Buying an Island

Hi,

I have now 14.336 m² of land. I pay for it a monthly fee of 135us$

So I was thinking of buying an island. 15.000m² for personal use and 50.000m² that i will rent.

The cost for an island is a one time setup fee of 1.675us$ and a monthly fee of 295us$

I'm trying to make a calculation of how mutch land I have to rent and at what cost to become break even.

So, an island is 65.536m² and has 15.000 prims.
65.536m² = 128 parts of 512m² with 117 prims each.

The 128 is in theorie:
You have to make beaches, water, roads, parks, ....

Can an 'experienced land lord ' tell me:

How mutch 'sellable' space is left for a 'normal' island ?
Is it 90%, 80%, ....

How many prims do you need for creating the island ?
Putting the roads, some trees, ...

How mutch of the island is rented in a normal case ?
How many renters have payment problems, don't pay, ... ?
...
...

Well it depends on what you wanna do of the sim.
You could sell or rent land, you could build houses for rent, build a mall, build a park..
And depends on how much you work for make the sim beautiful and desirable.
And you should be competitive with prices too.
The more land you give out the lower prices u can set, if you keep a lot of land for making it beautiful the less parcels you can cut, so you should raise the prices to have the same income. It is mostly up to how you like to make it
Myself im for beauty and exclusiveness, might cost more and have less incomes but it worths both for myself and for my tenants
Most of landlords though are not interested at all in anything but the money they can make out of it. You can see sims slices into 512 sqm parcels (well lets see, 128 parcels, very good income as the smaller the parcel the more it costs per sqm usually.. wow i'll get rich! Who cares if people who will buy those parcels can't live cause a sim can usually support 40-60 people together so more than half of tenant won't be able to get into the sim where they purchased land, i make money that's all).
Or you can make a beautiful sim, invest money on a good landscape, on common areas, cutting parcels of different sizes to satisfy potential tenants needs, offer a good quality customer service, leave some land among parcels borders so neighbor's lands won't be *touching* and so on.. Of course you'll have to invest more, and you'll get less incomes
You gotta balance the money side with the customers side, the market demand, the market prices and make it better than others
Competition makes life better and cheaper for everybody ^^

I think Mattie summed it up fairly well.

It's definatly going to be a balancing act, personally I am a fan of well designed and implemented Sims so if I was doing the project I would definatly be looking to include landscaping and other things to attract the renter.

That said many of my friends rent and often in sims where they are divided up with no landscaping but in all cases the plots are fairly large 2048 minimum and using Matties point about number of people on a sim I would probably go for 20 plots max. Many people have visitors etc.

Therefore lets' say 20 plots of 2304 = just over 46000.

Then 4000 for pathways etc.

15000 for yourself.

Now I've done a quick calculation and 20 plot's = $14.75 US/Month which is actually better than the premium rate for owning the same size of land ( 1536 to 2540 = $25 pcm ) however of course a resident who was renting off you wouldn't get a stipend but the extra $10 = around 2600Lindens so the resident is still better off. Up that rate to $20US/Month and you'd make a profit AND the resident can spend the $5 ( difference to land tier ) on around 1300 Lindens.

$20/month comes to L$1288/week which is more than I'm currently paying for 5664m² so that's quite expensive.

The idea is not bad but the calculation is not correct.

Setup fee of the server = 1675 us$:
+ 140.00us$ (12 months return)
+ 70.00us$ (24 months)

What if you can't find 20 people to rent ?
What if you have people who don't pay you ?
...., .... , ....

For security it's maybe better to have 30 plots at 14.75 us/month ?


-----------------

I have seen a island for sale 65.536m² that had only 1875 prims.
How is this possible?
Is it an old server or something ?

Kitty, it also sounds like you have an excellent rental deal. I _thought_ I was giving decent value, but can't even nearly approach what it sounds like you're getting.

- 65,536 / 5,664 = 11.6 "plots" of 5,664 sqm
- even at $20/month (which you say is MORE than what you're paying)
- that would yield: $20/m x 11.6 = $232/month TOTAL income

Of course, you can't even rent out "11.6" parcels, this would be reserving NO land for the owner, and NO land for roads / parks, and you're paying even LESS than $20/month, so in the ends, the total income is LESS than $232/month for the owner.

Given that even OLD island monthly fees (and current mainland tiers) are $195/month, I'm not sure I can explain how your current landlord is able to at best, simply break even.

But, lucky you, to have such a deal!

These are so-called "high area" regions (an euphemistic term for "low prim". I read somewhere that this is done by pooling a couple of such regions on a single lower-grade simulator. Purportedly this kind of region also doesn't support a lot of activity (i.e. # of avs, prims worn, scripted objects, etc.).

Maybe he has less prims than usual.

I'm planning to do the same thing.

I need a lot of prims for a shopping mall and i am planning to rent lets say 10 big peaces of land with say 1000 prims each witch is enough to build a house or so.
Total prim usage is 10.000, left 5.000 prims for land owner

Or the landowner is speculating: he needs a lot of prims but ALL his renters do not use 100% of there prims. 10 renters with an average prim usage of 500 = 5000 used prims.

What is the average prim use on rented land ?

well remember that some regions are *old fees* that is $195 USD / month, thus prices for rent and tier fees can be lower still allowing some income to sim owners.
At the new prices for new Priva Islands the *minimum* costs for each 1k (1024 sqm, 234 prims) are about L$7300 to buy and L$ 1300 monthly maintainance fees.
That is to cover the costs of ALL land with NO incomes.
Of course you should consider if you keep some land for common area/landscaping, thus not giving out for rent/buy all the sim, the monthly price should be raised keeping that in mind and allowing at least a minimum income.
If renting you should put in the rent fees the cost of land (of course delayed in time) cause those L$7300 for each 1k parcel you should in some way get back (might require lot of months of course).
Check out fees of some of the big *landlords* to get an average of prices, then try to be competitive and offer quality and creativity to make your sim more appealing to potential cusromers than others
And usually smaller parcels cost more per sqm than bigger parcels.

I agree it's a best case example but it's a starting point. $15US as better than buying the equivelent land on Mainland so you could push up the value to $20 ( needing to rent 15 plots ) and still give a service that is better value than buying mainland land.

I would probably go for 20@$20 rather than 30@$15 because you only have to find 20 residents.

Kitty is clearly getting an absolute bargain with her land with the owner not making the slightest bit of profit.

You gotta add to your calculations that you might have some plots not rented (can't be sure you will always have all the sim rented) and you will still need to pay the whole amount to LL each month, so to cover empty plots you should raise the price in the way you think it's best for you and for your tenants

... which may raise the doubt of the continued viability of her landlord's venture. The too-low rent would turn out not to be such a bargain afgter all if he suddenly goes belly-up and, in the worst case, somebody else taking over just deletes all her objects from the parcel w/o returning them.

If my supplier were in a demonstrably loss-making position, I would start to get worried and look for a sustainable alternative.

Which I did, 20 plots earning $20pcm means you need 15 actually earning to break even.

(Sorry the semi hijack)

I've been renting there since about June or early July, which is over 9 months now, and the sim has been around longer than that. If anything, I'd wager that I'll still be around on that rental long after most of the new profit-hungry landlords go belly-over.

My plot costs them $16.85, I pay a $19.35 equivalent, more than their cost so I don't see any demonstrably loss-making position either.

My point was that the OP is currently paying $135/month, and wants his/her own sim instead. With 1/4 of the sim for personal use, 3/4 of the sim has to make enough to cover the entire tier and of course it needs to make money on top of that. That's just never going to compete with high-volume rentals, leaving the OP with the headache of making sure there are enough renters.

Or the OP could just pay for the use of the 1/4 sim they'll be using which can still be lower than the current expense, and price the rest competitively compared to the rest out there to make up for the increased tier.

I wouldn't say the suggestions above are 'profit hungry'

It appears your sim is split into 11 plots (ignoring the 0.6 which could be rented too but for less) and therefore at best your landlord is making about $20 pcm profit. If he's using one of the plots himself then if ALL the plots are rented he's breaking even (just).

HE's clearly happy with not making a profit or covering himself, or even able to lose money, however from a pure business PoV he's not following sensible business strategy.

If he's running a RL job and using the rental to offset most of the sim cost then fair enough but if someone wants what amounts to a free island then the costings suggested elsewhere in this thread are more realistic.

It also depends what people want out of their rental. If it's a mainland style plot of land with no buffers around (and most mainland sims of course have roads and buffers ) then you can charge less. But a properly managed sim with reasonably large areas of common land and suchlike will attract people and people will pay more for the land. Of that I'm asure.

My suggestions at BEST bring in $400USD per month, $105 profit, but that's best case and of that $105 ir would take 16 MONTHS to break even.

Profit hungry? Hardly.