Buying land from absent land owner

[Digit Ditko]

I own almost all of a mainland sim, but for two plots, a 4096 sqm plot and a 512 sqm plot.  Those plots are owned by an individual not a group and that person has no logged into Second Life since 8-May-2011. I would love to buy these plots and have send IMs and note cards to said owner for months but no luck.

Any suggestions on how I can purchase this land?

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Simply put, you can't unless you can contact them and they agree to sell it to you.  

The owner is still paying tiers on it or it would have reverted back to LL by now.  It also could be they are a lifetime member if their rez date is very early in SL history and are guaranteed ownership of that land for their life.

The other possibility is they are using an alt in SL but never changed the ownership of the land for reasons of their own.

In any case, LL will not sell it to you nor will they help you contact the person.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Check the person's profile - if it fails to come up properly you are in luck. Their account might be suspended or otherwise de-activated. If this ever occurs, you can file support tickets to buy the land.

You might have one other option... watch the land with care, and see if anyone else is still using it. It is possible they have switched active accounts and still use their land with an alt. If you see someone lingering on the land a lot, ask them if they know the landowner and could pass along a note for you. If lucky, they will turn out to be either a friend or an alt.

Otherwise, you are essentially out of luck. You have to hope they see their SL bill at some point and decide to cancel the charge... which might never occur.

 

[Indigo Mertel]

I dealt with that problem a number of times. What Amethyst said is right, your chance to buy the land is rather small unless you can get in touch with the land owner. One thing I would try is to file a ticket here:

https://support.secondlife.com/create-case/

The dropdown menu you'll find there lists the type of issues you can file the ticket to, select "land & region".

By filing a ticket LL will check the status of the land owner. There may be a small chance that the account is dead. Usually LL reclaims the land after a number of months. You can give it a try but don't hold your breath.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

Filing such a ticket on what I believed were dead accounts has worked for me I think twice out of maybe 5 times that I've done it since 2009. BUT I only filed such tickets after checking every resident available method I could think of - which may have improved my odds a lot. More often, I check and eventually find some proof that the person, or someone in their land group, is still around... so don't bother filing the ticket but contact them.

[Digit Ditko]

The land owners profile, comes up fine, they are 4 years 10 months old. I have been watching the land very carefully. Every time I see someone there, I ask about the landowner and so on, but the occasional user of the plots does not know. The plots are wide open, anyone can rez things there so I imagine people are using the plots to un-box things rather than going to a sandbox.

[Digit Ditko]

Indigo, I just filed a ticket with LL, explain all the things I have done to contact the land owner. I asked if they could at least check that the avatar has a account in good standing. If this is all the land the person owns than it's $40, plus their premium membership fee. We will see that happens.

[Indigo Mertel]

Best of luck, Digit. Hope it works.