The Sakura Plan

This is a follow on from another thread, not mine so I decided to start my own.

The Sakura Plan (Shared Private sim - resident run)

There are two versions of this plan, the full sim and the homestead sim version. Both are identical except for the costs involved.

Outline

The sim is to be a resident run sim, and as close as possible to resident owned that is possible with a private estate. I (Mitzy Shino) will be the owner of the sim(s) as far as Linden Labs are concerned, which will make me responsible for the payment of tier to them.

A private estate is capable of having up to 9 Estate Managers, these people will be elected by the group on a rotational basis, they will form the “council” who can resolve issues, restart the sim, and police any abuse.

Their roles will actually be fully decided by the members once we are underway. In any cases where the Council are at loss to resolve an issue, then I will (as the person responsible to Linden Labs) step in and make a final decision. I do not see this as being something that would happen often and only extreme circumstances.

I have no plans to be a member of the Council and overseeing the operation of the sim.

Finanicials

I have done some early costings and these should be considered as a guideline only at this point. I have included a 10% margin in additional to the 3.5% L$ to USD% fee to convert L$ on the Lindex.

The justification for this is to build up a backup fund to ensure that the tier can always be covered.

Should the backup fund grow to an excessive amount then it may be possible to reduce the 10% margin, or use the fund to further expand by obtaining another sim.

Initial region purchase funds and all tier payments will be made to an alt setup for only this purpose, it will hold all community money and only release it as it becomes needed to pay the bills.

Full Sim

Purchase Price: $600-$700 (US$)
Tier (Monthly): $295 (US$)
Area: 65536sqm
Prims: 15,000

Number of Units: 64

Cost to buy in per unit: $2,765 (L$)
Monthly tier per unit: $1,360 (L$)
Land per unit: 1024
Prims per unit: 234

Homestead Sim (Grandfathered)

Purchase Price: $400 (US$)
Tier (Monthly): $95 (US$)
Area: 65536sqm
Prims: 3,750

Number of Units: 64

Cost to buy in per unit: $1,845 (L$)
Monthly tier per unit: $438 (L$)
Land per unit: 1024
Prims per unit: 58

There will never be more than 64 units available per sim. Each member must hold at least one unit, but may hold more. Specific land will be set aside for each unit. If the member decides to leave the group they may sell their units, first preference must be given to existing members.

The final rules will be decided by the Estate Mangers (Council).

Because something like this is about building a community, it will probably work best if the region has a theme, perhaps tropical/tiki as that seems popular.

About Mitzy
Some of you know me, some of you don't. So for some there will be trust issues. There is little I can do about that other than to say I have been around for a few years, currently “own” 25 sims, so I am not likely to up and run for a few hundred dollars.

p.s. This is me only trying to show someone how it could be done in a workable fashion, I don't plan to actually do this, although we could....

Hey Mitzy, is the buy in and tier in L$ or USD?

Edit: Yes, I realized what you are doing, but there is more to teach

Oops I missed copying that from the spreadsheet.

The totals are in US$, the per unit prices are in L$.

I'll fix it up now.

A serious question. Who will cover the shortfall in needed funds when the sim is not at 100% occupancy? If you only have 50 units occupied, for example, are you, personally, going to cover the remaining 14 Units costs? What if a bunch of people leave and only 5 units remain occupied?

Your pricing looks reasonable IF you have a small number of cooperative and compatible individuals who are committed to making it work in the long term. I live in a sim that works basically this way. The sim owner owns half the sim (roughly), I have "11 units", someone else has 6 units, someone else has 2 units, and a currently unoccupied 4 unit area and two other parcels make up the rest. In my case, there was no "buy in cost", as the sim owner remains owner of the whole sim. Any land abandoned goes back to him.

But I used to have 17 units there. I couldn't afford to keep that much, and had to give 6 units back to the sim owner. I was only able to find a buyer for 2 units, and that only several months after I been forced by economic necessity to abandon use of that area. He's had 4 units of my old land that remained at zero income for the last 6 months or more. And I am not the only tenant he has lost, or partially lost, and not been able to immediately replace.

Expecting each new tenant to pay a buy-in cost based on the initial sim acquisition cost seems unreasonable, when there are plenty of places that will allow you to rent with zero buy-in cost.

When I had to cut back on my land, if I had been required to buy in for the up-front setup costs, and had to sell my land to get out of it, I would have had to abandon my entire holding. I couldn't afford the drain on my SL income while I waited to find a buyer. I was reducing my land because I did not have the funds to continue paying what I had been.

People's land holdings fluctuate, a lot. You should know that if you already own several sims. Your proposed plan does not seem to cover a large enough "contingency fund" to cover the periods when not at full occupancy.

The buy in was only for the initial buy of the sim, once its purchased the "owner" of the unit can sell it, the sell price goes to them.

There are a number of reasons for the initial buy in. For example to try and help ensure people are committed to the plan because they have money at stake, to actually paying for the sim, its not like one of my rental sims where I make a profit on.

Sure I could just provide the sim, let people move in and pay tier, but then they would just be another bunch of renters on a sim. It would be ideal if it could be done properly so that each person owned their share, but within SL thats not possible on an estate land.

To start, yes I would be covering short falls, long term I would hope that any short falls could be met out of the contingency fund, but if they weren't then it would be up to me as the "official" sim owner to cover them or everyones investment goes up in smoke. Including mine because I would be taking at least 4 units, possibly more.

Having to move your land in a hurry is a problem for everyone, I would _hope_ that in time the community would have enough in the backup fund to buy pack any units that needed to be sold, and then sell them again.

((I know thats a little vague, and _hope_ is not a good plan, but this proposal was done quickly, I'm sure if I thought about it more, listened to the great feedback I'm getting and spent time on it I could refine it further so it would be as workable as possible.))

Dangerously risky on many levels.

"council of estate managers" without any significant financial stake => clique with little repercussions no matter what they do, so... they will do, and do, and do.

"any council at all" is in a way a resident governance experiment. Most residents generally hate these unless they are on said council

"the sixty days later problem" ... when this project stops being shiny, occupancy plummets... sustained interest in the project from outside, or a strongly positively branded estate is about the only thing that will keep the momentum going.

"the reserve tier problem" ~ 10% over margin is great, but that's maybe going to raise something on the order of 30 bucks a month on a new standard region. A safe 2 or 3 months of reserve tier will take 10 or 20 months to raise if occupancy is 100%. Or you've just spent several hundred dollars in actuarial, expensive 'backing' without recompense.

"the valuation problem" ~ cheap land is perceived as such, leading to abuses and overall occupancy issues. Resale once the region isn't new anymore will be nearly impossible.

"the management problem" ~ this will cost you X hours of your life, per week. After two years, it won't be fun to have to do, constantly.



Just my two cents. I'd never touch this scenario myself. Not saying Mitzy is wrong; this is just how I see it.

I think Desmond's analysis of the dropout rate is pretty accurate. New stuff in SL is good - old stuff takes a LOT to keep people interested in.
People are fickle

Thanks for all the great feedback...

Now may I point you to

Which is what kicked it all off in the first place. This was not something I ever planned to do, it was merely trying to show someone else how to do the math and a slightly better way to:

1. Write a proposal.
2. Handle feedback/questions/etc from forumites.

Again, thank you all

We knew that - we're just taking it even further and showing how feedback SHOULD be handled

There is one area in particular where your proposal is vastly better than the the one in the other thread. You use punctuation. Thank you.