Buying a little land portion with a free account

Hi all,

I'm on a free account

and I would like to buy (not rent) a very small land portions for a few L$ (I already found some classified about that).

Do I need a Premium account to buy 16 or 48 or (at most) 96 mq. of land?

Will I have to pay monthly fees for that land portion?


Thanks in advance from a not-english-mother-tongue ;)

I also think I will continue to use a free account, as long as I don't use credit cards or other online payment services.

Hi Signore,

You must have a premium account to buy any land, period.

The first 512sqm of land you own is "free" - that is, no land fees to pay, but you still have to purchase it from someone.

Actually, this isn't true. Free (Basic) accounts can own land on private estates, aka islands. Linden land is the only land that you're required to pay tier for.

Thank you Jesse , you are exactly right , i OWN over 30K of land on serveral privatly owned sims, and use a good chuck for Rental property. I have never owned a preium account and do not plan to in the future. I still pay tiers etc but they are the same as a linden teir. Others say "well u don't own that the person who owns the sim does - I say bulltweedel to that - who do u think owns the sims the lindens sells u land on - the lindens. I own the land as much as if i bought it off lindens themselfs, it is ALL virtual people, it is owned buy whoever has the rights to and make and build on it.

The only real diffrence is the privately owned sims i own land on are awsome to deal with, put a lot of work into the look and feel of the sim, and i get issues resolved on a few hours rather then a few days (one word of note i own NO anshe sims land but i hear they are ok to deal with as long as u follow the rules with are slighty longer then the enciclopedia britanica).

So a thank you to Jesse for strighting out that misconception i just felt it need to be expanded upon

You must have a premium account to own any land at all. ("Owning" land in this context means that only you and Linden Labs are involved in the agreement under which you have access to the land - no other users.)

You can rent land (from other users) without getting a Premium membership. The message above ("you can own land on a private island without paying for premium" is not quite true - you can have the same access to land that an owner would have via renting on a private island. However, there will be still be another user/resident involved in the agreement.

Wrong.

Unless you OWN the land, ie purchase it on the mainland, the land is not yours. Whatever a rental agreement/covenant says, the sim owner can boot you at any time for any or no reason, or if they decide to sell up and move on, the new owner has no obligation whatsoever to maintain any previous agreement.

I would never, ever own land for that reason, and for a month or so as a new player it might be worth considering whilst you figure out if you like playing this game, you should move to premium and land tier once you choose to stay. At least Linden Lab gets all the money, and not some greedy land baron who is lining their own pocket.

Lewis

Very much so.

If you pay somebody for land on a private sim you do not "own" it in the SL sense. You rent it. If they get bored, run out of money or otherwise stop paying their tier for the sim, you are out; if you breach the conditions or they want you out for some reason, you are out. Don't be fooled by the idea that "oh someone else always owns it" - of course that's true, but private sim owners are routinely known to default on payments or throw people out for breaching some code, whereas the Lindens aren't at all.

Having said that, there's nothing intrinsically bad about renting property. My home area is rental property on Caledon - I am confident that it will not suddenly disappear, the conditions suit me, the landlord is a pleasant and agreeable chap, and I can do pretty much what I want there. (I have far greater terraforming rights there than on the mainland for instance.) But you are paying to live on land that someone else owns, and you should be very careful of the conditions.

The new "covenant" system formalises this somewhat but the principle is still the same - somebody else can set conditions on what you can and cannot do.

Seriously, parcels of that size are pretty pointless. You really want to get a 512 to start with

Actually they aren't to be totally honest. If you can get them for cheap, there is a plethura of ways to use a 16, or 96m parcel.

Lol, more signs? I heard from somewhere that a 16m2 parcel can have like 3 prims placed on it...

You keep talking about owning land and if u do not own linden land you a renting it from sopmebody else -If u own linden land you are renting it from Linden labs what do you think a tier is? rent/taxes, just as on a private sim - it is virtual land - all "land" in a virtal comuntity is"rented" it does no exist in rl - linden could go under tomorrow and u would have no physical land to fall back on.

You talk about some sim owners setting zoning rules etc. not only does this happen all the time in real life - it is one often the best things about buying private in SL - i know people who own(plus the monthly tier) both Linden and and "rent" (as u put it) private sim land - as soon as they saw the greater fredom of movement and the termendously nicer atmophere of a private sim they cannot wait to dump thier Linden poperty (an downgrade they monthy preuim aka 9.95 rent account )

It has been said that "private sim owners are routinely known to default on payments" i have never heard of this personaly so i am not sure how ruotine it is, but as in anything i guess it is possoble - i tend to buy form more established simowners who own several sims(again no not anshe)

The last commnet and it struck me as bizarre was "At least Linden Lab gets all the money, and not some greedy land baron". Not only do i find the sim owners i deal with more human and easy to get along with than largest land baron of them all (linden labs) but i thought one of the points of SL was that everybody has a chance to make it ahead here. And you know linden labs is getting there cut from private sim teirs that sim owners have to pay. I would much rather give my money to an indvidial whos owns sims privatety that to Lindedn labs anyday.

A sixteen M2 parcel, 4 M x 4 M, gets you a prim allocation of a mere three prims. What possible legitimate use can someone with no other land have for such a small parcel? Advertizing? A 4 M wide sign is pretty small. Gambling machine? Most take more than three prims. I can't think of a single legitimate use for something that small. Yes, you coult put a three-prim vendor on it, I suppose. But any such parcels are NOT going to be in a good position to get customers for that vendor. It costs less to rent space in a mall, where you get decent customer traffic.

96 M2 isn't much better. Just 18 prims. What can you do with just 18 prims?

Perhaps someone could enlighten me on some legitimate reason why any person would want such a small parcel of land?

I'm thinking that this whole preference regarding getting land from Linden vs. getting it through an intermediary settles on the idea of who you trust more, Linden Labs or a private individual?

Islands do give a lot of customizability that aren't available on the mainland, and the owner can set additional community requirements that create a more of a gated community that keeps the "riff raff" out and maintains a quiet atmosphere.

On the other hand, some people look at the sim owner and worry that there is not a direct agreement between themselves and the people responsible for the servers. The same situation happens with PayPal, and there are a number of sites setup saying that as they are not a real bank that you shouldn't trust your money to them. You just have to decide for yourself what the risk is and what level of risk you can put up with.

I'm planning to make a "park" for artificial creatures, a tiny ecosystem. The creatures don't have to have any physical detail; they can be red dots and blue dots for all I care, as long as several dozen of each can swarm freely around the park. (What's the minimum size for objects?)


My question is: what's a practical minimum plot size for something like this?

Well, off the top of my head, advertising space to sell next to malls, a small parcel of land to host Jevn servers, or if you are just starting out with a store, 2 prims can make 3 walls and a floor and roof, pretty thin and load a few starter pics in there. I've seen more done with less.

I wouldn't bother with less than 512, mostly because you'll also want to have some space for them to move around in, for people to be able to watch them from etc. Maybe slightly less if there's a cheap plot.

The major problem with buying land for scripting experiments is the rest of the sim's performance though. I recently had to sell some mainland I was using (co-incidentally, for an a-life experiment as well) because the lag was so bad. I then started using it as a building sandbox, but then somebody built a freebie warehouse next door, and the lag became completely atrocious. Look for somewhere quiet, without clusters of green dots, and be prepared to move.

Yup, 3 whole prims.

Just enough for 3 whole rotating flashing bill boards.

The people who believe they can "own" land on another person's private sim might care to ask themselves one question.

Who has power over you ? Is there another resident who can seize the land from you with no warning, no compensation, and no punishment from anyone (not even Linden Labs) ?

In the case of land "bought" other than by clicking a "buy button" on the mainland the answer is "yes". The sim owner.

On the mainland the answer is "no". No-one but Linden Labs, the owner of the game, can do this to you.

To many this difference seems unimportant.

To many others it is decisive.

Renting on a private island is straightforward and clearcut.
"Buying" obscures the reality of the tenant-landlord relationship. You have two masters who can destroy you, not just the normal one which we all share. Only you can decide if this matters, in the light of how much cash you have invested.

I am curious as to why people would want to rent instead of buy. Is it because they do not want to put their CC on file and only want to use L$? It seems to me that in order to pay a weekly rental, or pay for land from a private owner that you would at least have to have a PAYPAL account.

I am sure everyone has their reasons...I was just curious if buying land, building homes, then renting them is something worth while hear as in RL

1. It can work out cheaper, sometimes, due to economies of tier scale. This depends on how much the landlord charges though.

2. Rental is the only option really if you want land in any sort of themed or zoned area... unless you can form an alliance with a bunch of your neighbours on the mainland, or you can afford to buy a huge piece of land where you'll never have to look at anyone else's build ever again.

You don't have to use Paypal, I rent using L$ - the cost is Lindex-linked.

You can also get more prims by renting, usually. This is because, since the landlord owns the whole property, they can pick up some of the low-prim areas (such as the paths/roads between houses) and assign them to you so that the spare prims contribute to your total. If you have two seperately owned lands next to each other, you can't do that because only one person can own each part of land and they'll have to pay for it.

But if you rent using L$ wouldn't that mean you would have to make enough L$ in game to pay your rent? Otherwise you would have to purchase L$ with a form of payment.

I understand what you are saying about zoning though. My original thought after I built my first home my neighbor built a big furniture store was "Why didn't Linden labs place zoning ordinances on the main lands"

Hmmm...I see..So first land would be great to rent to people then because there is no tier or charge for prims so you could rent at a fair price even though the property is limited to 512M

With prim trickery you can make prims of near-microscopic size. Small enough that you'll have to be less than a meter away from them to even appear on your client, due to LOD.

Yes. But most people don't rent because they want to avoid putting a CC on file, they rent for one of the other reasons.

If you're going to pay rent, you'll need a fair amount of L$ to do it with, and even if you do earn it all in-world, to get to that stage you'll almost certainly to have had some land to sell things from, or rented space in a mall. You're not going to be able to pay rent from camping.

I suppose it *could* be possible to work up from camping cash to renting a tiny bit of vendor space, then get more space from there, and so on, or sell things by hand, but that's not very likely.

(I suppose you could also buy L$ from a third-party site, so not have your CC on file in SL, or sell things simply through SLX/SLB... but why bother?)