Auction Question

[Jenny Ashland]

I have noticed that when prime real estate goes up for auction, like Horizons, and Bay City, there seem to be bots that outbid you as soon as you bid no matter how high you go. Then when the actual land is won, it turns up for sale for an astronomical amount. Aside from shelling out $500 to $600 for a 1024 in these areas, is there any other way to get this land? I have been playing the auction game for a year now, and there is just no way to win these places it seems. I have my own private sim... but I have this 1024 that comes with the primum membership, and I would like to be able to use it. But I like the road access, and the aesthetics of those places. If the Linden houses would just let us use our own house and just gave us the plot, that would be perfect. I thought about putting a mountain over the Linden house and just living on top of the mountain. lol Any ideas? Or is shelling out $500 the only option for living in these places.

[Rabid Cheetah]

Maybe get your freebie Linden Home parcel, then build to your heart's content in a skybox above 2000m altitude?  Or find a camper in a woodsy LH region, pick the tiniest camper so you've got lots of land still available, and plunk a house of your own down there?  I did that with my alt, two campers on one parcel -- on Linden, one bought off the MP.  🙂 

[AlettaMondragon]

Land prices in BC, Nautilus City and and Horizons are indeed absurdly high, although they all have a x2 prim capacity multiplier, so no wonder the prices are in the skies. You don't have to look for these places for a nice roadside land, though. Regular mainland has more roads, and much larger area, with way friendlier land prices. The closest to what you're looking for is Kama City on Zindra. (Look for Kama Center region on the map, and the area around it.) If you don't mind the adult rated continent, and the futuristic, metal roadways, it would be the way to go. The rest of Zindra is quite crowded as well, and you can find pretty cheap parcels on roadsides.

If you just want streets for the atmosphere of the urban infrastructure, Zindra should win the "cheap and city-like" challenge. Otherwise, if you'd also like to be able to explore a large area by driving, Zindra is quite limited in size and incomplete infrastructure, so other, larger continents are better for that reason. Also, on any other continent, you can get a parcel for even as cheap as 1 L$ per square meter, either by catching a direct sale, or by an abandoned land request. To have the city-like feeling, you can look for city-builds in some areas, that usually take up 1-2 regions. To avoid lag, you can look for a roadside parcel in the neighboring region, so that you can live right next to a city. You can find such especially in the East River area (look up Grizedale and follow the road in any direction around), and Northeast Satori (between Allalinhorn and Toroge). Those areas resemble urban infrastructure quite well, as far as the atmosphere goes, but also there aren't always many available parcels. If you keep looking for a while, though, you can catch a nice, cheap one when someone decides to move. Otherwise, there is a huge amount of abandoned and cheap lands on roadsides on all continents, and even if it isn't anywhere near an urban area, it can be fun to have a plot at those areas, too.

[Jenny Ashland]

Thank you for your answers  I will try that

[Qie Niangao]

12 hours ago, Jenny Ashland said:

I have noticed that when prime real estate goes up for auction, like Horizons, and Bay City, there seem to be bots that outbid you as soon as you bid no matter how high you go. 

Prices are high in those areas, everyone agrees, but just for clarity what you appear to be describing is not due to bots: it's just how the auctions work. When a bidder, A, makes a bid, that's always the upper limit of how much they want to bid, but the price reflected will be only L$10 higher than the previous high bid. So if another bidder, B, comes along and bids higher than that price, it may not be higher than A's limit and then the system will automatically adjust the price to L$10 higher than B's bid as long as it's less than A's limit.

Maybe you know this already. I mean, if you ever get notified that you have the currently leading bid, then you've outbid the previous leading bidder's limit. If you're quickly outbid then, yeah, that might indeed be a bot. Usually, though, the bots get busy as the auction closing time approaches, trying to crank up bids only at the very last minute to minimize opposing bidders' ability to respond in time.

[Jenny Ashland]

16 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Prices are high in those areas, everyone agrees, but just for clarity what you appear to be describing is not due to bots: it's just how the auctions work. When a bidder, A, makes a bid, that's always the upper limit of how much they want to bid, but the price reflected will be only L$10 higher than the previous high bid. So if another bidder, B, comes along and bids higher than that price, it may not be higher than A's limit and then the system will automatically adjust the price to L$10 higher than B's bid as long as it's less than A's limit.

Maybe you know this already. I mean, if you ever get notified that you have the currently leading bid, then you've outbid the previous leading bidder's limit. If you're quickly outbid then, yeah, that might indeed be a bot. Usually, though, the bots get busy as the auction closing time approaches, trying to crank up bids only at the very last minute to minimize opposing bidders' ability to respond in time.

I actually did not know this... Thank you for clarifying. I always wondered why when I hit submit bid it was like automatic that I was outbid... I just figured it was a bot because it was so fast. That makes more sense