First time land buyer; have some questions

[SoundwaveKun]

I have been considering buying land and I am somewhat confused on a lot of the articles I have been reading about it, and I was hoping to have a few questions answered. 
 

I am wanting a plot of land with a high prim allowance (500-900) but a small plot (500-3000m2) I only want to use it for my own home and nothing else, but I do like decorating. Is this at all possible? Would I be better off buying from an estate if this is my goal? 

Edited December 7, 2021 by SoundwaveKun

[Alwin Alcott]

28 minutes ago, SoundwaveKun said:

I am wanting a plot of land with a high prim allowance, but a small plot.

This is nearly impossible, Li/prims are tied to the size of land.

There are a few places with doube Li/prims on mainland , ( still won't be enough for a luxerious decor, it will always limit a user, even a fp region will limit ... so have to get used to limits   )
Some estate rentals do have primbonusses, but those often only are around 10-20 % because it aren't really bonusses but a redeistribution of the total prim amount on a region. ( it you get ten more, another parcel will be limited down with the same amount)

Sometimes there are  rentals on mainland for the double prim parcels here in the section below,  estate rentals mosltly advertise on their own channels.

[Maitimo]

You would definitely be better off renting from an estate. Many landlords will allow you to rent additional prim allowance without increasing the size of your land - that's what you need. Contact the landlord before paying rent to ensure that the option is available in the region you're interested in - it's on a per-region basis so even though the landlord may offer it as an option, it may be all "sold out" in the region you're looking at.

If you buy mainland then the prim allowance is directly tied to the size of the land and the only way to get more is to buy a bigger parcel and just use less of it. There are double-prim parcels in Horizons and some in Bay City, but they are stupidly expensive.  

[Qie Niangao]

5 hours ago, SoundwaveKun said:

I am wanting a plot of land with a high prim allowance (500-900) but a small plot (500-3000m2) I only want to use it for my own home and nothing else, but I do like decorating. Is this at all possible? Would I be better off buying from an estate if this is my goal? 

If you go the Estate route, you'll be paying for all the land area it takes to support those prims, you just won't have any control over most of it. That's how Estates (or double-primmed Mainland) can offer an "object bonus": they must dedicate enough of the region to support those extra prims.

On the other hand, if you'd like some control over all that extra land needed to support the prims, you may as well go with single-primmed, no-object-bonus land whether Mainland or Estate.

(The oddity is double-primmed Mainland, where your monthly bill will reflect the area of the parcel, not the (doubled) land impact allowance. As already mentioned, however, acquiring double-primmed Mainland is a very large one-time cost.)

[Quistess Alpha]

Except in special circumstances, the land-area to "prim allowance" ratio is about 0.3433.

A plot with  900 prims would have an area of 2621m2. A plot with 500 prims, 1456 m2.

Assuming you have a premium membership, the optimum amount of land to hold (price wise) within that range is 2048m2, (you can hold slightly more if you do some shenanigans with group-deeded land) for which you would pay an extra $7 per month to LL (you get 1024 "free" tier for premium).

IMO the cheapest way to buy mainland is through the auction

Edited December 7, 2021 by Quistess Alpha
dropped a word

[Rabid Cheetah]

Cheapest way to buy Mainland is to buy Abandoned Land.

[Quistess Alpha]

8 hours ago, Rabid Cheetah said:

Cheapest way to buy Mainland is to buy Abandoned Land.

Actually, you ~can get mainland for half the price of what they offer for abandoned land if nobody else bids on it, (0.5 L$/m2) it's just not guaranteed and you don't have as much say in the places available.

[Rabid Cheetah]

1 hour ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Actually, you ~can get mainland for half the price of what they offer for abandoned land if nobody else bids on it, (0.5 L$/m2) it's just not guaranteed and you don't have as much say in the places available.

Didn't know it starts that low.  Thanks for the info.

[Liv Simondsen]

On 12/8/2021 at 9:31 AM, Rabid Cheetah said:

Cheapest way to buy Mainland is to buy Abandoned Land.

Where abandoned lands can be seen?

[Rabid Cheetah]

12 minutes ago, Liv Simondsen said:

Where abandoned lands can be seen?

I don't know of anything that keeps track of or searches for Abandoned Land for folks.  Basically, you'll need to go out exploring, in areas that interest you, and when you find a tract of barren land check it via the About Land function of your viewer to see the General information for the parcel.  If it's Abandoned Land it should say so.  If you decide to buy the parcel, or part of it, fill out a ticket:

https://lindenlab.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/new

Make sure you're logged in to the Second Life website to get the full ticket menu, and select Land & Region, and Abandoned Land.

Abandoned Land costs $L1/m2, with a minimum purchase of 512 m2 if you don't already own any land in the region.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

Here's a HUD I've seen mentioned favorably in the forums. I haven't tried it out myself (yet).  https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/ArtiZan-Abandoned-Land-Finder-Automatic-parcel-scanner-sends-IM-and-email-reports-HUD-rezzable/21533770

[LittleMe Jewell]

The biggest issue with the HUD is that you have to actually visit each region for it to scan and let you know if there is abandoned land.  Once you know what you are looking for, when you visit a region, you can usually figure out that info on your own fairly quickly.

I think the HUD is most useful for people that already own land in a region and want to known when more land in the same region is new abandoned.  They can then rez the item and it will automatically monitor the region and notify them.

[Qie Niangao]

I wonder if this HUD takes a while to scan a region. For my own use I hacked up a little parcel info scanner that reports all the parcels in a region and their owners and area and all that jazz, and it takes several minutes to walk through the whole region. That's because I never figured out a faster way than to exhaustively sample every 16m cell to see if it matches an already indexed parcel. (Well, it could terminate when total parcel size accounted for every bit of land in the region, but that's not much savings in most regions. I suppose there are search orders that could improve the likelihood of completing early, but I doubt it would matter much on average.)

Anyway, the underlying constraint is that llGetParcelDetails() only works in the same region as the running script.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

I guess it depends on how you do your land shopping. I have certain regions I like best, and I map hop a LOT, so that HUD might actually be useful for someone like me. However, I have one that's more like what Qie described (it shows the owners of all parcels in a region), and I like that even better because it's always good to know who your potential neighbors might be.  

[Lucia Nightfire]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

That's because I never figured out a faster way than to exhaustively sample every 16m cell to see if it matches an already indexed parcel.

Do a "statistical" scan protocol.

Scan every 128x128m.

Then, scan every 64x64m ignoring the vectors(both axii multiple of 128) you scanned previously.

Then, scan every 32x32m ignoring the vectors(both axii multiple of 64) you scanned previously.

Then, scan every 16x16m ignoring the vectors(both axii multiple of 32) you scanned previously.

Then, scan every 8x8m ignoring the vectors(both axii multiple of 16) you scanned previously.

Then, scan every 4x4m ignoring the vectors(both axii multiple of 8 ) you scanned previously.

Keep track of parcel keys and total sqm and once you hit 65536 sqm, you're done.

I typically add a <2,2,0> offset to each point to ensure there is no weirdness with borders.

Keep settext updates to a minimum as updating settext per vector really draws out the process time.

Edited December 10, 2021 by Lucia Nightfire