How to buy some land that won't get boxed in by malls?

I've been trying to find a nice little piece of land for a long time, I upgraded my account and found to my disappointment that First Land never came up on searches, so I stupidly cancelled the account until I could find some. No worries, I kept my eyes open for something 512 ish for a little home.

So I found some land, good price, seemed perfect, lots of people with the same idea were looking for houses too. Ideal I thought. Due to account problems (still cant get a response from billing to fix it) my friend brought it on my behalf to pass to me later.

However since then about 70% of the land got snapped up by someone building some huge warehouse looking thing on two sides of my land, right on the border, twice the height of my home, thats two views gone. Now the other side that was linden land I was told was reserved as a "road" has overnight sold in its entirety too, no doubt the same will happen there.

With the land locked out, I cant even go visit my neighbours who are 50 metres away without teleporting to them.

So I feel like soon Ill be stuck in this little square of land with no view at all. Should I give up looking for some decent buyable residential land or is it out there? I'm a bit new to this, and so far its a bit disappointing. First unresolved account issues and then neighbours who obviously have no consideration for others.

Sell up and find another place or stick with it? Other option is very tall stilts lol

Hi Cenobite and welcome
Alas the trials of first land have met you. Most folk go through this with changing landowners.
Firstly, I'd suggest you try a skybox. This should restore your view, even improve it maybe and give you some time to get into working out exactly what you want.
Some creators use sky platforms for privacy and room anyway so ideal for getting to grips with building if you like.
In time, places change. I moved from my first 512 plot when I couldn't expand and moved to a nice place that had an almost perfect sunset view except for a 300 foot treehouse. Guess what? the treehouse is now gone! I'm not discounting that someone, one day could throw a mall or casino up just anywhere but hey! can we not say the same about RL too?

You have a much higher probability of keeping your views and neighborhood feel in a private sim continent, e.g. Azure Islands or Dreamland or several others.

There is no zoning on the mainland period.

A skybox or a private may be a solution.

But there still also very enjoyable places on the mainland. Ohh... in and around Maia we have some malls, but they are not disrubting. What helps here is that some people with the same ideas (as me) have good ideas how things should look.

Just don't give up on the mainland... and remember, when things change in a way you don't like... you can always drop all your belongings in your inventory and move on .

Morwen.

I would add my vote for a sky box as well. It's almost a no brainer with the ability to set your home up in the sky as well.

I just recently purchased 1024m of Mainland and the first thing I did was plant some trees and put in a gazebo and then a teleporter. I made a piece of "wood" the size of my property, 3 10x10m across and down, linked them, sat on them and set the z at 500m. Then I used that as the guide for my setting out my house. Actually I took a copy of the piece of "wood" to a sandbox and took it up in the air and pulled out what I wanted for my house, got rid of excess prims, put in furniture, counted prims and then pulled everything in. Went home and put the whole thing out and had just what I wanted. I fine tuned my teleporters and I'm all set.

So now if someone does build an atrocity next to my new plot, it won't bother me a bit.

Except that sometimes the air all around you is filled with a very bizarre set of builds, and it can be no more attractive that the ground. I ran into this recently and moved one of my platforms up to 600m, but it is only a matter of time before my neighbors start doing the same thing. The lower levels are just as populated as the ground.

There are a couple of other skyboxes near mine too - but a simple thing you can do is to go into preferences and set your draw distance lower - this helps both with FPS and the view. There is a skybox less than 100m from mine - but if I set the draw distance lower than that, I can see forever!

Yes, but I am a very private person. If they are there, even if I can't see them, it bothers me, because if they set their draw distance high, they CAN see me. It's an open platform where i change my clothes. I don't want to be to unknowing victim of a peeping Tom! And I don't want to enclose myself into a box, even one that i can see out and they can't see in.

FYI, while learning how camera controls work, I learned that within a sim, there is never any visual privacy. It's possible to "free" the camera controls to see anywhere within the sim. So, even if you can't see them, or even if you have a scripted "sensor" that says there are no avatars within 96 meters, it would still be trivial to "see" you, from within the same sim. It came as a minor surprise to me. See "the illusion of privacy" for more info.

If you are open to renting (which, by the way, is what you are doing when you buy except you are renting directly from LL), I have some parcels on a 100% residential sim.

The only way to avoid having a mall or casino or whorehouse appearing next to your SL home is to avoid buying mainland property. The mainland has no zoning at all, and the Lindens do nothing to protect property values of residents when a "bad" resident moves in.

Private islands can and usually do offer a more managed, zoned environment, and will refuse to allow such atrocities. The down side is that a private sim is owned by another Player, and if they bail out or sell out, you could lose the land. Personally, if you stick with one of the larger sim owners who has a large investment to protect and a reputation to uphold, you're pretty safe. Ask existing tenants how they like living there, and what sort of service they get from their sim owner.

"How to buy some land that won't get boxed in by malls?"

Buy land that has *already* been boxed in by malls.