Where will Mainland prices be in three weeks?

The mainland market has reacted to the casino ban by dropping from a base of L$9.4 a meter to L$9.2 a meter with most cheap plots listing at L$9.3. But three weeks from now when most casino owners tier has come due and they have made the decision to either keep the land or sell it, we should see quite a sell-off. Combined with another new continent coming online, it could point to a significant drop.

Or will it? LL could hold off on releasing a high and steady number of sims to auction until the casino land has been absorbed by land brokers.

My guess is LL, who still wants to get US$2,200 or so from their full auctioned sims, will delay the release of the new continent and thus keep prices above L$8.5 a meter. Which means if you are not buying huge amounts of land, there is no real reason to hold out for the market to crash. Decide what tier level you want to live with as far as monthly payments and when you find that perfect plot, go ahead and buy it.

That's my opinion. What's yours?

nothing will change, landbots will compete with eachoter buying from eachother till it`s up to the current price again and nothing sells due to ad farms and idiots

Once prices get to a certain place, bots leave them alone and real brokers take over. Bots buy the cheaper plots and make more profit and don't affect the base price as much as real brokers do who buy high and list higher.

From my casual observations, i've noticed two trends i find somewhat disturbing. I've been watching the price of mainland 4096+ size plots and i've noticed a whole lot less churn on the bottom end of the market in the last week or two. There are many plots on the first page of the search listing that have been there for many days when previously no listing ever seemed to stay on the first page for more than about a day. I've also been seeing a whole lot of linden land with claimed dates of june or july of 2007. For all i know these trends are nothing more than the creations of my imagination. All the same, i'm glad i've already sold off my unneeded plots.

I won't be dealing in land for a month or so, I think that will be enough time to start to gauge whether there's been an impact or not, I don't think land prices will be much different to where they are now but there may be a dip in the next week or two as some people panic and then matters will stabilise.

I'm afraid you're right. I think it would be much healthier for SL if land prices dropped by at least 50% over the next month or so... but I don't see it happening. As I've mumbled on another thread, it's just not clear how much impact gambling actually had on the SL economy because we just don't know how much of the take simply passed from gambler's to casino owner's RL accounts, only briefly denominated in L$s. There are casino properties that will mostly come up for sale (assuming the casino owners can't come up with something better to do with them), but how much, all told? More than most recent Linden auctions? Probably not. So if LL can delay their next auction by a week or so, it should fully offset the land-value impact, as far as I can figure.

Most amazing to me is how relatively well the L$ has held up through this. It suggests that the casino owners haven't been keeping much of a L$ balance to cash out. Or else Supply is doing a hell of a lot better job than Bernanke.

While I certainly believe that the initial purchase price of around $2200 per sim is significant to LL, I think the real long term income are tier charges. If LL can get more people to turn premium that ultimately means more tier charges for them and a longer term--more stable income. In order to get more tier charges, I think its in the best interest of the company to have very cheap land. SL is expensive compared to other online pursuits when you break it down. There is your membership fee(if premium), your tier charges and on top of that possibly hundreds of dollars for a significant piece of land to have fun with. That is way too expensive for most. Especially when you can obsess over a myspace page for free.

I think SL has the potential to eclipse the popularity of a site like myspace since people could obsess over a 3D version of their creativity--but in order for that to happen it simply needs to get cheaper I believe. Therefore, it wouldn't surprise me if land prices got much lower. I think certain types of land--like beachfront or mountaintops will always command a premium. However, regular green flat land will need to get to about $500L per 512m plot before the general public will get interested. SL needs a more general appeal in my opinion. Nerds like me who are willing to pay current prices for land and love it are getting fewer. lol

The only way that I can see land prices remaining expensive AND SL getting more popular is if they can convince people that the economy in SL is robust enough to justify high prices. Right now there are people making money in SL, but they are few and far between. Most barely break even and some are even happy just to run a business to discount the cost of the game.

Perhaps. But then why haven't they lowered tier prices or come up with more incentives to go premium? The only thing I've seen them do is raise Island tier and take away First Land. Short-termed thinking, eh?

You're right there and I don't understand it. I think it may be the LL is a growing company and that they may be conflicted as to which direction to go. My *guess* is that they may be trying to strengthen the SL economy by catering to large RL businesses like they have. The more RL businesses that set up shop here the more credible the platform gets. However, if they were gonna do that--they really needed to do more hand holding with these business than they did. As it turns out, we have massive corporate islands with no apparent purpose and little understanding of the potential. If the corporate thing falls flat, I think we may see LL cater to individual players a little more--perhaps resulting in lower costs. Where else would the revenue come from at that point?

I certainly think there should be more incentives for becoming Premium, but even the modest access to online support brought on a storm of protest from Basic members, so maybe that field is being left fallow for a spell.

LL must produce some revenue, so tier is difficult to reduce.

But I really agree that the initial hurdle of land ownership is too steep right now because of high purchase price. So, retaining First Land would have been a huge win, had it only been possible to protect that policy from abuse. But I see a lot of sims coming online lately so maybe LL is actually trying to reduce the "barrier to entry" a bit--thwarted, perhaps, by land barons who aren't yet singing from the same hymnbook?

And I must admit, from a purely selfish perspective, I'd like to see the balance of value shift from Linden-supplied CPU capacity to resident-created content, hence the appeal of lower land prices.

Actually I think they are still trying to figure out how to make real money with it. Amazon.com wants you to be able to buy things directly in SL, but why not just go to the website?

And according to the Wired article, LL is not making money off RL companies: "Linden Lab leases virtual land to cover its server costs but doesn't take a cut of what companies spend establishing their presence there."

Given the latest news articles, if all they are looking for is credibility, it seems like it's not going so well.

Advertising I'd imagine. I mean Amazon are big enough but having an Amazon bookstore inworld, I'd possibly use that if it was user friendly.

I have noticed that during this glut, many landowners have chosen to INCREASE their current holdings.

o.0 a 50% drop in a month? That would be below what land sold for 2 years ago.

Hmm...L$9.2 per sq/m right now? Cheapest mainland was consistently L$4.5 per sq/m between May (when I joined) and the end of October last year (when the dreaded private island price increases were announced).

Edit: Correction. More like L$4.9. I remember there were always 512s available for $L2500 at that time because I tended to work out whether larger parcels were worth it based on that easy to remember yardstick.

/me guesses this latest drop will continue but is temporary and that things will go back up and settle to 9.5 or so within a couple months.

I think the bigger concern is the number of users logged in at a time - this number has been flat. A couple months ago, we were sniffing at the heels of 50k. Now, it's rarely over 45k. Not sure where the saturation point is but do think we'll see it this year, unless the population grows or the land expansion slows *a lot*.

I've noticed that too, I'm hoping that the lower number are because of the summer. People are out in parks, RL beaches etc. I've spend less time online because of that. Maybe when fall/winter rolls around those numbers will increase.

However, I hope LL would be prepared for over 50K. It would seem now that that number would crash SL or the lag would be terrible.

aye I have no reason to be premium after paying for my first 45 days. it just seems like a waste, buying permonth you only save 83 cents if you're using your tier and your stipend.

and I can't exactly get attractive land. I want a nice spot on a a mountain, nice and steep to boot. along with no ban lines, no ads, and all the land bought up so there aren'tads in the future. and custom builders on it to boot(doesn't matter how much they suck at building I want custom)... basically no such thing in all of SL.

i hope the prices drop. i think i want to buy more land.

Ummm...yeah. When land drops down to an average of $4-5L per m2, I'll take an interest, and breathe a sigh of relief. Land has been ridiculously expensive for a LONG time, now.

I don't see the gambling ban having much of an impact on land prices three weeks from now.

In fact, given that SL was the cover story of all international editions of Newsweek dated July 30, I'm guessing we'll have another influx of new residents and a corresponding higher demand for land. I have confidence, though, that LL is able to match that demand with supply.

Start browsing the estate listings and talk to some estate owners. It does exist, just rare to find on the mainland unless you find an older established sim like Mahulu.

I think their mistake was to have the high tiers too low for too long. It always seemed quite silly to have island owners compete against LL for land-owning residents and being able to offer a better deal (themed communities aside).

Despite their lack in caring for the mainland, it's probably one of the biggest revenue earners since as soon as more than 2 people own land in a sim (and nowhere else), they get more tier than they do for a private sim. People's unused tier alone would probably fill a small continent as well.

I wonder how many of the new residents that were born this weekend will stay in SL. Not too much fun if you can't TP, search or buy anything.

Hmmm, this is one of the lowest prices in a good while for a full sim at auction:
Bob Too (128,12 Mature 65536m US$2152.00 Jul-29-07