General Question about land fee

[ashrimero Jigsaw]

Hello,

 

Thank you ahead of time for taking the time to answer my question. I was hoping someone could chime in and give me insight on what my total monthly charge would be on my credit card. I tried to understand what my total cost would be but am still a bit cloudy (after looking at the land fee section of the site)

 

If I am purchasing a mainland property (at the cost of the previous seller), my total payment to SL will be:

2,048 sqm

15.00 +9.95 charge/month?

 

Does this sound about right.

Thanks!!!

[Sea Warcliffe]

Correct, if you are paying your premium fees monthly. See the mainland pricing and fees page.

Things that can change this:

1) paying your tier quarterly or even yearly for more savings

2) The 10% group bonus can get you up to 10% more land should you choose to deed your land to group.

[Jennifer Boyle]

You are correct: $24.95 per month.  There are some ways to save.  The easiest is to pay annual, at $72 per year, for the premium membership.  You can also make a group with an alt to own the land, which gives you a 10% increase in the amount of land that can be owned, so you can own 10% more for the same price.  You can also rent tier for L$0.25 per square meter per week.  Using your example, you would need to rent 1372 square meters, which would cost you L$343 per week, or about L$1600 per month, which is equivalent to about $6 per month, a considerable saving.  So if you had an annual membership, owned the land through a group,  and rented the tier you need, it would cost you about half what it would otherwise.

[ashrimero Jigsaw]

Thank you for the clarrification.

 

One additional question. say i purchase a 2048  property. do I also get an additional 512 for free?

 

Does it look like this for my billing:

 

1. 2048 mainland purchase= 15+9.95

2 or is it 2048 mainland purchase, another 512 property for =15+9.95

 

Thanks!

[Sea Warcliffe]

Think of your premium 512 as your bonus tier. Actually it says that on the link I gave you:

"Premium accounts are granted a 512 sqm bonus lease before land use fees are applied. The chart below shows the fees for all land you hold or tier you donate beyond the 512 sqm bonus."

So for $15 USD per month in tier payment(plus $9.95 monthy) you can own 2048 + 512  = 2560 sq meters

And more if you take advantage of the group land bonus

The sweet spot on cost for premium fees is yearly $72 - with the stipend factored in the cost is less than $2 per month.

[Richie Kanto]

It is also important to mention that here you're discussing owning mainland. If you didn't want or need the premium membership for anything else, you can be a basic member, save the monthly premium membership fees completely, and own the same 2048m on a "private" SIM for about $13 per month (hence one of the main reasons mainland is so empty and everyone's living on private land now).

 

 

[Jennifer Boyle]

As was already pointed out, an annual premium membership is almost free when the stipend is taken into account.  I think access to chat support is invaluable.  I rarely need it, but when I do, I REALLY need it.  For example, I can get the region where I live restarted when it needs it.

[Qie Niangao]

Right, although at these smaller units of tier, Mainland is very tricky to make cost effective. It helps to either need exactly the right size of parcel, or to leverage cheap annual membership fees.  

How cheap? With the US$72/yr annual plan, 52 weeks of L$300/wk stipend, at L$250/US$, comes to a net cost of US$9.60 for the whole year--only 80 cents a month.

For example, let's say you want 2048sq.m. for a year, which (according to Richie) one can rent from an Estate for US$13/mo. That's a difficult size for Mainland:

A single premium account would pay that US$0.80 membership cost plus US$15 tier. That's US$15.80 per month. It's such a crappy deal because that particular amount of land leaves the 512sq.m. "bonus" tier on the table (and that's because there's no 1536sq.m. tier level, and instead one must jump all the way to 2048).

On the other hand, consider two premium accounts that pool their bonus 512s. That's US$1.60 cost of two premiums, plus the US$8 tier for 1024sq.m. for a total cost of US$9.60 per month to cover that same 2048.

You can see where this is going. That same 2048, covered by four premium accounts' "bonus" 512s costs just US$3.20/mo, net of stipend.  Really, until you get up to a half-sim where Concierge services are a consideration, there's really no good financial reason to ever pay tier beyond the bonus 512sq.m. in any Premium account.

Granted, that initial US$72 outlay for a premium entails some risk: LL could go out of business, or make SL unplayable, or cancel stipend, or something dreadful, but otherwise, if you cash out all the stipends, it's a very cheap way to own land.