Price Fixing

[Preston Verne]

In the last week, the bottom end pricing of mainland has gone from .1 l per meter to .5 l per meter, basically because there is at least one, and perhaps more dealers who are buying all the land below the .5l per meter price and abandoning it to make a point. I wish I didn't know this to be true, but they've contacted me to try to convince me I should do the same. I buy and sell land for fun, and have been happy passing on bargains to others when I found them. I've sometimes cut a parcel to make it a standard size and offered the remaining bit for a low price, hoping that someone else in the sim could use it for the extra prims, as I have often needed to do in the past myself, normally they've bought those parcels and abandoned them, but the newest approach seems to be erecting an ugly skyscraper on a 112 m parcel right on the property line next to me to annoy me. They don't realize I like skyscrapers, lol. Anyway,. I've reported this abuse to Linden Labs. The funny part is that I tend to not deal at the bottom end of the market since most of my land is waterfront parcels that I have an enthusiasm for myself, but apparently, someone out there is trying to fix prices. It doesn't seem fair to the market and I wonder what long term ill effects it will have.

[Preston Verne]

Sorry this is rambling as much as it was, I typed most of it while I was distracted, but I think it gets across the point.

 

[Marigold Devin]

Welcome to Second Life Forums, Preston.

I don't know about price fixing, but it does sound like whoever has been contacting you should be ignored. 

You continue buying and selling land for fun, as you are doing.  Waterland property will always command higher prices than landlocked mainland, which is hard to even give away at the moment. 

As for these creatures putting skyscrapers on land to try and intimidate neighbours, don't they realise it's a virtual world, and we can set out camera view so we don't see them, and on some viewers there is that rather marvellous de-render feature ?   LOL

As I said earlier, just you keep on doing what you're doing, the way that you're doing it. And most importantly, do it for the fun of it. 

Edited to add:

If you are not already in it, then I urge you to join The Arbor Project (its listed in my profile groups).  Their aim was to beautify the mainland, buy up ugly little chunks of land, and over the past few years, many of those horrid little landcutters and ad-farmers have gone to the wall.  They will also advise you if an abuse report submission is appropriate, and we all support each other if we think several abuse reports about an issue would help to persuade LL to take action about something we feel passionate about.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

A fool and his money is soon parted.

First there is tons of mainland for sale by owner that cheap so to have much of an effect they'd have to invest a lot of money, just to turn around and abandon the land and lose it.  They also have to pay a months tier for it, so it is costing them few dollars a month in addition to the money they spend buying the land, and a lot more if they are buying larger parcels. 

Second, how do they figure mainland is going to sell any better at a higher price?  The majority of people in SL have land on private estates.  Even as cheap as it is now, they don't want mainland, other than some choice locations such as on the Blake Sea, because tiers are more expensive unless you own a large amount.  Additionally a lot of mainland is just ugly since there are no covenants so people build anything they want wherever they want.  The land itself is so chopped up looking due to terraforming land without regard to what looks natural or taking any pains to integrate it with the contours of the land of the land surrounding it.

The result is they may raise the price temporarily, which I highly doubt they will, but it  will just drive more people to the private estates.  Sooner rather than later the law of supply and demand will kick in and prices will bottom out again because they can't keep doing this forever.

If these people really want to increase the value of the mainland, they should convince LL to do away with the Linden Homes mini continents and relocate all the homes to the mainland where vast parcels are already owned by LL.  It will decrease LL's costs by using up the oversupply of empty abandoned land and make the mainland a more vibrant community.  The people that have Linden Homes will be part of the greater mainland community and see more larger homes in choicer locations which will encourage them to want to upgrade themselves.  The existing landowners will benefit because supply will go down and demand up.

[Curious Hazelnut]

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Preston Verne wrote:

In the last week, the bottom end pricing of mainland has gone from .1 l per meter to .5 l per meter, basically because there is at least one, and perhaps more dealers who are buying all the land below the .5l per meter price and abandoning it to make a point.

...

It doesn't seem fair to the market and I wonder what long term ill effects it will have.

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I don't know what the long-term effect will be, but my guess is that sooner or later those guys are going to get sick of wasting the money (even if it's just lower profits) on that game and give up.

[Preston Verne]

Hi Marigold, I was unfamiliar with the Arbor Project, but it's a great cause. when I split land parcels to sell them, I often end up with small leftover parcels, I've been pricing them at .2 l per meter in the hopes that someone else in the sim could use the extra prims....I've been prim locked before myself and know sometimes I could use them too. Unfortunately, what's happening is that the land manipulators are buying them and abandoning them, which mean they pretty much end up in the vortex of land that will probably not make it back into circulation, unless someone specifically asks for it. I'd be happy to donate those parcels to the group if you think that would work instead, just let me know who I need to contact to do that. Thanks for your help, I've already joined the group. It resonates with me because unlike the other land sellers out there on the mainland, I take the time to set up every parcel  I sell so it's more attractive in the meantime...terraforming, bird sounds chirping, trees, flowers, docks, etc., so they all look more attractive for everyone else.

[Qie Niangao]

Microparcels set for sale are wide open invitations to adfarmers--and they very definitely still exist, with new ones cropping up all the time. It is much better for those to be abandoned. Neighbors can always file support tickets to get those added on to their parcels for the nominal fee of L$1/sq.m. (These days, in practice, I'm pretty sure anybody with other land in the sim can do the same.) The whole process is described in the Abandoned Land policy, a link to which is conveniently supplied in the Description field of every newly-abandoned parcel.

I can't speak for Arbor, but I doubt the group is eager to take on new land at this point, now that the Lab is providing essentially the same service.

As to larger parcels being bought and abandoned, I wasn't aware that this was a thing, but it doesn't sound like it would catch on at any grand scale. I can definitely see, however, that a parcel's value could be considerably enhanced by being surrounded by abandoned land -- in this market, it's practically as good as Protected -- so it could make sense for dealers to do that in an attempt to recover some value from otherwise marginal Mainland inventory, without having to carry the extra tier.

Even if lots of land were bought and abandoned, "price fixing" seems a bit grandiose. Really, perceiving any real difference between L$ 0.1/sqm and L$ 1.0/sqm sale prices is living in denial about tier costs.

[Marigold Devin]

Hi again, Preston.

As Qie points out, LL will do the same as Arbor, ie let people have little parcels of land that have been abandoned/given over to them, if it can be attached to an already-owned piece of land. Being in Arbor group is certainly a great place for advice generally, very supportive of each other, and united in their desires and efforts to make the mainland a better place for all.  Owners in group are those in emboldened text, and any of those can be contacted directly if you wish to purchase a little parcel of land to join to bigger. Listen in to group chat, it's enlightening, although not as busy as it used to be.

I no longer own any land, but used to do the same as you; terraform land, add flowers, trees, buildings, and did sell some parcels of land with homes and furnishings included, until Linden Homes were started up.  The beauty of doing so on mainland though, was you could see that some sims already had a theme as people had bought land that already might have got castles on, or 1960s-style flat-roofed buildings, so it was easy and fun to buy empty plots, divide them into 512m and decorate them accordingly to put them on for resale.  A bit more choice, but harder to find than the Linden homes styles. And as a small fish in a very big sea, I gave it up to pursue other interests, but it was certainly very enjoyable to do, and I'd urge you to continue doing what you're doing for as long as you enjoy it too.