Is there ever an option to rent to own?

[OvOwl]

Only wondering because it should would help on those sellers that jack up the parcel size prices 10 times and even over for a parcel. Apparently they are not looking for a quick sale I could be renting the parcel weekly to own it. 

[animats]

Second Life does not have enforceable contracts. User are anonymous, too. Rent-to-own implies that you are building up a credit with a landowner to be used later. There's no way to make the landowner turn over the land when you're paid up.

Mortgages run into the same problem. At one time there were banks in Second Life, but one of them went out of business and disappeared with all the money. So LL now requires that any bank in SL be a bank in RL. So far no bank in RL has taken up that offer. So there's nobody to sell you a mortgage.

There are now at least four other virtual worlds where land is controlled by a "blockchain". Land is really expensive there; it's more about cryptocurrency speculation than actually doing much in those virtual worlds. If you owned land on one of those systems, you could construct a rent-to-own contract on the Etherium blockchain, where someone got to use the land as long as they kept paying, and it transferred to them completely after all payments had been made. If they didn't make a payment, the land would revert to the seller. It's probably best that LL doesn't support all that complexity.

[OvOwl]

Ahhhh thank you. My eyes have been opened. So it all boils down to dishonesty. Great! =/ 

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, OvOwl said:

So it all boils down to dishonesty. Great! =/ 

Welcome to the internet.

[Mollymews]

back in the day some of the mainland barons had rent to buy parcels

[Prokofy Neva]

On 4/1/2020 at 7:26 PM, OvOwl said:

Only wondering because it should would help on those sellers that jack up the parcel size prices 10 times and even over for a parcel. Apparently they are not looking for a quick sale I could be renting the parcel weekly to own it. 

Of course there are sellers that have rent-to-own. I'm not one of them simply because it means yet another layer of record-keeping and management as exposure to the vast population of unscrupulous users who far outnumber the population of unscruplous land dealers --  but I know perfectly respectable and trustworthy dealers like LIFE Properties from whom I myself have done rent-to-own for years.

Land barons put high prices on land, especially prime waterfront and sailing land on Blake because they can, it's an open market. They can afford to put what seems like a ridiculous price on it which is more than you will pay and wait months and months because the cost of tier is not greater than what they will make when the sale goes through. It's no uncommon to see land sit there for 9 months or more because a land baron who buys in bulk can afford to do this. If enough people can't pay their prices, eventually they come down.

I've known a few others who did rent-to-buy but they simply got out of the business or left SL because it's not a business you're going to get rich at, it has very small margins and high exposure.

The Lindens were right to get rid of the shady bankers and stock market founders but rent-to-buy isn't exactly a "mortgage" because the land dealer didn't loan you any money at an interest. He just let you pay for land he himself bought at his own expense over time. That's a different kind of financial arrangement, not a bank or loan, and therefore the Lindens have no reason to stop it, as it is a user-to-user transaction.

From his perspective, you're more likely to be the risk than he is, because you could bail at any time after a few weeks rent and then he doesn't have the sale he thought he did. 

To prevent that sort of all-to-common occurrence, the dealers do this: they remain an officer of the land group. So that way they retain control of land that THEY *paid for up front* and NOT YOU, if you bail.

That's why this claim by animats who has never done this and doesn't understand it is false: "Rent-to-own implies that you are building up a credit with a landowner to be used later. There's no way to make the landowner turn over the land when you're paid up."

Um, that's not how it works.

It's not about the land-owner having "seized your land and made you pay" because obviously...it's HIS land HE PAID FOR AND YOU DIDN'T. Why would you get to have land you did not pay for turned over to you in full?!

Many people fail to grasp this simple lesson of land in SL: you have to pay an upfront cost, either to the Lindens, or to another resident -- the purchase price. After that, you still have to pay the tier to hold it, per square meter -- as you would pay a maintenance fee on a condo.

I don't know of a single rent-to-own dealer in the history of SL who would let a user give him only installments -- rent -- on land he didn't control, trusting he, the land dealer, will be paid in full in the end. This isn't about "building up credit" obviously.

Let's say the dealer purchased on the auction or from another buyer a nice piece of waterfront that costs $50,000, even if only a 1024. It might be on the Blake Sea. He owns the land. You rent from him and pay $1000 a week or whatever he charges, and at the end of 50 weeks or whatever the math is, he turns it over to you. If you were renting, you would just see that rent sunk each week with no equity. If you sign the arrangement to own it, you will keep paying the installments over time that eventually lead to you taking over the land, and him leaving the group.

So it isn't a mortgage at all; it's literally rent-to-buy as an installment plan because you couldn't afford to pay the $50,000 up front. If you don't trust him to turn the land over, then don't enter the arrangement, but there are dealers like LIFE who have built up the representation over the years and have no reason to screw somebody over because their continued land business depends on a good reputation.

If you don't trust a company to turn over the land to you after your installments, you're not required to do this. It exists for people without capital. You can always raise the $50,000 yourself, perhaps saving it over time in a business, then buy the land outright.

The default to always hate and loathe the supposed land shark is misplaced, when the dealer offering rent-to-buy is way more exposed by people who don't follow through than vice-versa.