Why Do People Have These Expectations in Rentals?

[Prokofy Neva]

I've been in Second Life for more than nine years now. And for much of that time, I have run a small rentals business on the mainland -- mainly mainland parcels and mall space, although I have a few private islands.

And I'm baffled over and over again as to how people acquire the expectations people have when they come to rentals.

Perhaps people can explain to me.

I realize that with private islands being the overwhelming majority of offerings, people get used to "buying" (it's actually renting from the island owner) a parcel that they then fully control.

But there isn't a script that connects a payment event with a group invitation event, is there? That has never been something they've cracked in LSL -- that you pay a box, and instantly become a group member able to set prims.

What happens is that people put their own group as the owner of that parcel, or set it to their group, and that's how they set prims.

Unless I'm mistaken, there isn't a script that connects expiration of a rental box with clearance of prims on land. That is,  there might be something that puts a number of minutes into the land menu, and connects that to payment -- I'd be interested to know.

But this is what I find over and over again, that people think:

"I should be able to return the prims of the previous tenant on this parcel even before joining a group"

Why would you be able to do that? That would mean you could return group-set prims including the manager's rental box and any management prims like plants. No manager would set it up that way. You'd also be able to return your fellow tenant's prims on a whim.

"If I pay a rental box, the previous tenant's house should automatically disappear."

How? Is there really an LSL command out there that says "when payment event return all prims on parcel no payor"? Really, guys

"If I join a group I should be able to return other people's prims even if set to group, and also control the parcel completely"

A key problem with this idea is that if you had TOTAL control, you could sell the land out from under the group owner paying tier. Or put a parcel in search and cost him $30 a week with your store in the sky. So obviously these have to be managed carefully.

"If my rental box expires, all my prims will instantly disappear and return to inventory"

This idea is so deepset, so profound, that I have to figure this does happen in island rentals on some automatic basis.

"Someone else can pay my box even though my box isn't expired"

Yes, I realize there are boxes that take multiple avatar payments. But then...anyone can pay them. Not just you and your roomie, but anyone -- meaning they can then take away your parcel. So short of configuring a box with two names if there are sub boxes, what to do? I think single payor is better. The other one can pay after it expires.

"My prim counter will tell me how many prims I have"

The problem with this is that on group land, you are not limited to that parcel's limit in a group -- a parcel can borrow prim allotment from a commons or spare prim lot and such counters may not work.

i realize there are very sophisticated rental systems with some of these configurations, although I'm not aware of anything that has "payment event=group membership". You could have a bot dispense an invitation to an open group or the landlord could manually issue one. Or you could have the first level of tenancy open in an open group to start out, and then manually move the tenant up to resident status with more powers, i.e. return non-group prims, ban, deed media.

Again and again, I find people have the most elaborate, complex -- and unfounded -- ideas about rentals. They live in fear, thinking all their prims will disappear if a box expires. They feel without even being given return powers they should be able to walk and return everything that "doesn't fit" for them.

 

Thoughts?

 

[Randall Ahren]

Never rent. Too many unhappy stories.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Sounds like you need to update your rental system.

There are rental systems

• that have plug ins that will actually issue the right invitation to a closed group and eject non paying tenants via a scripted agent for less than 100L a week..
• with plug ins or API's to automatically set up house systems and security systems in the tenants name.
• that will not take rents from anyone but the tenant and a designated partner. They also have an option to lock up if a tenant doesn't pay the rent to prevent someone from taking over the parcel if you wish to give a grace period. If you use autoevict they will not evict the tenant while the box is locked.
• that will give accurate prim counts even on group owned land.
• with the option to auto-evict after a period you set as well as allow you to evict a tenant from a website without logging in.
• allow you and people you trust to do all this via a website at no additional charge.

If you don't have a rental system that does all this for you, you may be losing tenants.  There are a lot of people that won't rent mainland simply because of having to join a rental group.  There is nothing more frustrating than renting a place and having to wait sometimes a few days to get your group tag so you can use it, or wait for the landlord to come and clear out former tenants property.  If you don't want to update your system, you should be available yourself or have a few designated people you can trust that can cover for you when you can't be so this is done within hours of them paying rent. If for some reason you can't do this or an unexpected absence occurs then you should adjust the rent so the rental starts when they get their tag IMO.

 

[Qie Niangao]

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

There are rental systems

• that have plug ins that will actually issue the right invitation to a closed group and eject non paying tenants via a scripted agent for less than 100L a week..

---

I'm unclear about that particular bit. As far as I know, there's no way for a script to send an invitation to a closed group without the help of a bot. (Scripts can, of course, blurt out some chat history that, when clicked, offers a "Join" button to open enrollment groups.) It would be a boon if scripts could do such operations directly instead of the old bot kludge, but I'm not aware of any progress on that.

Meanwhile, there are some companies that lease bot access to do such operations, so it's not necessary to go into the bot-running business oneself, nor use a general-issue commercial rental system, if one wants to provide more customized service.

The thing I wonder about group-bot outfits, though, is whether they're in trouble now that the group-message spam limits are in place. That might have changed their operations a lot (such as adding many times as many bots) to keep from running into those limits.

A separate thing about Mainland rentals:  I've only ever dabbled in it myself, so this approach does not scale, but it may nonetheless affect expectations: it's so much simpler to use a distinct rental group for each parcel. That way, the renter can have nearly complete, almost owner-like control over the parcel and the land group, and gets as close as possible to the privileges estates extend when "selling" their parcels. (But again, it doesn't scale. Even with the ability to belong to 42 groups, it takes two members to keep a group alive, so one would need another alt for every 21 groups, which isn't very practical.)

Finally, it's perhaps worth noting that only in the past year or so, a new LSL function was introduced, llReturnObjectsByOwner(), that can help with managing rental parcel contents, used in conjunction with good ol' llGetParcelPrimOwners(). So, if one is using an older rental script and wants to automate the "eviction" process, this could help.

[Pussycat Catnap]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

The thing I wonder about group-bot outfits, though, is whether they're in trouble now that the group-message spam limits are in place. That might have changed their operations a lot (such as adding many times as many bots) to keep from running into those limits.

A separate thing about Mainland rentals:  I've only ever dabbled in it myself, so this approach does not scale, but it may nonetheless affect expectations: it's

so

much simpler to use a distinct rental group for each parcel.

---

Would such bots even need to issue a group message? And even if so, you'd have to have an insanely huge AND unstable business to hit the limit which I think is some several hundred spams per day. Even if it was 100 a month - if I had a rental business with turnover that heavy I'd have other worries, unless I owned 1000+ sims.

I don't think a rental group per parcel would work for Prok. Prok has a LOT of parcels and it would be a management nightmare as well as be something Prok would need a dozen alts to manage due to the limit in the number of groups an avatar can be in. Its an idea for a small setup though - I manage a bit of land for a friend, and yes that has its own group.

 

[Qie Niangao]

One certainly wouldn't need to approach the bot group-spam limit for mere group invitations (although come to think of it, those may be throttled at some level, too). I was thinking about these companies that provide a full range of group-bot functions, including issuing group chat. If they're doing it for dozens of groups at the same time it might push that limit -- even without being particularly spammy to any single group.

Also, I agree and definitely would not propose the distinct-group-per-parcel approach at Prokofy's scale of operations. There was, however, a question about the origin of prospective tenants' expectations, and I suppose some may have developed expectations based on experiencing the dedicated-group approach to Mainland rentals.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

There are rental systems

• that have plug ins that will actually issue the right invitation to a closed group and eject non paying tenants via a scripted agent for less than 100L a week..

---

I'm unclear about that particular bit. As far as I know, there's no way for a script to send an invitation to a closed group without the help of a bot. (Scripts

can

, of course, blurt out some chat history that, when clicked, offers a "Join" button to

open enrollment

groups.) It would be a boon if scripts could do such operations directly instead of the old bot kludge, but I'm not aware of any progress on that.

 

---

There are such systems and they do work.  A scripted agent is a bot.  The OP could run his own bot for this sure, but it would have to be logged in all the time so he would have to have his computer turned on 24/7 and worry about it going off line if they weren't around to fix it  or rent a server to run it with.  For less than 100L week, which is less than $2US a month, he doesn't have to deal with all that. 

I doubt he'd have to worry about the 5K a day message limit in any case if all the bot is doing is sending invites.

Only he can judge if the expense is worth that to him.  It may not be if he only has a couple or few rentals but if he has a substantial rental business and he loses prospective tenants who don't rent because they don't want to wait for a group invite, or he has to frequently adjust rents for tenants that  couldn't use their property for a day or so, it could pay for itself.

[Seductive Dreamscape]

I've rented with Prok for around 2 years now, with different parcels as I like to change my environment quite a lot when renting... I have found the system very easy to use. There is no waiting around for group, you just join Ravenglass Rentals (open group), pay the tier box and with the tag, rezz your stuff. If there are some bits and bobs from previous tenants on the parcel, Prok is very quick (within 24 hours) to come and return those bits (I have to say, that's unusual - most plots are clean). You look at the prims within the "about world" to see how many you have rezzed. It's not rocket science. I will continue to rent from Ravenglass Rentals as nowhere on mainland gives me the variety of plot choice or the bargain price. And the other tenants are the friendliest community, too

[Qie Niangao]

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

There are rental systems

• that have plug ins that will actually issue the right invitation to a closed group and eject non paying tenants via a scripted agent for less than 100L a week..

---

I'm unclear about that particular bit. As far as I know, there's no way for a script to send an invitation to a closed group without the help of a bot. (Scripts

can

, of course, blurt out some chat history that, when clicked, offers a "Join" button to

open enrollment

groups.) It would be a boon if scripts could do such operations directly instead of the old bot kludge, but I'm not aware of any progress on that.

 

---

There are such systems and they do work.  A scripted agent is a bot.  The OP could run his own bot for this sure, but it would have to be logged in all the time so he would have to have his computer turned on 24/7 and worry about it going off line if they weren't around to fix it  or rent a server to run it with.  For less than 100L week, which is less than $2US a month, he doesn't have to deal with all that. 

---

Right, and we're probably talking about the same companies that offer those services because the price is about the same as I've seen.  Speaking of price, at least one of them supports multiple groups per customer, so that would be a savings in Prokofy's case -- and mine, in fact, if I ever get round to it.

It is, however, most unfortunate that bots have to be used for this functionality at all. It's a gruesome waste of resources. Unfortunately, the Lab has adopted the shortsighted view that even very rarely-used functions should be exposed in the UI instead of in a scripting API, resulting in viewers that are unlearnably complex. They've also foolishly convinced themselves that it's harder to secure an API than a UI -- except, duh!, bots. But I rant.

Incidentally, another change that might be relevant is the pending "group ban" feature by which a group can prevent certain accounts from joining. Of course this is no help in excluding alts, so it's not a perfect substitute for invitation-only enrollment. Still, I can imagine allowing open enrollment to a land rental group, paired with excluding known troublemakers, and using the recent llReturnObjectsByOwner to only permit objects by the rent-payer or those authorized by that rent-payer. At scale, however, that approach might be too vulnerable to attack by griefers: it would clean up after them, but perhaps too gradually to be effective.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I couldn't agree with you more.  I have always thought it was ridiculous that group join to a closed group couldn't be scripted and that you couldn't black list people from joining your group if its open enrollment or not.  If its a closed group it would prevent staff from inviting someone they didn't know they shouldn't.  It would also be great if we could script ejecting people automatically if they were banned for bad conduct or griefing.  As both a former club owner and off and on landlord, I would really would have appreciated it.

[BarcodeBrian]

While the OP might not have the latest gadgets with their added complexity and resource usage, it's still not necessarily true that their present system needs updating or that it is outdated. If it works just fine as it is and its operation is well understood and acceptable, any replacement options are purely discretionary.

[Qie Niangao]

Sure, but the OP is competing with private Estate rentals, who have a distinct advantage in the array of tools offered the Estate manager.

Also, it's rarely the case that an automated tool uses more resources than an avatar performing the same task manually; usually much the opposite.

[jwenting]

I much prefer to set my land to my own group, and control rez rights that way. And any decent rental agency would allow that for private estates, where they remain estate manager and can always revert it if I leave the parcel (that estate agent would then also return anything I rezzed there).

An estate manager who doesn't do that for his new tenants is not one you want to rent from.