Land resellers

I've been shopping for a small piece of land to build an office on, and found one that looked promising tonight (now that Search works). When I teleported there, I found a crowd of resellers lauging over the fact that the land had been bought and placed back up for sale at a higher price. I admit I probably shouldn't have shot of my mouth, but I find the practice disgusting, and told them that it sucked. I was then shot by one of them. So, since this is a Resident Answers section, my *question* is, can anything be done about this? Does anyone else think this is unfair, or abuse of the system? Perhaps there should be a time limit between the time land is bought and land is sold. Thoughts? Or rather, thoughts from anyone that isn't a land reseller?

This forum is a place for people to ask for help with Second Life, not to villify categories of people by labeling them as vultures and asking people to join you in your insults.

I was asking for ideas on what could be done about this practice in order to allow the majority of SL citizens to be able to buy land without being taken advantage of. I assume by your post that you see nothing wrong with this.

free market. the original seller shouldn't have sold it so cheap. blame him.

Edit
PS sorry to hear you got shot at. That is definitely abusive. Even if you were "shooting off your mouth" this does not justify their escalation of the confrontation.

Like in real life you will have people take advantage of the niave. If its legal they will do it. Unfortuantly, buying land and then reselling it at an inflated price is not illegal. Shooting you on public lands is against the guidelines, but from what I have seen an abuse petition will do you no good.

All I can advise is you 'Move on' to the next lot. I know it sucks but unfortunatly thats the way the world is in RL or SL..

Cheers

Your questions in order:

1. Yes there is something you can do about it. Get there before they do.
2. Its not only not unfair, its a great way to make fast cash.
3. There is a time limit. 1-2 seconds.

Thoughts from a former land seller: Quit whining. If you got a cheap piece of property, and no longer wanted it, wouldnt you want to sell it for a profit ? There ya go.

Bopete, I happened to be one of the resellers who was there. The only reason we were all there was because Land Sales search was broken and returning old results, so a lot of us saw what appeared to be a cheap parcel in the results. We were laughing about the fact that it still appeared cheap in the sales list even though it had already been bought and put for sale at a new price by somebody. We then proceeded to have a discussion about where we saw land prices going and our different strategies.

It's a free market, and people are free to buy and sell at whatever price they choose.

Interestingly, you called us all vultures, despite the fact that you too were trying to benefit from cheap land.

As for being shot at, yes, that was unacceptable and I would consider filing an Abuse Report. The person in question made us all look bad by that action, which I believe the majority of us stated at the time.

Stephen, thanks for replying...

You are correct - at the time of the incident I was highly annoyed at everyone there - wrongly so - in part for what happened to the land, but mostly for being attacked by one player, and that wasn't fair. As for me trying to profit from cheap land, I was only looking for somewhere to build an office - not something I could make a quick $L from.

I believe the phrase I used at the time was "sleazy" and that was only in regards to the practice of snatching up land, raising the price, and putting it back up for sale immediately. I wasn't aiming it at anyone it particular (save for the person that did it, which I had no idea who it was at the time). i also had no idea what the response of the crowd was since I was flung far away, and tp-ed out as soon as I saw what happened. As for filing an abuse report, I needed time to cool off and think about what to do, but also didn't know if that would simply stir up more hostility from anyone that the player associates with. So I appreciate your reply.

Bopete, it's really just one aspect of a free market. At one time it used to be possible for land resellers (epithetically called 'swoopers') to have 'land scanners' all over the grid that would notify them the moment land went up for sale. LL determined that gave the resellers an unfair advantage over other players, and they made changes in the scripting language so land scanners couldn't be built.

The result is that all players now theoretically have the same chance at scoring affordable land. The resellers have to search the land listings and world map manually just like you do. It's all just a matter of who gets there first.

I said 'theoretically' because I've heard rumors of an exploit that allows knowledgeable people to wrongfully obtain land reserved for new residents at a super-low price. Not all resellers necessarily know of, or avail themselves of this exploit.

Personally I get really annoyed around the holidays when people line up outside stores to buy up the latest hot toy or gadget, with the sole intent of listing it on eBay at an inflated price. I think it's gross and opportunistic, but at the same time I think the alternatives would be worse. How do you stop people from buying up all the PlayStation 3's only to resell them? Do you outlaw eBay? Do you send case workers to purchasers' homes to ensure they're actually using their PlayStation? I don't think anyone would want that.

Money-involved games will always be influnced by the market. Resellers gain their income from fluctuations in the current market-price (which no-one know what it is). They take a risk, a speculation in an upgoing market. We can all do that!

And in some way, we can all gain (or loose) from it. Sell your land in 6 months and you will get more than today? Who knows? No one knows!

Resellers are here to stay, and forever. We will never get rid of them. As long as there are the smallest possibility to make profit of buying something to one price and sell it to another, they will always exist. It's called the market.

All we can do is to get used to it, accept it. BUT, to prevent feeding the market (resellers). Don't sell without checking the market price. Sell to people you know. Give good prices to people you like.

Now see to yourself. If you had a land you bought cheap... put it up for sale just for fun... gain 5k in one hour... tempting?

We're ALL resellers in some way, aren't we? If we get the chance.

I am one of those people who buys land and sells it again for profit. SL is a place to play the game of your choice, and making money from land is a perfectly legitimate game!

One of the thrilling aspects of this game is just that! It's legitimate to do whatever you wish, as long as you stay within the borders of the game, set by Linden. So ofcourse, buying and selling land is legitimate for everyone. If you think you're good at it, do it! My interests are somewhere else, some like to do clothing, some like building, some selling/buying. They are all legitimate!

Good point Conifer, that's what's it's all about really.

For the record, I am not a land-seller (or a seller of much anything).

I do not think it is unfair to spend your time buying low and selling high. Land that is available for free buying and selling should be available for anyone to buy and sell and that inevitably means some people will buy and sell for profit.

I am not sure a timelimit makes sense. Why should not people buy and sell for profit? It is not as if SL land is a commodity that is necessary for anyone's health or survival (which I would see as causes for enforcing availability).

As the saying goes, it's not stupid to ask for a price, but to pay it.

(I do think it is a somewhat silly way to spend your time... but to each their own.)

There's nothing wrong or immoral about buying land, using it and then later reselling it for a higher price when you no longer need it.

However, that's not what a reseller does (the land isn't used other than planting annoying advertising prims on it) and from a community point of view it's mostly parasitic behaviour because it artificially inflates land prices and devaluates the surrounding land. Other than a higher sale price, a reseller doesn't add anything of value to a piece of land for sale.

There are acceptable aspects to reselling (if someone wants to sell in a hurry, they could contact a reseller, get a lower than market price, while the reseller gets to sell the land for a profit), but the active swooping up of fair priced land only to drive up land prices certainly isn't.

Wanting to profit isn't the issue, the manner in which the sales are conducted is.

Never to forget, it's the sellers that sets the price. It's you and me that sells our land to resellers, isn't it ? Sell cheap to get money fast? Someone else will buy and sell at a higher price. So who did something wrong?

It drives up the cost of the market in general, and forces people to pay a higher price than they would have had to pay if they'd been buying directly from the resident of that land.

This practice has been around as long as people could buy and sell land, and I tend to agree with the OP that it is a little unfair to the people who would have been otherwise able to afford land. It's simple profit-taking while providing no service. Say what you want, but I can't see a single benefit to the community at large for this practice. Yes, it does allow you to sell your land more quickly, but if people were looking to buy land for themselves, they would have bought your land anyway. The only time I can see this being a valuable service is for the people who need to dump land quickly to prevent being charged tier again.

However, there's no practical way to stop the practice. Even putting a time limit on the sale would just cause resellers to adjust their prices upward to cover the extra tier cost. The only thing I can think of would be to limit the volume of land that could be bought and resold through one account. However, since land in SL is the only true fixed asset, I can't see LL placing any restrictions that would drive down the value of property.

On the other hand, it provides a liquidity and stability for the market that would not otherwise be there. If people were not holding large portfolios of land for sale, people trying to buy land in general would be in the same position as the people looking for first land at the moment.

Buying it cheaply where possible and reselling at a slightly higher price provides the land reseller with compensation for the tier usage during the month, and also helps mitigate the risk associated with a collapse in land prices while holding that land.

It basically provides a similar service to market makers on the stock exchange. However, during a boom (I hesitate to call it a bubble at the moment) it's obviously prone to resellers trying to profit, whereas market makers have strict rules about how they can act.

Sorry, but that angle doesn't hold true either. When you get to full sim tier and up, the price for holding a single parcel is negliable. The cost incurred for holding on to 512m² for a whole month is $1.4 or L$380, an insignificant fraction of what land is being resold for.

hmmm...basically right...

except that it was never possible for land scanners to determine when land went up for sale...they could only determine when land had been released. At that time, released land was immediately broken into 16m2 squares, its owner was set to 'nobody', and it was set to sell for $1/m2. What land scanners did was to scan for land that was owned by 'nobody'.

and LL didn't make any changes to the scripting language. The way that they stopped this practice was to change the way that land was released. Instead of breaking up the land and setting it to sell for $1/m2, they changed it so that released land was transferred to Governor Linden and then later auctioned.

and LL didn't make this change because it thought that it gave resellers an unfair advantage. There were several other reasons such as resident anger over scanners using sim resources in sims where the person scanning had no land. Or the fact that the old system was the single biggest way in which 16m2 billboard griefer lots were created.

and land-scanning was a very small and mostly benign manifestation of the swooping phenomenon. Swoopers were most reviled for buying land that had either been set to sell accidentally or set to sell for $1 with the intention of transferring it to a friend. But they didn't use land scanners to do this. They simply pressed the land search button repeatedly looking for new land to show up on the market.

Other than that, it's mostly right.

Seriously, though, the most remarkable thing to me is how the prevailing resident attitudes have changed toward the land business in general.

Two years ago, the average resident in SL was a lot less tolerant of people who resell land. Words like liquidity would have never come up. And the pitchforks and torches would have come out in force.

I have no problem with people buying and selling land, but most offer nothing in return except for a higher price on the land. It's greed and nothing more. As far as 'slightly' raising prices to make a profit, when I first joined just a under a month ago, 512 lots were 5k give or take, 1024 lots were 9k-11k. Now a 512 lot is rare to find at under 8k with 1024 lots running 15k+.

Just today I was checking for land again, and someone has bought a TON of cheaper 1024 lots and repriced them at 20k! Not only has this person not done anything to the land to benefit the next buyer, they haven't even bothered to change the descriptions on most of them to hide the fact it was simply bought, repriced and put back up for sale.


I'm not going to propose any solutions because first, I don't think anything would really be more benefitial than harmful, and second, I don't think anything would really work. What I would prefer is that these resellers actually make the land worth what they are trying to get for it. Do some developing, provide something unique instead of just buying cheap and pricing greedy.

Please consider a case like this: I purchased an island a while back, and needed to sell off my mainland sim as fast as possible, to avoid paying twice the tier for a month. I could have sold to the end-consumer, but it may have taken weeks if not month to sell a whole sim split into small parcels. No matter which price I would have taken for the land, it could have been a loss for me to pay for two sims until the land was sold.

So I just IMed the friendly neighbourhood land reseller and sold the whole mainland sim for the low price of L$5.5 per square meter. I left it to her to take the risk of paying a high tier for land that perhaps wouldn't sell for a while. She could have made a loss instead of a profit; that's the risk of the land sale business that I wasn't willing to take. She made the effort of splitting it into several parcels, flattening it (will likely have taken 4 hours to get rid of my landscaping) and she even added houses and trees to add more value to the land.
A fair deal; I avoided an additional tier fee and had the island purchase price back, she likely made a little profit for quite some work and a high risk of money loss.

Besides, think of how a free market economy works in RL. Whatever you purchase at any RL store is bought cheap and resold with profit. Every ware has likely passed three or more distributors before the end-consumer buys it; each of those distributors makes a buck on it, enabling them to pay their employees who would otherwise sit at a street corner with a cardboard sign and an empty hat in front of them.
The DVD that costs around 90 cents for Warner Brothers to produce, including all manufacturing and printing costs, is sold to you for $34.99. That's how an economy works. It may seem unfair at first glance, but if WB would sell directly to you for $2 per DVD, a lot of people would be out of work and couldn't even afford to pay $2. The only thing that could be done about this is going back to the good ol' bartering system and giving up a lot of modern life luxuries.

The SL economy does not yet work on this basis, but I hope it soon will. At the moment I'm handling the customer support for my wares myself. It was no problem as long as I sold only 10 items each day. Buw now I answer IMs for hours on end on some days, time that I badly need to work on new products. There would be two ways for me to avoid this: I could either hire personnel for the customer service only, or I could sell slightly cheaper to a reseller who does all service work at own cost and risk. Either way, I pay, either support personnel or in form of a reseller rebate; they would provide a valuable service that I'm willing to pay for.
Alas, this isn't practicable atm; SL lacks a way to re-direct IMs to the seller, since most end customers simply check the item properties and call up the creator's profile. We would need a "Sold by" entry at a prominent position in the item properties. We also need a telephone-like IM system, to redirect "calls" to a service central. Also, there's no way to grant a reseller a limited copy & trade license, that enables only as many copies of a ware as he purchased from the distributor. I hope such functions will be implemented as the SL economy evolves.

See my post above; they're paid for their service and their risk. The service: taking the risk of monetary loss due to "shelf time" off the previous seller. The risk: not being able to sell the land for some time and making a loss by paying more than one monthly tier fee for it. Resellers not only "ninja-buy" parcels that someone tries to sell to other residents; often they're IMed and asked to buy by someone who needs to get rid of his land ASAP.

Atm the prices are high, just because everyone sells at higher prices, not the resellers only. They need to make their cut. Of course some overdo it, a price of L$20 / sqm is indeed a bit outrageous. But you can simply do the same as you would do in RL: penalize an overpriced merchant by buying from someone else, or by not buying at all If you think that all land prices are currently too high, just wait a while. If no one buys, they will have to lower their prices again.

Uhm, that's not exactly right too. When you own 1/2 sim and buy a single 512 sqm parcel in addition, you'll be charged for a whole sim. Own a complete sim and buy another tiny parcel, and you pay for 1.5 sims.

At the time when I sold my mainland for L$5.5 it was likely resold for L$7 (I had paid L$6 originally). 65,000 sqm sold for L$357,500, resold at $455,000, makes a profit of L$97,500. Subtract the tier fee of US$195 and you have a profit of US$139 minus RL income taxes only (edited; wrote US$334 before, forgot to subtract the tier) - if the reseller was able to get rid of the land within one month. If no one bought at that price, since the land in the sims around was still sold for L$6 - L$6.5, she could have made a loss by paying US$390 for 2 months. She likely would even have had to lower her prices to L$6 in order to sell it, resulting in a loss of US$279.

The market dictates the max. price; currently the resellers are lucky bastards, but that may change again soon. It's up to LL to change it, by selling more mainland

What you are saying, Ishtara, is an excellent reason as to why restrictions shouldn't be put on buying and reselling. The problem is, it doesn't speak to the problems some people suggest are actually an abuse of the system.

RL economics only go so far with any game, even SL. Land tier fees don't really counter the balance you get from a government tax system. The tax laws in the US make it impractical to buy land and resell for a minimum profit. SL has no such system, nor (do I feel) it would fit in. The differences still prevent the 'greed' business practices IRL.

If you buy a piece of land IRL and turn around to resell it the next day, you will take a huge penalty for doing so and you had better make one hell of a profit to cover the fees. If you keep that land for at least a year, the heaviest of those penalties are negated down to normal taxes. If you actually live in a house on that land for a year(2 years?), it's nearly a total write-off. In SL, the worst case is you have a fee that adds out to about 5 bucks for a 512 parcel. The more own and the more you buy to instantly flip, the less the penalties per square meter are. It's almost a reward for turning large amounts of property, as opposed to stopping after flipping a few lots.

There are some other factors that could help ease the problem, such as LL actually putting out more land at a better rate. Some people do claim a land shortage is to blame for the sudden increase in land price. I don't really see it as the main problem even though LL obviously should be putting out more land. It would definitely sell. They get the same fee regardless of what the land prices are in-game, so I'm not quite sure why they are falling behind. In fact, I'd venture to say that more land would make them more money. I'd personally up my property if prices weren't out of wack atm. It would make my monthly fee about 25-30 bucks instead of 15 (includes my 9.99)

Anyways, the problem I see, is the people who buy up everything under a certain price and reprice it well above what should be a fair market value. It's why I call it the greed factor. They price it at whatever they know they can get for the land. Sounds reasonable, right? Why shouldn't they get the max price? Well, the difference here is they buy out everything below their price so that they have a monopoly. In the end, you either don't get your lot or you pay what THEY say is fair market value. Fortunately, you don't need to own land to do most of the recreational stuff in the game. Even building isn't limited thanks to sandboxes.

In your example, I feel it was a legitimate use of the system. What I've seen lately is not always as legitimate even if it's not breaking any rules. In the end, I suppose it's all a matter of perspective.

Best solution? Lock down all land to L$6/sq m and 95% of the playerbase win.

The 5% that lose are the land dealers - who frankly we could do without anyway. They control the land market, which controls the economy, which causes everyone pain.

What is Second Life without the ability to own land? Just a big chatroom with little point. The appeal of SL for many people is that they can buy some land, build something they want, and tailor their little bit of the game to just how they want it, not how someone else built.

Don't for one minute think that land dealers are here because they are providing a much needed service - they're doing it to make money, and that's all. They really don't care that they're manipulating the market price to suit their own needs - because there are enough people that will buy land regardless of how much it costs (example being the L$10,000 16 sqm ad parcel griefers).

A more flexible tier system, enabling people to expand without worrying about going up to the next high level would benefit so many players, I really don't understand why Linden Lab haven't implemented something like that already. It would encourage far more people to hold on to that little 512 that would put them over tier if they buy something else - and perhaps pay only $1 for it instead of $20 or whatever.

It pains me to see greed destroying Second Life just as it does reality.

Broccoli