

I'm guessing we're going to have to charge OURSELVES rent, IE, not try to use the other lots to cover our own projects... that means skirting the profit margin quite a bit since we have to use shop profits to try to cover what we're not getting by not giving up that land. At $3 a prim it's covered easily but at $2 a prim we may be running in the red.

Is it really all doom and gloom if you want to run a sim for any purpose other than renting it all out?

You have 40% leeway, as long as you're getting paid for more than 60% of the prims you should be in the black.

Okay... I just ran the numbers.

If I chuck the advice I was given to have 1500 prims of buffer to prevent lag, I can rent off 11000 prims. That's 73% of the island.

At L$2 a prim, after all is said and done, that's approx US$309 a month. We can JUST make slightly more than Island tier price... but that's assuming it's all rented out, which is clearly not a common thing. So in other words, it's not possible to get the thing to float on its own merits unless we chuck our own projects and just rent out 90% of the island, and even then it'll go into the red unless 78% of it's rented out, which as noted, is not likely.

There's gotta be something I'm missing here. Unless sim rental only works for empty pancake land like Anshe islands.

11000prims * 2L$/prim / 266L$/USD * 0.965exchange fee * 52 weeks/year / 12months/year =
$345 USD/month

That's ~15% profit per month, fairly considerable and you're not even getting paid for 26% of your prims.

Good point -- using the 266 rate gives a boost, and I was using a 4-week-a-month multiplier when really it's 52/12. That does raise the margins a bit.

My concern then is the above statements that you shouldn't count on a sim being any more than 60% rented out. That'd really hurt, if it never gets past that point. Hopefully our shop profits can cover the gap on dry months, or hopefully that's just pessimism in practice and the reality will prove more fruitful once the prices drop.

Okay. I'm willing to try out 2$L a prim. Question is, how many of those two dollar prims per SQM lot? We can toy with the number/size of lots by using vertically stacked apartments to spread things out, so we can swing about anything. From your experiences, what are people willing to pay for, what's pushing it too far into the rich zone?

Seven, I posted in the other forum about some suggestions for you after visiting Flotsam Beach. Sorry, I meant to post it in this thread.

You can view my comment at /327/e5/188670/2.html

Elanthius,

Are you saying to charge L$2/prim for just the prim allowance you give the tenant, or do you factor in the prims used by the prefab house and any landscaping as well, on that plot? I am assuming you mean L$2/prim just for that decorating/furnishings allotment. Please correct me if I am misunderstanding this.

Heh, welcome to forum crossposting city.

THANK YOU for your feedback. I'm compiling up all the feedback here (and there!) into a plan of action.

Right now, since my thinking changes from hour to hour but we will pick one plan and stick to it I swear... I'm thinking:

* Two lindenbucks a prim.

* For every 256sqm, 90 prims, L$180 a week. (Some lots are 512s and 1024s, multiply as appropriate.) This seems like a good baseline; please tell me if I'm wrong!

* Less physical lots, to space things out more. Vary the houses slightly. (We don't want to make any unappealing due to lack of enough floorspace, etc, but small changes are plausible.)

* Make available to the residents 'virtual lot extensions', IE buying extra prims if they need it. Keep a bunch floating expressly for that purpose rather than demolishing a house to add prims to someone else's. We already have one shopkeeper who's using 600 and would love to use more. That'll help us space things out, since we won't need a physical house for every rentable lot.

End cash, after all wrangling, is US$345 when fully rented. Add our shop profits to that and we should be in the black, if not the green, after every month. Hopefully. Cross fingers.

So the 90 prims is their decorating allotment, and doesn't include the prims for the house and landscaping, is that correct?

This gets so complicated! Every time I am certain I know how I want to do it, I read another comment that changes my mind! And sometimes it is comparing apples to oranges, when you start talking about whether you are charging by the square meter, or charging by the prim. The consensus that seems to be emerging indicates you charge by the prim.

Back to the drawing board to rework my plans. My calcualations put me impossibly high, and i knew that, which is why I started asking questions.

And this is getting confusing as we all keep bounching back and forth between your thread, and mine. Let's all pick just one, and stick to it so the info stays together.

Which one seems to contain the most info at this point?

Princess Ivory

Let's stay here, so as not to clutter the other thread with non-Flotsamy stuff. I don't wanna step on an existing conversation!

You're correct in that the prefab building does NOT count against the prim limit. That's 90 prims per 256 sqm of pure decoration. We eat the cost of the building so you don't have to. That means a typical 512 lot with a beach house on it lets you set out 180 prims of furniture, a 1024 sqm large square shop allows 360 prims of sale boxes and displays, etc. At industry standard L$2 a prim, that means take your prims, double, and that's how much you pay a week.

In general, we ARE charging by the prim -- saying "256 sqm" is just easy shorthand for planning things out! It beats having insanely variable prim allocations ("This one gets 60, this one gets 85, this one gets 132, etc". It's a nice, digestible chunk. And under the new plan, as you suggested we're going to remove a few buildings and space them out more -- and the prims they used to offer for rent go in a holding tank for people to expand their limits, if they so desire.

There's a lot of excel-fu remaining, but the calculations look solid. If two-buck prims appeal, as this thread says they will, then this will work. And we'll have the virtual prim holdings on hand for people who need more.

For reference only -

...the latest Caledon sims typically use about 450 infrastructure prims out of the 15,000 a sim is allowed, and the rest is for residents. Rocks, trees, road, streetlamps, a few small touches. Surprised? (yeah, the residents really bring a sim to life don't they!)

There are exceptions, but even the SkyCity sim uses less than 1000 prims for every last scrap of infrastructure.

I'm charging... *grabs calculator* ... $L 1.96 / week for prims in my newer sims, and $L 1.64 / week for prims in my lower tier, older sims.

Ours uses roughly 3500 prims. This is for:

* Plants, trees, etc
* Roads and infrastructure
* All the shop and house prefabs
* Our own atmosphere facilities (lighthouse, drive-in, roller rink, food court)
* Our shop and arade.

That leaves 11000 to rent, with a 500 prim buffer for vehicles and temp rezzes and the like.

If we want more rentable prims we have to demolish the roller rink and some of the other features people have said makes our island unique and appealing... or we have to make the prefabs count against limits, which means letting people choose NOT to use them, which means the old mideval sex castle and space station landscape effect. A covenant could be put in place requesting "beach structures only" but that'd be a nightmare to enforce.

Desmond, are you saying that you let them build or purchase their own homes and yard ornamentation? Do you just ask that they honor the time period, in their choice of building, then? And how do you decide how many prims to give them? Is it based on the standard prim allotment per plot size?

Princess Ivory

Building or purchasing their own homes - you bet I do.

Anyone who prebooks a spot in Caledon through me gets a free house - I sometimes draw off my own West Trade Imports LTD for that, but usually I've had other top shelf designers involved, especially for new sim openings.



I do just ask that they honour the time period, but it's more than that, and less at the same time.

The theme is 19th c. Victorian steampunk, but it's pretty inclusive. There might be a treehouse, say, with a perfectly respectable, well read 19th. century bespectacled badger residing therein. That selfsame badger might possess a Wellesian Time Machine for his travels (to be used only for Historic Purposes, in generating source material for his thesis soon to be presented to the Caledon Library).

So... while you might find a badger in bowler and tweed navigating a 1950's Chevy Bel Air down the cobblestone streets of Old Caledon now and again, it would be treated as the genuinely curious and fantastical thing that it actually is. The car, of course. Not the badger.



Lot sizes are generally standard 1024m, 2048m, 4096m &c &c. with the same number of prims as the mainland has.

Lately in the newish sims I've been doing same, but all double prim. Lot easier to say 'same as mainland' or 'double prims than mainland' than to wade through prim pricing calculations.


Hope this helps?

Hi Seven I'm one of your fans as far as your content etc goes. I had looked at your place and loved it and even considered renting space, however here is the thing in my viewpoint for what its worth.

If i rented it would be as a seller this may sound odd but I only need 30-40 prims and most places I go to although prices are climbing in some builds I pay about 125-150 per 25 prims, recently prices have gone up and if I dont get any sales I pull out. I would rent a larger space but as with anything with "bulk" price does go down a bit. In any event I will probably be along to start up a place there as I have a neat idea that might at least make it not a huge out of pocket cost. I saw the original prices and felt it was very high.

Also I might share with someone I think I love the large spaces etc except that spacewise and merchandise/decoration wise its very hard to fill a large space with a low amount of prims.

Anyhow I would lower the prices a bit on the larger buildings and keep the prices the same on the smaller ones. I dont know if this makes sense or not to you but there is also the tier discount thingy that comes into play.

I think also your problem might be time of year. Although I have not suffered a huge hit to sales (yet) now I am sure i will that I have said it I know many people are. A further suggestion is if you keep the prices at the present rate is to place an ad that will cover the businesses in there. Maybe I'm unrealistic but when I pay a bit of a higher price if they dont advertise and I dont see any traffic in a 2-3 week trial I leave.

I am also looking for a place to script and build in peace my main place has now become very busy so I'm kinda pondering that as well.

Anyhow I will stop rambling I was very tempted to rent the other day but had just spent a lot of time shuffling stuff around and a fair amount of Lindens. Anyhow I will be along shortly (well not as in today) and likely rent a large "shop space" soon mainly because I have something that I wouldl ike to try that likely will fit in there very well.

Also please dont take down your roller rink hehe or anything else for that matter. The enthusiasts will eventually show up and Im one of them just a bit slow (its an age thing ^^)

Thanks for your feedback.

Jen and I are still trying to hammer out a final plan here. There has to be SOME way to make a sim pay for itself without renting out 95% of its prims as Caledon does... half the reason we got the island was so our shop and arcade would have a better home than the mainland (we got plagued by ad towers and bad neighbors) and we could launch new projects in peace. But if we can't pay for the sim from renting out the parts we aren't using, that future's in jeopardy.

Surely there's some combination of rent price, lot size, prefabs/no prefabs, skyboxes, apartments, whatever that will make it WORK... we just need to figure out how the heck to do it. I refuse to believe the only way to survive is to just sell the entire server in big, empty chunks like Anshe does.

Okay, here's a summary of today's plan we cooked up.

We're taking the advice of Desmond and Princess and the others to heart, and trying to match industry standards. We've found a way to have our cake and eat it too -- IE, have our own projects and still turn enough of a profit to keep it floating.

Under our new plan, we're using L$2 a prim, 2x prim multiplier, Desmond style.

256sqm / 115 prims / L$230 wk
512sqm / 230 prims / L$460 wk
1024sqm / 460 prims / L$920 wk
Tents / 15 prims / L$30 wk
Extra 230 Prims / +L$460 wk

SHOPS/TENTS: Your prefab shop is mandatory, but doesn't count against limit. This keeps our boardwalk shops in-theme. We're improving the tents and making more 256 small shops to satisfy the needs of smaller business owners.

HOMES: The prefab is free, optional (install your own theme appropriate house), and does count against limit. This is industry standard, renting an empty space rather than a mandatory prefab home.

How are we making it work? We're setting up skybox plots around the rim of the island, above the open water. If someone rents an "Extra 230 Prims" we just knock an empty skybox plot off the grid. (If there are no free skyboxes, we simply don't offer this option anymore.)

All lots together, even under the lower prices, will pay for the sim plus some buffer.

My hope is that by following community standards for how to offer properties, it'll be less confusing, more palatable to the wallet, and more appealing to renters. It'll take a few days to set everything up, but once we're done, I'll post announcing it.

THANK YOU for the advice. And if you have further advice on the above, let me know!

Hi Seven,

I think part of the problem you face may be that larger land owners are able to charge less on some plots knowing that over their whole rental system they can still make up the profit or at least cover tier. They do this to stay competitive.

For example I believe my land lord holds quite a bit of property and the island I rent from has no special theme and has been split into 4096 plots (mostly anyways) and I rent a 4096 plot which comes with 937 prims at a cost per week of L$1700 and if I pay a months rent in advance I get ten per cent knocked from the price.
I have looked around and these are very good prices.
I have only ever seen a few places with vacancies that come close to these prices.

However it sounds like these numbers would not be viable for anyone who has only one island to rent out based on the current island prices and on going tier costs. So I must assume this shortfall is made up on other properties held by the same land lord.

So I believe you must find a different way to differentiate your island that brings people to you instead seeing as it is hard to compete on price.

Ideas:

Maybe you could charge different L$/sqm rates for the different sized plots. The rates for popular sizes would be more than the not so popular sizes.

Maybe make waterfront plots get less prims than the same sized inland plots to make the inland areas more attractive. Waterfront property is already very sought after and people may still be willing to rent them with lower prim allocatments.

Maybe you could create a unique or unusual variation on a existing theme that is popular and sought after for your island like Desmond has with Caledon and take a fair and balanced approach to enforcement. This will get fans of the genre interested - an example might be a Lovecraftian themed island.
People seem to be willing to pay more for a themed location especially if it has a great community going.

The community aspect is probably *the* most valuable part of the whole deal. If you can foster a community then the location will be more sought after. The down side of this is that requires hard work and active participation of your part to create and drive this as a community - at least initially.

Also if you think that general demand for island plots will rise and that supply will be relatively scare then set a price you are happy with and wait if you can. People are often willing to pay more due to scarcity.
Obviously with the latter you need to be aware that larger land owners will be expanding their holdings also which will offset demand.

BTW The last time I look on the island I rent from (a couple of days ago) there were at least 3 x 4096 plots unrented at the above prices. This is unusual for this island since I have been there as it is quite popular (I have been there almost 4 months). This could indicate a general slump in the market.
This would not be surprising given the series of bombshells that LL have been dropping lately.

Just my thoughts
Regards
Nathan Childs