What to look for when looking at Estate Land

[Ethen Pow]

I run into to many people that are unclear what they are looking for in a Estate Land, A few things you can do to see if a land on a sim is worth while or not worth your lindens.

When you look for any parcel to call your home or commerical structure, you need to look though Land forum and overview the open parcels to rent. Secondlife has many Estate Owners and many more estate sims, sometimes going for a estate sim is much cheaper and less handache than mainland.

Once you compiled a few places that are good go and look at the land and check their Covenant, the Covenant is important and must include many Details to make sure you are safe. One thing that shows a good rental is REFUND clause, when you can't rent any longer or you choose not to rent because a some factors, having a refund is good, expect a fee and make sure its clearly stated on the Covenant how much is that fee, sometimes it might be 10-25% of the remaining amount.

Once you see that the estate land is perfect for you after looking at the covenant and sim itself talk to any renters and see their side, how long they been renting and how does the estate owner or estate managers help you with problems, are they professonal and do they act in a timely matter? How long did it take to get the land deeded? has the sim gotten Griefed and was it handled quickly? see what you can learn, not all renters know because the sim runs great and stays in good shape or they are hardly on.

Once you got all the info and still want to rent, seek a Rental Agent of that Estate or find the rental box near the parcel boarder, sometimes if they are willing, the can place your rental box in the air if they allow skyboxes and you want to see the box when you get on your land. Pay the rental Box and get the land transferred (If it not already set to 1L to get deed) then your good to go!

 

I hope this wall of text helps you get land on a estate or saves you form a bad experiance.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I would add to this list by saying

Its important to see how many vacancies they have in their total estate.  The sim you are looking at may be new and not a good indication of vacancy rate, that's why its important to see the vacancy rate of the entire estate.  A high vacancy rate means that either they are charging too much compared to other estates offering similar amenities, or their service is very poor. Ask for a list of all their sims if its not available on a website or estate office so you can check this out.

Also find out how long the estate has been in business.  The longer it has, the least likely it is that it or the sim your buying on will disappear with your land and money because they didn't pay tiers to LL.  Its not a foolproof way, but its better than not checking.

[iCade]

On one point I have to disagree. All of the estates I have rented with offered no refund, yet their customer support was superb and I had absolutely no troubles. The staff bent over backward for their tenants. Refunds are a nice bonus, one that seems to be far and in between and is not and should not be a given.

The option to take your pre-paid tier with you when you move from a bigger to smaller parcel or vice versa, or move from a grassland sim to a beach sim within the estate agency sims however is wide spread and appreciated and quite frankly much better than an offer of a refund from a strategical standpoint.

Offering refunds if you decide to leave before your tier time is up, makes me as a renter, think they have had a lot of requests for that, which in turn makes me think the estate agency is not that good as people seem to leave a lot. That of course is just my opinion.

 

And to add on to what has been said, if you check out parcels, and an estate manager pops up to help you, that's great. But if the estate manager get's pushy to sell you land that's where you have to run, desperate behaviour is never a good indication.

Also, websites and land offices should be neat and orderly, information should be quick to find. The neater it is, the more professional the angency tends to be.

 

[Ethen Pow]

A Refund Policy that well thought out and clearly outlining when a refund we can recieved, I normally will allow this on the remaining time. Except when tier is due for the estate sim, normally within 12 days of tier date, no refunds can be issued until after.

Also, you don't need many sims to be better to rent too, this is where I find issues for new estate owners to come into renting land. Community Based (less than 65% of the SQ M is rentable and there is a meeting hall and such) can be better, Tomestone for Example is a RP community of old west, and has succeed without overall extreme amount of sims.

estates with less sims or more is should never the the judge of best choice of renting estate land, Normally I find Estate Owners normally cluster together to improve their chances of success, Its more of cooperation that is the key. I found this is a few communities like Ryder, Valleys and some Key communities out there.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I couldn't agree with you more.  My comments about vacancy rate apply to large as well as 1 sim estates. Its the percentage of vacancies that count.

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Ethen Pow wrote:

A Refund Policy that well thought out and clearly outlining when a refund we can recieved, I normally will allow this on the remaining time. Except when tier is due for the estate sim, normally within 12 days of tier date, no refunds can be issued until after.

Also, you don't need many sims to be better to rent too, this is where I find issues for new estate owners to come into renting land. Community Based (less than 65% of the SQ M is rentable and there is a meeting hall and such) can be better, Tomestone for Example is a RP community of old west, and has succeed without overall extreme amount of sims.

estates with less sims or more is should never the the judge of best choice of renting estate land, Normally I find Estate Owners normally cluster together to improve their chances of success, Its more of cooperation that is the key. I found this is a few communities like Ryder, Valleys and some Key communities out there.

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I couldn't agree with you more.  My comments about longevity and vacancy rates apply to any size estate. Vacancy rate is not the number of sims but the percentage or how many lots are vacant compared to how many are rented.

The size of the estate really has no bearing on the service.  I've had great experiences with both large and tiny 1 sim estates.  The small estates because you generally get more personal service than with one that is hundreds of sims. The large estates because it was managed and staffed correctly.  The last large one we rented a lot in was fantastic, and the only reason we left was because we got our own sim.  But probably my worst experience was with a small estate of only a couple of sims where I rented an entire homestead.  They didn't pay the tiers on my sim, even though I paid the rent in full and on time and it got confiscated by LL,   We got no warning.  I logged in one day to find it gone, along with all the things I had rezzed there.  But that was not due to the size, it was due to an unscrupulous estate owner.

[Lizard Howl]

Hi Ethen, Amethyst

I'm glad to see discussion going about Estate lands good, bad, and in-between.

The more people know about what to do and what to look out for the less people will get ripped off.

I used to think that looking for the large, stable Estates was the way to go, but recently I am reading stories about good sized Estates disappearing off the grid!

Amethyst has the right idea about vacancies: if you can somehow determine the # of vacancies or % of vacant land an Estate has, that is a good indication of the stability of the Estate.

No matter what you find, don't spend more up front than you have to.  Be wary of deals that sound too good to be true, or ask for a certain amount of Ls up front and promise a lot of tier for the Ls.

It's easy to promise 6 month's of tier (for any rate) if you are leaving SL in a week.

Finally, if you haven't yet, take a look at the articles I posted years ago on my website.

Some of the numbers have changed, but the principles remain the same.

Have fun, and good luck!

Lizard Howl

Segarra Estates Owner