thinking of buying a region

[SnakeDance Moonwing]

hello, i am new to the forums, I am thinking about buying a region, i have several questions :)

This is the largest amount of land one can buy in secondlife yes?

How many parcels/section can you have on a region?

And does land rent fast? or would i have an empty region sitting around with nobody interested in renting,
cause i have to tell you the set up fee for 1000 bucks is alot of money and so are the monthy fees, if i had nobody to rent to cover the fees then i wouldn't be able to afford to get a region.

thanx for any help or advice :)

[Wildcat Furse]

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SnakeDance Moonwing wrote:

And does land rent fast? or

I would have an empty region sitting around with nobody interested in renting

,

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THIS .....*meows*

 

 

[Hollys Chevalier]

Well, first off, you can buy regions for less than that from someone who already owns some regions; there's a lot of folks downsizing their holdings these days. 

 

You can buy as much land as you want to pay for. And pay tier for...  The # of parcels depends on how YOU divide it up. 

 

As for "will land rent fast", that depends on a -lot- of factors. One is your asking price, another is amenities.   I know a guy who owns 3 regions, he's a decent guy. His rent price is dirt cheap.. and he has trouble keeping his places full.  One of his big issues is that he has no clue how to do nice or even halfway nice landscaping.   He completely flattens out the land all the way to the edges, puts a sand texture on it, tosses the houses on it every which way, and thinks he's done.  It's not very nice looking, not once you've seen what can be done with SL landscaping. (go wander round Botanical or Alchemy Immortalis sims sometime, among many other places I can think of that are just lovely to look at..)   He also does not allow people to have their own music in their rentals; each house would have to have a separate plot and he has mostly apartment type buildings, which don't work so well with that.  

 

Another lady I know owns well over a dozen regions with a central theme, lush landscaping all around, has  varied free events every week or so at a community center she built in the heart of her sims & open to everyone, and there's a great mix of residential and commercial land sites. She is an absolute sweetheart too, always willing to work with someone on anything you need, whether it's terraforming help, adjusting the borders of your plot so the house you just bought will fit, even letting you pay your tier a day or two late without reclaiming your land 10 minutes after the tier meter expires.  Absolute angel.  Most of her residential properties are double prim too, which is hard to find sometimes.  AND she's very reasonably priced, more so than many landlords I've seen.  Yet she has trouble finding renters who will stick around.      I have no idea why, unless it has to do with the glut of land on the markets and people leaving SL in general.  

Speaking only for myself, I love SL.. But sometimes I think about leaving too.  Thanks to the lousy economy, I've been out of work for a couple years now.  But I like owning a little bit of virtual land and I love SL despite its flaws and I adore the friends I've made in world.  Sometimes it's really hard to choose between paying my tier and paying RL bills.. And the bills usually win.  :-\

 

of course, your mileage may vary.  

 

 

 

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[Polenth Yue]

Is this is the mainland section because you're thinking of buying a mainland region? That's a little different to private regions. There's no setup fee (other than initial land cost, which is likely to be less) and tiers are lower. But you also don't get the same land management tools and have to search around for a full region for sale. They're not created on demand.

[Phil Deakins]

This is the "Mainland" sub-forum but you can't buy a mainland region from LL. You can buy one from a user, if you find one for sale. You can buy a private region from LL (with the $1000 setup fee), or from a user (without the setup fee). Such regions are not connected to the mainland.

The smallest parcel you can make is 4m x 4m (16 sqm) so, if my maths is correct, you could make 4096 parcels, but such tiny ones would be useless to you.

 

[Dogboat Taurog]

yes the set up fee is a lot of money and i can almost guarantee you will never make money from renting in SL.

in fact you will probably sell your land in 3 years for less then you paid for it.

SL is a money pit nowadays.

[Darren Oates]

Hi if you are new to buying a region with a plan of renting out the land i would strongly advise to buy MAINLAND from another user no setup fee just one cheaper price to pay depending on your budget and as others have pointed out the teir costs are way cheaper so in affect you can charge LESS for your rental spaces compared to private sims where you will have to nearly double your rents to stand any chance of getting any return on your investment over the months ahead.

Plus now this is the key factor you can SELL your MAINLAND at any time if things go pearshaped (dont work out) and you can even resell parts of the sim instead of messing around trying to sell a private full sim if you search for a full mainland sim you will see plenty pop up for sale every few days and just keep a eye out for a good deal the less you can pay the better dont rush in let the WOW factor settle maths and a bit of homework goes along way in SL. Its actually getting renters thats the hard part but you will get them with a bit of diffrent tactics until you find the best way.  Have fun trying to get your ideas off the ground look at it as a long term plan just dont pay over the odds until you know you can fill a sim then go for private.  Good luck.

[Jo Yardley]

Why not start small?

 

I started the 1920s Berlin project in a 1024 meter parcel with 4 tenants and now I have a full region that is pretty much fully booked, my apartments have waitinglists.

 

You need to offer people something unique, something they love and will not only pay rent for but keep paying rent for a while.

So start thinking about how your sim will look like, what the houses will be like.

WHY would anyone want to live in your sim?

Once you've answered that you can grow.

Only if you're sure you can keep a full region tiers close to 300 dollars a month paid for by the rent the people pay, only then should you buy a full region.

And yes, there are regions out there for half the prize, so try and get one for 500 dollars or so.

[Knowl Paine]

You could have 1 - 65,536 sqm plot, or 2 - 32,768 sqm plot, or 4 - 16,348 sqm plots, or 8 -8,192 sqm plots or, 16 - 4,096 sqm plots, or 32 - 2,048 sqm plots, or 64 - 1,024 sqm plots, or 128 512 sqm plots.  

 

A full Region is 65,536 m² in size with 15,000 prims  Mainland sims can support a maximum of 40 avatars, full regions can support up to 100 avatars, homestead regions can support up to 20 avatars, and openspace regions can support up to 10 avatars

 

Renting land for profit is very challenging. A Region owner should look for a Land Manager they can trust. If you have the means, Region ownership offers plenty of opportunities to enterprise but as in any venture one must first plant a seed. It takes a good farmer to grow a good apple.   

 

Region Owners who rent and even those who don't rent, have access to a great wealth of talent. Builders, scripters, musicians, film makers, artist, jewelers, clothing designers, IT specialist and many others.

 

[Marianne McCann]

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Jo Yardley wrote:

Why not start small?

 

I started the 1920s Berlin project in a 1024 meter parcel with 4 tenants and now I have a full region that is pretty much fully booked, my apartments have waitinglists.

 

You need to offer people something unique, something they love and will not only pay rent for but keep paying rent for a while.

So start thinking about how your sim will look like, what the houses will be like.

WHY would anyone want to live in your sim?

Once you've answered that you can grow.

Only if you're sure you can keep a full region tiers close to 300 dollars a month paid for by the rent the people pay, only then should you buy a full region.

And yes, there are regions out there for half the prize, so try and get one for 500 dollars or so.

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This. Reposted so you read it again.

There is not "get rich quick" in SL. Maybe there was in '04 (but even then I doubt it), but anyone who makes money - especially today - does have to work for it. Sometimes a lot. If your thought is, "I'll buy a full region, flatten and parcel it, and the renters will line up to dump Linden Dollars on me," then you really should rethink your plan.

If you buy a sim with the idea of renting it, think about what would make *you* and your friends rent that land, versus some one else's.  Does it have a theme? A community? Some unique property that makes it stand out from the rest?  If the answer is "no" to all the above, then yes, it's quite likely your parcel will sit empty.

And much like 1920s Berlin: start small. build something unique and cool, and gauge the response. Grow accordingly. Yes, it's a lot more work, but it's really how you succeed. Like 1920s Berlin, or Caledon, or others.

(And yes, this is a mainland forum, not a private estate forum, but you get the idea)

[Randall Ahren]

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Marianne McCann wrote:

There is not "get rich quick" in SL.

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Actually, I think there is although not in SL real estate. The latest was breedable pets. Of the top 96 best selling items in the Marketplace, consumable items for breedable pets makes the list seven times of which these items are all no copy, no modify and no transfer so that customers must keeping purchasing the items as they are consumed.

[Phil Deakins]

I depends on what you call "rich". There are many ways to become rich in $L. And, imo, it's still possible to become RL rich from SL, but I don't see breedables as a way of achieving it. Selling enough to top the markeplace best sellers doesn't generate RL riches. It may generate enough for a reasonable RL livelihood for a while, but that's all, and most breedables won't even do that, regardless of being in the marketplace best sellers list.

In my view, it may still be possible to achieve a degree of RL riches in land, but nowhere near as easy as it was some years ago. Building up the sort of land business that Anshe Chung has can still be done but it's nowhere near as easy to grow from scratch any more. The time of the pioneering gold rush is gone, and it would now need a serious RL-type business plan, backed with some significant money, but I believe it can still be done in the same way that it's done in RL; e.g. MySpace ruled that segment for a while, but then Facebook came along. Twitter currently rules its segment but what's in the future? Will an alternative come along and take over, as happened with MySpace? Probably. SL rules this particular slot and makes money but it can be toppled. Nobody has tried yet - not seriously - but all it would take is some serious money. No well-established business is future-safe in RL, and it's exactly the same in SL but, like RL, it will need serious RL thinking.

 

A single sim - the topic of this thread - will most likely lose money, at least for a while, and especially if it's an inexperienced person doing it, but it could make a small amount. I remember a comment by someone who runs a popular set of 35 themed sims (at that time), by renting parcels out,  saying that the best profit that can be expected from a sim in the rental market is US$200 a month (that's after tier is paid, of course), and it assumed that all parcels were rented out all of the time, which is unlikely to happen for a newcomer to that business. So, imo, it's a darned good idea to get into that market with a sim, provided that it's done for the enjoyment of doing it at a cost of some RL money, and the loss is the cost of the enjoyment - as a hobby that we pay for - but not with expectation of making money. If it doesn't lose money, all well and good, but it's best to assume that it will - at least for a while.

[Randall Ahren]

In the RL if you own property held for rent, a certain vacancy rate is assumed, usually between 10% and 20%. What type of vacancy do you expect with a full region held for rent? As for a $200/month profit after tier is paid, that is a 100% profit on the monthly tier. Moreover, you don't have to worry about being sued as you would in RL for cheating your tenants as is common in SL.

Edit: alleged cheating. Actually that is one of the problems with SL business, lack of enforceable contracts.

[Phil Deakins]

I don't expect any vacancies, as I'm not doing it But I'd guess that, for a newcomer to the rental business, who starts out with a large piece of land (a whole sim) rather than grow from small, a much greater vacancy than 10-20% could be expected, but even 10-20% vacancy would bring the US$200 profit down a great deal - to between 160 and 180 US$ a month. Couple with that the fact that (as I understand it) the OP is thinking of a private sim and not mainland, which costs US$295 a month in tier, and the 100% profit is seriously reduced to something around 50% or 60% profit. Then if the business person is in the EU, add 20% to the tier and the 100% profit is down much more.

The chances of a newcomer to that field maintaining a tenancy of 80-90% these days is slim, imo - not without operating at very low rents, which would mean that it would be a good hobby that would most likely lose money, hopefully not much, at least for a while, but have the potential to perhaps show a small profit eventually.

The person who stated that the most you can expect from a rentals sim, owned and operated a highly desirable set of themed sims - so desirable that he had a waiting list of prospective tenants at that time. Newcomers would be unlikely to create such an environment.

So, imo, a relatively new builder, who buys a sim to rent land or places out, is most likely to run at a small loss each month, at least for a while. A dedictaed person could grow it from there, but it's best seen as a pleasurable hobby which might cost a bit to have, imo.

[Melita Magic]

Why pay that when you can get a used region for as little as 250 dollars. I was very tempted to buy that one myself but my tier is high enough!

Join 'For Sale by Owner' group in Second Life. When someone wants to dump their region you could be waiting.

[WADE1 Jya]

If it is too much for you, you shouldn't jump in at that level as it is unsustainable & could easily even hurt your real life financial situation a little. A good way to start is rent some small parcels first like a 512m for example, if you can 100% recover costs (and hopefully a little profit) from your 512 parcels for several consecutive months this would be a good indication a sim is a good idea for you as a next step.

In total agreement with others here of start small and work your way up cautiously :matte-motes-grin: it could spoil what would otherwise be a very fun experience if you jump in too big right away.

Conversely, another sustainable method would be saving up your money and wait to buy your sim until you have enough that you feel more comfortable with the costs. Having a sizable fund dedicated towards several months of future operating costs is very useful... so you don't have to collapse your venture soon after purchase. Such a fund will also save your operation if you sometime have a month or two running red.

To keep it fun, you should not mind slowly depleting this fund at times. This will happen at first, at least until you learn better how to recover your costs. Also keep in mind that many sims never completely cover their teir costs.

[Josephina Bonetto]

I sold my private region in the For Sale by Owner group in May 2009.  A very useful group.

I personally would recommend getting your feet wet on mainland first unless money is no object.  Learn how to select good mainland, start small, and increase your land holdings gradually as parcels become available.  It is true, you may never own the entire region if people never move on but in the current climate there is also a possibility you could own it one slice at a time.  Solely relying on renters to pay tier is not enough of a business model, you need to offer *more* than what the others are offering and to know your target market.

Depending where you live, VAT is payable on your monthly fees too.

I have bought and sold a respectable amount of mainland in the last 4-years and even after owning a private region I can honestly say it is my preference. 

[Ricky Zhichao]

Lot advices for you here and all so true. So think twice before make any decision. The most important advice sure is: dont buy totally "new" sim but buy it from marketplace or other way from someone who already owns a sim and is quitting it. Its not at all "worn" or "used" sim technically. Its just the same as new sim and price will be less than half of that 1000 dollars..like 450 or so. After purchase you need to pay some kind of transfer fee to LL for making that change work. Anyway read all these valuable advice messages in your thread and learn lot that way.