Renting Apartment Units To Others

[WhisperingPond]

Is there a tutorial regarding setting up an apartment/condo and renting out the units to others? I'm only finding land renting in my searches. I'm not ready to do this, but would like to know the pros and cons. I've seen high-rises but no activity around them, so maybe few people rent this way. Just working down my list of the million things I'd like to know about SL. Thank you.

[Annabell Wandsworth]

Hi

I don't know of any tutorials. If you are an experienced land renter, you have a bit of knowledge now. I don't know honestly if there is a big market for apartments, and I would guess not because of the camming around issue, but I could be wrong. Sound like you have already done a search for apartments and condos in the forums and not seen any results, so maybe I am correct.

If you already own the land, it is low risk to go ahead and try it anyway.

You might try getting a job as a sales agent for a landlord to get some info about what is required day to day.

Annabell

 

[Mollymews]

a way to do apartment buildings to allow access and visibility privacy for each of our apartment renters in a cohesive build design, is to cut land parcels each with access to the main parcel. Then build our apartment building to fit

example: We cut say 4 parcels on the left of our main entrance/foyer, and 4 parcels on the right. So 8 apartments. We can put the apartment floors at different levels to give our apartment building some height. Then from our entrance/foyer put in lifts and/or stairs and hallways leading to the apartment doors on the differing levels.  Cladding the exterior of our building to give the aesthetic look we are wanting

[Annabell Wandsworth]

All residents on a parcel can see all other residents on that parcel. There is no way to cut your way around that fact.

[Mollymews]

9 hours ago, Annabell Wandsworth said:

All residents on a parcel can see all other residents on that parcel. There is no way to cut your way around that fact.

 

see the example I gave of subdividing our parcel into smaller parcels

Edited July 23, 2020 by Mollymews

[Prokofy Neva]

The short answer might be: don't.

It's as very hard way to do rentals; it's hard to build and hard to manage and hard to rent.

Why? Because everyone is in a tower on one parcel, so they do not have dedicated media streams or privacy.

Yes, you can build towers (and I have had them done for me) where you allow little micro parcels for streams and "avatars can't see me"; where you space things out beyond 20 meters (so chat can't be seen), and so on. But you are still left with certain problems. One is security orbs, that are just an annoyance in such a small space.

At first people might think, oh, wouldn't it be great to live in an apartment, sitting on my balcony looking at the Manhattan skyline and sipping wine with my honey. Except...you have 8-10 or more other people in the same tight space with you. One boon is that they rarely all come on at the same time -- they are on different time zones or don't log on. But still, the thrill ebbs quickly as soon as you hear other chat or see other people so close by.

It's hard to get people to understand at first how to use a teleporter. You would think this is basic and simple. Believe me, it isn't. You would think if you tell people all apartments look exactly like the foyer they would grasp that they don't need to view it before renting, but they don't. I would explain that you can use the TP to view apartments but that they look like the foyer, and it never sunk in -  a sign saying "You must read at a 12-year-old's level to rent in this place" actually did work as it either got people mad enough or amused enough to comprehend the sign. 

What Mollymews is describing sounds more like town houses in terms of their spacing.

I have towers large and small, and here is how I solved these problems.

I put out the tower with closeable windows and locked teleporters -- that's a little privacy. One build I have wasn't done with 20 m -- another was but that really isn't enough to solve people's need for privacy. So on an adjacent parcel, where on the ground level I have docks and stalls for rent, or a shopping mall or a forest or whatever, I cut up 256 or so parcels to fit skyboxes -- that's often enough for small ones. Then I place a teleporter inside the apartment that takes them up to that skybox, where they have a dedicated parcel for media, and can have an orb above 500 m. That's often still not enough and they rent poorly.

Another direction I go in is to make them very cheap with no skyboxes or anything, so that people just use them as a little hangout and a place to change clothes or sort inventory -- their expectation is not high.

If you are going to work with 4096 or 8192 or more to rent out, why kill yourself with apartments? Put out cabins or homes.

The other issue with apartments is that you can't really charge a lot for them, given their lack of amenities, yet you still have to ,make up that $11 US or so per 4096.  Can you get people to pay $150/wk which is only about $2 a month (if you give a discount for advance payments)? Can you charge more (US $2.25 would only break even)

[ChinRey]

On 7/23/2020 at 2:27 AM, Annabell Wandsworth said:

I don't know honestly if there is a big market for apartments

There is a market for everything in SL. But this is a very small one and it's also hard to fidn the people who are interested. Also, you have to expect quite a bit of turnover and the general rule is that a renter who stays for less than a month is a dead loss for the landowner.

[Chic Aeon]

14 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

he other issue with apartments is that you can't really charge a lot for them, given their lack of amenities, yet you still have to ,make up that $11 US or so per 4096.  Can you get people to pay $150/wk which is only about $2 a month (if you give a discount for advance payments)? Can you charge more (US $2.25 would only break even)

For the OP most of all, that is only true if you are keeping the land impact points consistent with the parcel size.  That isn't necessary of course. Some apartments have 25 li allotments (or less) and others have 300 -- and both could be the same size meter wise.

 

One way to solve this apartment problem would be to build a selection of "filler buildings" with just one apartment in each building but on various floors. So the empty (and unfinished to save on land impact for the building) apartments would have closed windows or curtains or shaded glass and the apartments for rent would have open views but on different floors. This would give the appearance of apartment blocks but solve the privacy and some other issues including sounds --  if the land settings were checked correctly.   

 

I have no plans to DO that and while being a landlord is one of the few things that I have NOT done in SL, I hated it immensely when I did it in real life --- so I definitely don't need to have THAT experience again LOL.  

[Prokofy Neva]

On 7/29/2020 at 9:57 AM, Chic Aeon said:

For the OP most of all, that is only true if you are keeping the land impact points consistent with the parcel size.  That isn't necessary of course. Some apartments have 25 li allotments (or less) and others have 300 -- and both could be the same size meter wise.

 

One way to solve this apartment problem would be to build a selection of "filler buildings" with just one apartment in each building but on various floors. So the empty (and unfinished to save on land impact for the building) apartments would have closed windows or curtains or shaded glass and the apartments for rent would have open views but on different floors. This would give the appearance of apartment blocks but solve the privacy and some other issues including sounds --  if the land settings were checked correctly.   

 

I have no plans to DO that and while being a landlord is one of the few things that I have NOT done in SL, I hated it immensely when I did it in real life --- so I definitely don't need to have THAT experience again LOL.  

If you charge less for a space than $100 or at least $150 ideally, you are losing money. As Rey said, there is a huge turnover on the lower-priced units.

I already said that the way to solve it is to stagger the apartments so they have their own stream and spacing beyond 20 m. I realize that it's important for you always to contradict whatever I say, even if it means saying the same thing differently lol.

But even if you use textures instead of built mesh or prim windows, etc. etc. it's hard to do on 4096 or 8192 and beyond that it becomes ridiculous. You should take that same space and just rent it out as townhouses or ranches or whatever. And I don't just have my own experience to draw on. All around me in the massively abandoned Nautilus 2 region (the pink mountains) are people trying these cheapie "holodeck" apartments with tiny spaces stacked up forever. They are all empty. No one comes. What does rent are those giant 4096 domes that uglify the landscape because to cram in as many as possible, they start at nearly ground level to allow for the 20m issue. They should be outlawed. Those are fuller, but still half empty I find. At one time in SL's history I had 4 apartment towers, all nearly always 100% full. That was because there were a lot more newbies who wanted an inexpensive pied a terre until they could figure out land better. But today, there are Linden homes and abandoned land and island rentals and people go to those rather than an apartment tower.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I already said that the way to solve it is to stagger the apartments so they have their own stream and spacing beyond 20 m.

Another solution is to use skyboxes as apartments. Use Anywhere Doors or just basic no-nonsense quasi teleporters to smoothlessly(ish) transport people to the apartment in the sky when they click on the door to the one in the building.

Space the aparment boxes a few hundred meters away from each other and you can use MOaP players instead of the parcel stream. (Discalimer: Because of sound leakage you should never use Media on a Prim players for music streaming on ground level unless you have a whole isolated region for yourself. They can work that way in skyboxes though, as logn as they are properly set up and the skyboxes are far enough apart from each others and everything/everybody else.) Moving the actual apartments up in the sky also makes it easier to  set up security orbs with sensible exclusion areas.

[WhisperingPond]

Thank you all for your help. I like the Skybox idea. I never thought about stacking them. How high can I go and what's the minimum distance between for radio usage and stuff? 

I recently saw someone in my favorite Sandbox unpacking their Skybox and it had a cityscape image surrounding it. It was so cool I had to buy one, even though I didn't need it. SL does that to me. I have so much stuff that I've either used once or will never use.

Even the idea of renting a stack of Skyboxes probably won't keep my attention more than a month. SL has been a wonderful distraction from RL. It's also a distraction from learning Blender which I tell myself I really want to understand.

Since asking this question I've checked the Classifieds and there are a ton of rentals. Maybe it's not worth the time. Or maybe I'll do it just for the experience. 

[Prokofy Neva]

20 hours ago, WhisperingPond said:

Thank you all for your help. I like the Skybox idea. I never thought about stacking them. How high can I go and what's the minimum distance between for radio usage and stuff? 

I recently saw someone in my favorite Sandbox unpacking their Skybox and it had a cityscape image surrounding it. It was so cool I had to buy one, even though I didn't need it. SL does that to me. I have so much stuff that I've either used once or will never use.

Even the idea of renting a stack of Skyboxes probably won't keep my attention more than a month. SL has been a wonderful distraction from RL. It's also a distraction from learning Blender which I tell myself I really want to understand.

Since asking this question I've checked the Classifieds and there are a ton of rentals. Maybe it's not worth the time. Or maybe I'll do it just for the experience. 

You have to stop well before 4096 because at 4096, you can no longer rez anything, and your attempts just get error messages and bounces. You can't edit cam things into place either. So just go below to like 4000 to prevent frustration.

Well, it's always fun to try rentals, maybe you would at least offset your costs.

Yes, there are lots of skyboxes that have skyscapes surrounding them or even built outside of them. The best ones have texture changes to change the scenery. I've made some of those myself.

So yes, you could rent a stack of skyboxes but I would urge you to put the first one above 500 so it is not in the view. Nothing forces you to do this but it's a good practice on the Mainland.

As Rey said, you could use "go anywhere doors" -- I prefer to use teleporters simply because people can be scared off from "go anywhere," they don't understand where they are being taken, but a teleporter lets you click and see a destination that is labeled.

I don't like MOaP because it's so annoying to control. It zooms you in and it autoplays and you can't stop it even if your own YouTube is not on autoplay. I think the media devices are just that must less of a nuisance. But nothing is perfect.

I have found that making a "Bed & Breakfast" like real life actually works. I was so determined to do this, and when I started it, I was the only one, and people didn't understand it, and it was hard to rent. That was 4 years ago. Now I have customers who get it and like it and move around from one to another. The way it works, they walk into say an old Victorian house, or a Hacienda type house. They have their own room. The door can be locked but that's of marginal use as you know if you know of the sit hack. More to the point, you put in a teleporter. Then they can go up to the skybox. That teleporter can be locked more effectively, and then  you can also put in an orb. But you have that room down below to entertain people, and not have to bring them into what is your bedroom or private workshop unless you want to.

PS 20 m is the limit not to hear room chat. But no amount of spacing fixes the stream issue unless they are on dedicated parcels. So you'd have to have a structure that has one on a little 192 or 256, then the next one on the next little 192 or so over, etc. Takes up a lot of room.

Edited August 2, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[SneakyBooger]

On 7/22/2020 at 8:49 PM, Annabell Wandsworth said:

All residents on a parcel can see all other residents on that parcel. There is no way to cut your way around that fact.

You can technically have 2 apartments per parcel that have no camming privacy. One at ground level and one in the sky. They wont beable to cam in on each other if the privacy eye is turned on.

[Rabid Cheetah]

On 8/1/2020 at 2:19 PM, WhisperingPond said:

 It was so cool I had to buy one, even though I didn't need it. SL does that to me. I have so much stuff that I've either used once or will never use.
 

 

You speak for most of us lol