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Abandoned Land Auctions


Cedric Brown
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  • 2 weeks later...

This doesn't always happen, though. Some parcels go without even the L$ 0.5 /m² opening bid and return to the abandoned pool. The most recent one I found is from about a week ago, so it doesn't seem to be happening as often as it was for a while. No idea if this is a sign the market is improving, or the Lab is getting better at selecting parcels for auction, or the pool of abandoned land has so expanded that there's better stock available.

(I wouldn't expect "better stock available" to improve bid probability at equilibrium. If it were a general trend that better land were being abandoned, that slumping demand to keep the land should also reduce demand to bid on it, eventually.)

It could be that the land market is improving, perhaps in response to news that the Lab is pulling some Sansar developers back to the Second Life team. I don't know how fluid that staffing has been before, so I'm not sure this news is as meaningful as some seem to think, but markets can react to rumors.

Edited by Qie Niangao
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 2/3/2018 at 4:29 AM, Qie Niangao said:

This doesn't always happen, though. Some parcels go without even the L$ 0.5 /m² opening bid and return to the abandoned pool. The most recent one I found is from about a week ago, so it doesn't seem to be happening as often as it was for a while. No idea if this is a sign the market is improving, or the Lab is getting better at selecting parcels for auction, or the pool of abandoned land has so expanded that there's better stock available.

(I wouldn't expect "better stock available" to improve bid probability at equilibrium. If it were a general trend that better land were being abandoned, that slumping demand to keep the land should also reduce demand to bid on it, eventually.)

It could be that the land market is improving, perhaps in response to news that the Lab is pulling some Sansar developers back to the Second Life team. I don't know how fluid that staffing has been before, so I'm not sure this news is as meaningful as some seem to think, but markets can react to rumors.

I'd have to agree, this includes word of the Lab switching their server hardware to the cloud like Sansar.

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If you're a paid member, you can send in a support ticket and ask that an abandoned parcel be auctioned off. I've done that and bought a parcel. That's probably where most of the abandoned parcel auctions come from, which implies someone wanted that parcel.

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@animats No, you're just not informed sufficiently about this and haven't done it enough -- but then, no one requires a hall monitor on these issues, the Lindens and the TOS are sufficient.

I'm putting this answer here for public information for those who live and work on the Mainland, and who don't just have offices here, for those who want to live a virtual life as it is on a sim, and not make a meta game out of platform features without regard to the lives of others.

It is not where "most of the parcels come from" -- again, one has to see this over time and have sufficient experience.

Most of the parcels come from the Lindens' arbitrary placement of land on the auctions when/as they see fit, for any reason or no reason. If they have criteria, they don't make them public. Those of us who have watched this for years know it is arbitrary, capricious, and sometimes curiously punitive.

The Lindens do not have a policy of selling abandoned land to anyone who asks. It would be great if they did, there would be lots less of it. They don't.

Instead, they will sell you abandoned land *most of the time but not always* if it is adjacent to your land, usually on 3 sides. *Sometimes* if it is a small parcel, they will sell land on the same sim where you have land if it is larger, but NOT ALWAYS.

And this is the problem that vexes many people who just want to have more prims on their sim and stop blight on their sim. They do not sell it on demand. 

The Lindens have a policy that many of us condemn -- and which you are not involved of without sufficient experience with them -- to NOT sell abandoned land if you ask for it, especially if it is desirable, i.e. nice waterfront.

Instead, they put it on the auction, because they feel that it is "more fair".  What is more than one person wanted it? The "only fair" way would be to auction it. Of course in reality, most people never follow the auctions, don't want to play them because they get bid very high, and don't want the stress and confusion. The auctions actually don't have that many participants.

As far as I know (but they don't tell us) the auctions is a *sink* and not a *source* in the LindEx system. That is, one can't really say the Lindens "earn money" by selling the land at $10/m instead of $1/m directly to you (their price for that transaction). But they get more Lindens taken out of circulation, and thus keep the Linden at a certain value, so it's part of their system. HOW they do the formulas on this we don't know. THAT it might in fact be a source and not a sink is always possible -- we do not know. They do not tell us. They should.

The Lindens used to have their own software for the auctions that revealed a) who bid on them, and how much, and how many times b) who won. That way big landlords and their alts, that people came to know, would be outed for jacking up auctions deliberately. People would stop buying from them when they did this. I'm not for controlling prices or setting caps or preventing people from bidding freely. I am for making the information about the bids known. People often don't realize they are bidding fiercely against a mere neighbour on their sim who just doesn't want blight and malls and clubs to go up next to them. Had the Lindens let PEOPLE ON THE SIM first have the auction among themselves all this would be different. They don't have software that does that and won't make it. Instead, they bought e-bay software which related I believe to a board member at one time or something, and so no more transparency, no more news. Nothing. Only gouging by mysterious buyers with only the inworld sale the visible result -- but no one can stay away 24/7 to see how the land changes hands.

Another thing the Lindens could do -- if they wanted to solve this problem of abandoned land, which they don't -- is to ask people to put in requests to them in a ticket. If the Lindens saw multiple tickets, they could even manually take a bid or use software to have that bid only among those on one sim. If they had transparency, they could even post the notice that X, Y, Z avatars showed interest in a piece of land, and that might facilitate, say, 3 neighbours agreeing that the one who really wants it will buy it, and the others won't bid because now they are secure in the knowledge that their view won't be ruined. Of course, that doesn't always obtain, Mainland life is cruel and vicious, but it would work in some cases.

No, Lindens cannot manage high-maintenance governance systems. But they won't automate it in creative ways -- self-start auctions for only those who can show ownership on a sim which is easy to scrape from their own land ownership page on their account at secondlife.com Why is this so hard? Where there is a will, there is a way. There isn't a way.

How else can this be fixed? After awhile, you get to know the big bidders. You IM them when you want some land and ask them not to bid -- guess what, they won't! They have enough! 

Edited by Prokofy Neva
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On 2/24/2018 at 6:40 PM, animats said:

If you're a paid member, you can send in a support ticket and ask that an abandoned parcel be auctioned off. I've done that and bought a parcel. That's probably where most of the abandoned parcel auctions come from, which implies someone wanted that parcel.

Yes, many times I've also found if you are polite, and and make the Land teams job easy by filling in the ticket properly, then they will assist and sell abandoned land to you, and if you have a foothold in the sim - sometimes without an auction.

Generally the land team are the most efficient and awesome support part of LL, but it should always be seen as a favour, so it's very much in the attitude you approach them with that will dictate if you get success or sent to the circular filing cabinet (labelled trash)

As most reasonable people know - honey catches more flies than vinegar.

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  • 6 months later...
  • 2 months later...

I'm sorry to dredge this topic up, especially given the absolutely fabulous derail above, but have things changed since last October? I was under the impression, given the knowledge base article below, that if you submit a support case, they can sell it to the resident direct, especially if they already have a neighbouring parcel (someone abandoned the parcel next to mine on Mainland (Jeogeot) at the end of the year and I'd like to get that if possible). Anyone have any experience in this? Am I better off looking for a larger parcel elsewhere?

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9 hours ago, Ginger Shostakovich said:

I'm sorry to dredge this topic up, especially given the absolutely fabulous derail above, but have things changed since last October? I was under the impression, given the knowledge base article below, that if you submit a support case, they can sell it to the resident direct, especially if they already have a neighbouring parcel (someone abandoned the parcel next to mine on Mainland (Jeogeot) at the end of the year and I'd like to get that if possible). Anyone have any experience in this? Am I better off looking for a larger parcel elsewhere?

It used to be that you could **sometimes** get abandoned land via a ticket, though usually only if you had connecting sides to the parcel - often 2-3 connecting sides was needed.  Otherwise, all abandoned land went to auction.

However, over the last year LL has been working to increase mainland ownership, by increasing the Premium tier allowance and decreasing tier rates.  With those changes, they got way more lenient on abandoned land. Now you can usually send in a ticket for any piece of abandoned land and request it be sold directly to you.  If you find a piece larger than you'd like, send the exact coordinates for the section you want and they will often even cut that piece out for you.  Sales are at L$1 per sqm.  You don't even need to own any land near the parcel or in the same region or anywhere.   If they turn you down on a parcel, they will likely tell you why and you can probably go find a different parcel and get that instead.

Edited by LittleMe Jewell
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8 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Now you can usually send in a ticket for any piece of abandoned land and request it be sold directly to you.

Not lately unless you have a good claim or they think the parcel isn't suitable for auction (odd shape/size). At least that is what my experience has been.

Frankly, with the amount of time I spend looking at land, it puts me off because I can spend days looking for a parcel only for it to go to auction (which ends at the worst time for me due to my timezone). Sure you can say the end time doesn't matter because I can set my maximum bid but only fools think that. Placing an early bid allows others more time to think about if it's worth outbidding you. It also means the price is likely to be higher due to this. While I could place what I believe is a good price as my maximum bid, if I check back and have been outbid that gives me time to re-evaluate the parcel and how much tier I have, deciding if I want to go higher than the price I previously set, except I don't actually get this opportunity because I won't be around for the final 6 hours.

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4 hours ago, Hintswen Guardian said:

Not lately unless you have a good claim or they think the parcel isn't suitable for auction (odd shape/size). At least that is what my experience has been.

From all the people that I know that have been successful in requesting an abandoned parcel, it has been people that were wanting the parcel for their own home.  I don't think I know of anyone in the rental business or land resale business that has successfully gotten an abandoned parcel via Support request without them meeting the 'good claim' criteria.

 

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1 minute ago, Qie Niangao said:

This might be a dynamic situation. Until today I hadn't even realized that auctions were back, and that might well change the direct-sale practice -- and certainly consume some time for the Mainland-supporting Lindens.

Yes, that is another thing coming into the mix.  It could be that they were being so generous on the direct sales specifically because the auction wasn't working.

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