So how it is finally done (getting the land) - mindmapped/foldered?

[Averager]

Greetings to the forum,

I have encountered to the problem I was not able to clear, even how I tried.

Okay, so how I should understand all the tiers, rents, etc. ...?
I am not native English speaker, I did try to figure the page:
http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Buying-land/ta-p/700043
but am confused and out like a snowman.

Some folder-type thinking or mindmap would be the way I can understand this, like this

1. Basic account
1.1 Premium - Annual Membership USD 89.28 per year
1.1.1 Land Manager
1.1.1.1 Land Use Fees
1.1.1.1.1 USD 8.00/ month 1,024 1/64 Region
1.1.1.1.1.1 ????
1.1.1.1.1.1. .x.x.x You have your avatar on own land
1.2 possible other way leading to the land options from basic
1.2.1 path #1
1.2.2 path #2

I now am at 1.1.1.1.1 ($8 month), but what next? What options? Very unclear.

With best regards,
Averager

EDIT: Fixed a typo...

EDIT 2:

1.1.1.1.1.1 Possible Land Purchase?

1.1.1.1.1.1.1 Additional things/ costs/montly's..?

[Jenni Darkwatch]

If you want to "own" land, i.e. rent directly from LL as opposed to renting from another resident, you need to be premium. If you'd like to rent from another resident, you do NOT need to be premium.

If you're premium you can either rent a Linden "starter" home for no extra cost, or you can go buy some land somewhere. One way to find land is to log in, go to any of the mainland sims and pull up the map. Enable "Land Sale" and check what's available.

The "Tier" is essentially the rent. Depending on what size land you want, your tier goes up. With premium you can buy a 512 parcel without paying any additional monthly fee. If you'd like anything bigger, you will have to pay (Tier) rent to LL.

An example:

Option 1: Rent from another resident. No need to go premium. Just go and rent land from anyone (check forums or MP)

Option 2: Own your own land (which really means you rent it from LL). Steps:

• Become premium
• Log in to SL and go to any of the mainland continents, e.g. Corsica, Nautilus etc. or the adult continent
• Open the map, enable "Land Sale" and look for yellow parcels. Look at e.g. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ink%20Cap/90/7/20 to see what those look like. That's a random 512sqm parcel btw.
• Find a parcel you like the looks of and TP there to see it in person. Generally, parcels with "protected" borders are more expensive than e.g. parcels surrounded by other renters.
• If you like the parcel, buy it in-world (there's a buy parcel icon in the address bar - you can click on that and get more details on the conditions of the sale). That's a one-time fee you pay, after that you only pay your Tier (rent) to LL.

If you'd like to own a 512sqm (32m x 16m) parcel, that's covered by your premium membership. If you'd like a 1024sqm (32x32m) parcel, you'll have to pay tier for the additional 512sqm. That is, 512sqm of that are covered by your premium, the remaining 512sqm will incur an additional fee of US$/month and so on, as seen here: https://secondlife.com/my/account/landfees.php?lang=en-US

Advantage of renting from another resident: No premium needed. However, there's plenty of horror stories where estate owners just up and left, and there's no recourse in case of disputes. Most land is also disconnected from LL waterways, meaning it's unsuitable for sailing or flying.

Advantage of renting from LL: It's your land, you can (almost) do whatever you like. The big disadvantage can be summed up with "Neighbors". If you have nice neighbors you're all set. If you have a total jackass neighbor it can be a nightmare. That's why quite a few people prefer land that's got as few neighbors as possible. On the other hand, having neighbors can be fun - we always do our best to accomodate our neighbors for example.

Hope that made sense

[Averager]

 

Thank You so much, I think I have been in a direction approximately, but this helps really to figure it a bit more. I think I need to remap this to my brains, do I still have something I miss/ figure out.

 

But some additional things, as I now understand:

1.) Most important to me to figure 110%: The tier (montly payment like in my first post) is not yet the land, but sort of permission to get more/own land?

2.) As I have premium, and with its additional 512m2 + the tier (montly payment) I have now total of 1024m2 size parcel allowed to buy only, so it is not yet any land?

3.) Now the option is to find the land.

3a.) The only option to get that from the LL (where the tier is got to get more land) is to rent for additional monthly cost? That way I could get "fresh" untouched land, which would surely have untouched defaults in permissions. And then the question mark would be the neighbours.

3b.) From resident: Nothing guarantee, that after the land purchase you would get the land at all. Or not all of the permissions belonging to the area would not be transferred. Figured I this right? Huh, then that renders this option unusable/ too risky, at least for a beginner like me.

If I understanded the previous ones right, I would like this cleared too. Then I think I should find some land to rent from LL, which seems to be better option for beginner.

Also I will do update/edit my post(s) appropriately, how I finally get to the goal. Also as I am new to the forums as well, I research, what there is options to make/do with the (answered) topic.

 

 

 

[Averager]

Additional questions:

4.) Purchasing from LL:

http://usd.auctions.secondlife.com/lin/auction/auction/list/

Is auction different to rent or the same as an option? It seems that I might need more L$ purchased then...

[Jenni Darkwatch]

You can always double check how much land you can own with your current payment by going to the land manager in your dashboard. If I correctly understand what you're saying, your Land Use Fees should currently show the following:

Square meters owned: 0 (because you haven't bought any Land yet)

Square meters donated: 0 (this is for group owned land, irrelevant in your case)

Premium Bonus in Square Meters: 512

Paid Tier Level: 512

Available Square Meters: 1024 (basically premium bonus + paid tier)

Monthly Cost: USD 5.00

3a) If you get land from LL, it'd have to be via auction. That's the only way to get it from LL directly. Land for auction was (usually) owned by a resident previously but reverted back to LL because either the resident abandoned it or LL repossessed it due to lack of payment. I do believe permissions would be reset to defaults.

3b) If you BUY land from another resident, permissions might be anything, but you can reset those. Be careful though: Sometimes residents "sell" land on privately owned estates, which is not what you want. You can always check that by going to the for-sale parcel in world and looking at World->Region/Estate where it should say mainland, with the owner being either "nobody" or any of the Lindens. Buying is very different from renting. If you rent land it is paid in L$, bought land is paid in US$.

For reference, this is mainland: http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131012152915/second-life-aviation/images/5/5c/Linden_Lab_Mainland_Continents.png - if you open your map and zoom out a little you should be able to spot most of the continents except Zindra (which is way off to one side).

A few notes on certain terms...

Permissions:

If you own any land on mainland you have all parcel permissions open to you, regardless of who else owned the land before.

If the previous owner left anything on the land, you can return it if you wish.

You can also edit any of the permissions via World->About Land, without limitations. In most places you can also terraform within certain limits (usually 10m up/down). What you do not have is access to the Region/Estate management options. You can view them via World->Region/Estate, but you can't edit them.

Auctioned land:

I have no direct experience with auctions myself, apologies for the vague information on that. Generally, auctioned land is pretty "clean", the land has no prims left on it and I believe permissions are set to some default. Regardless of that, you should still check out any land you bid on, again the neighbor issue. I do not know if you pay auctioned land in L$ or in US$, sorry.

As far as I know the percentage of auctioned land vs. land sold in-world is relatively low. Personally I would not want to limit myself to auctions.

"Owning" land:

I think I accidentally introduced some confusion by adding the word "rent" to this. The confusion stems from a little but important distinction: Land we own we pay Tier for, and we pay directly to LL. Land we rent from other residents we pay in L$.

If you look at the forums you see plenty of posts where people sell e.g. an Estate or Homestead. Sadly, not all of those are actually sales. Some of those really are renting their Estate or Homestead out to other residents, which muddles the terms.

I tend to still use the term "own" loosely even if the land was bought from LL, because IMO we still don't own that land, we merely rent it from LL.

Land ownership and management in SL is unfortunately not one of the easier topics. There are many nuances and I've never actually found a good comprehensive guide on the topic.

Neighbors:

One very unfortunate problem on Mainland are neighbors. Because parcels get bought and sold relatively frequently, neighbors change. Each neighbor may have different ideas of taste and decency, and plenty build quite fugly walls around their land. On the other hand, sometimes cooperation between multiple residents yields some amazing areas. There's plenty of horror stories about bad neighbors, please keep that in mind. On the other hand, in the few years that we had our sim and a mall we didn't have any truly awful neighbors and never had a dispute.

There's not usually anything that can be done about that, except to pick a parcel that borders LL owned land (Waterways, Roads or Railroads) or has no neighboring sim on one or more borders. While it's possible that LL changes those it's pretty rare. Those parcels are also the most sought-after pieces of land and therefore relatively expensive.

Maturity Rating:

I completely forgot about that one. You need to look out for the maturity rating of the parcel you buy! The rating cannot be changed by you, it's fixed by LL. Depending on the rating there are certain things you can't do with your land. Instead of repeating LLs official policy please read it here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Maturity-ratings/ta-p/700119

 

Sorry for the long post

Jenni

[Averager]

This is definitely THE explaining thing. I think this helped me to get this figured a LOT.

I encountered into some Kudos-feature and find that to give that, my question is on wrong place.

Your answers are very much appreciated. Now I think I have enough knowledge to do somewhat safe advancing, but still as a newbie, I now sort this thing in my mind, making some clear mindmap of this.

I am positive now, that this problem can be called as "solved" and I will edit my first post yet a bit later, then making note of that. So I now carefully progress with this, not advancing, if the thing is not clear. I think I am very near from the goal.

You have seen much of effort on this. *bows deeply*

Cheers!