Houses - Sell, Rent, or Pre-fab>

Hi, I'm quite new in SL, and I am interested in building and selling houses and other buildings. I'm not sure of the best way to go about this, and have a few general questions.

Is there still a market for well designed and quality built houses?

Is there a market for small cheap starter homes on a 256sqm plot? Maximum price for these?

Should I sell pre-fab houses in a box from a store, or should I build my houses on land for sale?

Is it better to sell land with a house on, or to rent it. Which is more popular?

How do I go about advertising any of these? Land sale; Classifieds; advert signs on the actual land for sale; a store; SL forums; my own website? A house already built on land for sale seems the hardest to advertise, because it could just appear to be very expensive land. There seems to be no specific place to advertise these.

Finally is there a market for landscaping services, and custom built houses on demand?

Thanks for taking the trouble to read this, and for any help you may be able to give me!

Yes!! all power to you to start your own building company in SL! Goodness, from my experience lately, we sure could use a few good ones now.

Can't answer all your questions, but a couple of thoughts.

There will always be a market for well-made houses.

I think there is a definite market for small prefabs, but I don't think they command very high prices unless there's something really unique about them. Some prefabs show up in freebie packs, so if you want to sell them (I've been thinking about this because I may do it myself at some point), I doubt that you could go much over L$500, if even that.

You can sell land with a house on it but unless your buyer likes both the land and the house it won't be a value-add. They'll just take the house out and replace it with one they like. My partner and I tried renting out a house on land we owned once, but all it did was show us we don't really want to be landlords. Your experience might be different though.

There is a big market for well designed quality homes. There's also the building industry whereby you do custom builds for landowners.

Some people like ready made homes, some people prefer to put their own buildings in place. You need to be flexible here.

As for marketing, scan the classifieds for people in your field and see what their offering.

I would also check the SLExchange site.

It has a good selection of what prefabs are already available.

Thanks so much, and what a quick response! Prior to SL I had no experience of manipulating 3D shapes, and I quickly discovered how difficult and fiddly it can be to built with prims, especially when trying to keep the prim count low. However I'm pleased with my first attempt at building a house, so I am encouraged to continue.

Well that is certainly encouraging! Quality is what I aiming for.

Yes, that seems reasonable. I was thinking of targeting new residents who don't have much L$. Or perhaps renting would work better for that market?

An excellent point - I'll bear it in mind.

Thanks for you suggestions.

Very helpful, thanks.

Thanks, I will.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm now thinking it would be better to rent my Starter Homes to new residents, instead of selling them. With just a few homes all the arrangements could be done manually, but I read about automated rental machines.

Can someone point me in the direction of a very simple script to start me off with the basic rental tasks, e.g. money transfer, object permissions, etc. As my needs grow, and as I learn LSL I can then hopefully add to it.