Just trying to get the opinons of anyone who rents an apartment in SL.

[ipwnza]

I'm working on opening up a new apartment complex in SL and was looking to get the opinons of some of the people who might be renting with me and using the facilities  I will be offering.

 

Which would you rather have?

1) an apartment complex on an island with water access, etc. Extremely high-end and fitting to the island it is located on - with palm trees, a spanish style of architecture on the building, a pool, free private boat, etc. For this reason, the amentities will use alot of my prims, retracting from the amount that I can offer each individual unit. (75 prims per unit, rent would be L$300 per week)

2) an apartment that is extremely basic, just four walls and one bedroom, but allows market price of 150+ prims for $300 per week, but has absolutely no amentities or services.

Thank you for your opinion,

Kevin

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Are either apartments in the two options furnished?  That is importqnt to know.

[ipwnza]

I will most likely offer both furnished and non-firnished options, as my complex has 9 apartments on the lot. Furnished will of course reduce the available amount of prims even farther, but if anything, i'll be using meshed furnature which wouldn't bring it down much more then about 25 prims.

[Canoro Philipp]

people who like to create and customize their environments, that have an idea of how they want their environment to look like, that go shopping buying different types of furniture would opt for the 4 walls and a bedroom with the chance of manipulating many objects as they see fit.

people that don't want to put an effort in designing their enviroments would prefer a nice looking ready made environment, and maybe some free prims allowed to unpack things or rez a few things.

now which one of those would be more popular? what kind of people are the majority in SL? the creators or the people who just enjoy the work of the creators? i would like to believe that the majority of SL users are creators, after all, it is one of the original intentions of SL, but many users come to SL and see it as a videogame, a place where they can explore places, do activities like flying on a plane, try fashion, they enjoy what is already made.

since SL is not mainly promoted as a creation tool, is more promoted as a place to have fun with with your firends, it would attract people that have those intentions, besides, creating requires a learning, dedication of time, developing of precision, people that just come for the fun would not lean so much to learning a job.

so i would say that people that would like to rent your apartment complex with everything, are the majority.

who are the ones who have more money in SL? probably creators, store owners, club owners, and anyone who has a business here, and of course the ones who buy lindens.

for the price you offer, I would say that catering to creators, people who like to move everything around, and are most probable to have an income source, is the smartest decision.

now, if you are going to offer something very basic, you could make it look nice enough, or you can go middle ground, a nice house, with about 100 prims free.

personally, i would choose the place with more prims available.

one thing to be aware of, since creativity and skills varies from user to user, if you rent land giving freedom of creation, expect to have a very varied landscape, from beautiful to ugly, to many design styles, it all depends of the mind of the tenant.

[irihapeti]

some suggestions

if making a apartment building then dont do multi-level where a apartment level shares the same parcel ground space as a apartment on other levels

not for 2L a prim anyways

people who do rent shared parcel-level apartments (or skyboxes) expect to pay way less than this. Like 1L a prim or less. bc of the non-privacy. Is a zillion landlords who provide this service already

+

for 2L a prim then design each "room" in the apartment building so that its the only "room" on the parcel no matter what level it is at

parcel the land under the room into 12m x 12m or about. Then set the invisibility of the parcel so that cant see/hear the other parcels

extra benefit is that each apartment can have own land/parcel media

+

furnished or unfurnished

i would think about providing both. Have a rezzer that can provide pre-set furnishings. The furnishings can count against the parcel. Or the tenant can choose to rez None furnishings. And they can then use all the parcel LI as they like

the walls, doors, ceiling, window, floor prims not counting. The building being root anchored onto the main parcel 

[ChinRey]

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ipwnza wrote:

I'm working on opening up a new apartment complex in SL and was looking to get the opinons of some of the people who might be renting with me and using the facilities  I will be offering.

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If you want to start an island based rental business now, just forget about the general market. The big land barons have highly polished organisations, well established customer bases and at least some of them are on old Open Grid deals with far lower tier than what you have to pay. There is absolutely no way you can compete against them.

What you can do is find some niche they don't cover. Fortunately there are still lots of those and your first idea seems like a good one. I'm afraid you'll have to do better than 75 prims for 300 though.

[ipwnza]

My best option then would be to reduce the amount of prims the actual building takes up (from 400+ to 100 something via meshes), resulting in the possibility of giving out 100 prims + furnature to each resident for $175ls, which on 9 apartments, would result in me making a 100ls surplus weekly. Of course, i'd have to then upsell users with some kind of convience store or onsite cafe which would make a profit, because I cannot rely on 100% occupancy. As you said, there's only one way I can compete with the land barons, and that is to match the prices and exploit a niche.

[ChinRey]

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ipwnza wrote:

My best option then would be to reduce the amount of prims the actual building takes up (from 400+ to 100 something via meshes)

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Oh yes. I'd say top quality mesh houses are absolutely necessary for this. And make sure it's top quality, made by builders who know how to save LI without sacrificing LOD. Those can be hard to find actually - for some reason there are far more high quality battered old mesh shacks than high quality mesh mansions in SL. They do exist though so look around and remember to examine the houses carefully before buying. (I can't really name any specific builder worth looking for but there's one frequent contributor to these forums who makes some absolutely amazing Mediterrean style luxury mesh houses...)

You may also want to reconsider the free boat part too btw. It seems to me that most people who are interested in boating prefer their own vehicles and besides, if it's an isolated island there's not much sea to sail on anyway.

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ipwnza wrote:

Of course, i'd have to then upsell users with some kind of convience store or onsite cafe which would make a profit,

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Oh. That is tricky. You may make a few Lindens in profit every now and then from that since you won't have much overhead but don't expect any substantial income from it.

[Seductive Dreamscape]

I agree with the previous posters in that people do want quality rentals, but just to be a little contrary here, people also want simple community living. If you can create a homely, inviting village with a central hub whether that be a cafe or a little romantic dance pavilion, people will rent. People like to have privacy, sure, but they also want to feel they are part of something. I have 30 rentals,in a hippie village, small basic houses with a high end sex bed, a fireplace, a rug and a sex chair and then the renter gets 10 prims for personalisation, ie. pictures, plants etc. If you have a theme, and you have a community gathering space to reflect that theme, people will always want to rent. Do your homework on what your competition is charging, and then see if you can undercut them a little. Everyone loves a bargain - do offers and discounts ("rent here and bring a friend to rent another and get two weeks free" kind of thing). If you need any more help do contact me inworld - I've been doing cheap rentals for years x

[ipwnza]

What i've managed to do is reduce the total prims for all structual entities (the apartments and amentities) to under 150 with 8 apartments (I had to omit one apartment in order to make it an even number as each building holds 2 residents). Therefore, I can provide each resident with approx. 92 prims before furnature. If furnature is added, it would bring that down to about 75. There are further optimizations I can do, so if I can provide 92 addtl. prims after furnature, and charge rent of $200ls per week, i'm now making a L$ 300 per week profit before any discounts. The apartments themselves are extremely spacious, and are available in 1 or 2 floor options (2 floor costing l$400 per month). As for the sailing, I could just provide a dock with space to rez a boat, as my apartments are located near a bay/inlet providing ample space to boat around. 

[ipwnza]

Also, in reguards to amentities, I have enough space to provide a pool, boat dock, and some kind of business.

[ipwnza]

Here's an early look (obviously no where near done, still need to add various plants, pool, cafe/hub, etc). The idea is that there is alot of open space, a central hub such as a cafe, bar (can't have a club or something as this isn't an adult rated lot), and a port to make have that 'island resort' feel. Note that each building holds two residents (each resident will have 2 floors and half of each building). The first floor will be the living room/kitchen/dining area, and the second floor will be bedrooms/bathrooms.

[AlecDeBoeuil]

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ipwnza wrote:

I'm working on opening up a new apartment complex in SL and was looking to get the opinons of some of the people who might be renting with me and using the facilities  I will be offering.

 

Which would you rather have?

1) an apartment complex on an island with water access, etc. Extremely high-end and fitting to the island it is located on - with palm trees, a spanish style of architecture on the building, a pool, free private boat, etc. For this reason, the amentities will use alot of my prims, retracting from the amount that I can offer each individual unit. (75 prims per unit, rent would be L$300 per week)

2) an apartment that is extremely basic, just four walls and one bedroom, but allows market price of 150+ prims for $300 per week, but has absolutely no amentities or services.

Thank you for your opinion,

Kevin

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Neither.

Alec -something else.

[Kelli May]

Aligning the buildings: I am guessing that the idea is to make it look informal and less geometric, but it just looks messy to me. Building when the basic structure isn't aligned to the gird is a nightmare. There are better ways to break up the geometry than by rotating to random angle. It also looks like at least one building is positioned over water. They just don't look like part of the landscape.

Choice of building: bland, bland bland. Identical square boxes with a window in each corner just don't do it for me. Ideally I'd like to see different buildings with a bit of design interest to each. If the buildings were less symmetrical, you could get some extra visual interest by putting them at right angles to each other.

Location: you have less control over this, but that's not a great spot. Very flat and uninteresting with what look to be ugly screens on each side. Having nearby water is always an attraction, though, so the boat dock is nice. You say you're planning to add more buildings, but the plot already looks overcrowded.