Land auction discouragement

[justin Brouwer]

I have noticed that the lab has changed the payment process for land auctions and it makes it a little discouraging to participate in auctions.

 In the past, when you bid on the land, you did not need to pay your bid amount unless you won the auction. If you won, you would pay the winning bid amount in full in order to take possession of the parcel. Which seemed pretty straightforward.

Now you have to front the entire amount of your bid in your account in order to participate in an auction. As I was planning to bid on several large lots, it would have entailed me bringing in and converting $1000.00 USD into lindens. If I win, no problem. But, if my bids do not win, I am not about to leave $1000.00 USD in my account.  I would then have to pay a transaction fee and 3.5% conversion rate to take the money back into the real world. This would amount to having to pay out $40 just to have had the privilege to bid in an auction. Not a very enticing proposition.

I can understand why the Lab may have changed it. I am guessing many people would win an auction and never pay, making some auction wins bogus.

But, unless I am misreading it, the above mentioned new auction procedure acts as a deterrent to bidding on large mainland parcels. (unless you are filthy rich of course). Maybe buying a private sim is a better bet for me?

Has anyone else been discouraged from the land auctions for the same reason?

[Fionalein]

Maybe some idiots bid on many auctions and only bought one despite winning many - sadly land flippers won't care about this one

[LoneWolfiNTj]

4 hours ago, justin Brouwer said:

...I was planning to bid on several large lots, it would have entailed me bringing in and converting $1000.00 USD into lindens. If I win, no problem. But, if my bids do not win, I am not about to leave $1000.00 USD in my account....

Say you bid on 20 properties worth 50US$ each. Say you won all 20 auctions. Would you have bought all 20? If that is the situation, what is the problem? You wanted to spend 1000US$ on Second Life virtual land, so if you didn't win all your bids, why wouldn't you have just leave the money in your Second Life account, and kept bidding on other properties until you acquired all the land you wanted? (Though, I have to wonder if you understand that owning that much land would likely cost you hundreds of US$ per month in "land use fees", in addition to your monthly SL fee.)

What it's sounding like to me is, you actually only intended to buy one property, even though you bid on many in hopes of winning an auction, and you intended to flip the bird to the sellers of your other winning auctions. Be aware, if you did that in First Life, you'd probably go to jail. And Second Life is, in some very real ways, a subset of First Life. The fact that L$ and US$ are interchangeable is a huge clue in that regard. It means that if you stiff someone out of their hard-earned L$, you're also stiffing them out of the their hard-earned US$. In The Meat World that would constitute "fraud". In The Linden World, it just a bloody nuisance, because the land doesn't actually change ownership unless and until you pay for it. But it's still somewhat fraudulent because you're wasting the time (which = real-world money) of the sellers who thought they were finally going to be able to convert no-longer-needed land into money, only to find that the winning bidder flaked-out on them, so they have to put it back on the market and wait some more.

So, if you want to know why the rule change, I'm pretty sure that's why.

My suggestion on how to proceed is, if you just want to acquire one piece of land, then bid on one at a time. Auctions are games, similar to poker, and no such games give "guarantees of success". So roll the dice and take your chances. And if you win, pay up, 'cause it's your land, now. You bought it, you own it.

On a related note, see the video below, which is a 3-second excerpt from the 1989 movie "Pet Sematary":

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/12518eca-5355-4370-b0f9-88c646af6519

[Mollymews]

5 hours ago, justin Brouwer said:

 In the past, when you bid on the land, you did not need to pay your bid amount unless you won the auction. If you won, you would pay the winning bid amount in full in order to take possession of the parcel. Which seemed pretty straightforward.

in a world of all good people then it would be pretty straightforward as you say. Good people conduct themselves honorably

sadly the world is not all good people, and is why we end up with escrow payment systems like this

when there is no escrow then not good people subvert the auction bidding process, to jack up the price of their existing for sale parcel holdings.  Bidding on parcels that they have no intention of buying.  A escrow system doesn't entirely eliminate this behavior, it does tho ameliorate it a bit by imposing an upfront financial cost

like you say tho, it does cause people like yourself the same upfront cost, who are interested in only securing one property from a number of properties. Of which any one of them, and only one, you would be happy to secure

there is no way for a system to "know" to distinguish what a person's honorable intent is from the dishonorable intent. When the action to do/complete a process is exactly the same no matter the intent 

[justin Brouwer]

Thanks for the early morning cynicism LoneWolfiNTi, (lol) but your suppositions are totally incorrect. I am looking to buy adjacent lands (auction and abandoned lands) and combine them into one solid parcel for a development project I have in mind.  Maybe I am naive, but I think mainland (or at least parts of it) can be made into a visually worthwhile endeavor.

Minions to the rescue...

 

[ChinRey]

24 minutes ago, justin Brouwer said:

Thanks for the early morning cynicism LoneWolfiNTi, (lol) but your suppositions are totally incorrect. I am looking to buy adjacent lands (auction and abandoned lands) and combine them into one solid parcel for a development project I have in mind.

Yes, the new policy can be a problem when you're looking for a specific parcel and aren't itnerested in bidding on anything else.

[Theresa Tennyson]

13 hours ago, justin Brouwer said:

But, unless I am misreading it, the above mentioned new auction procedure acts as a deterrent to bidding on large mainland parcels.

It also serves as a deterrent to having someone bid against you. And if someone is willing to invest more than you are, they'll get the land. That's why auctions exist.