Land Flippers Hate or Love?

[Paul Hexem]

1 hour ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

I know of large vacant parcels in Zindra that have been for sale by dealers for years. They have had to spend thousands of dollars to maintain them. I have wondered how they can afford to hold vacant land for so long. I doubt it will ever sell for enough for them to break even.

That's exactly what I'm saying, yeah. Either LL is doing something wrong, or these flippers have some benefit we don't know about.

There's no way that's financially viable.

[Coffee Pancake]

11 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

That's exactly what I'm saying, yeah. Either LL is doing something wrong, or these flippers have some benefit we don't know about.

There's no way that's financially viable.

Or the flippers are LL moonlighting.

[Raspberry Crystal]

The question that occurs to me is, do the powers that be within SL actually care about the customer experience? Is there a corporate value to promote virtual community, or a more cynical view which values short term survival more?
Meanwhile, customers make the best of it, some doing so in a way which amazes me with their creativity and willingness to share.

I have found myself 'flipping' at times, not through land purchases, but with my views on certain behaviour as my relationship with SL changes.
When funds are low I feel more generous towards those 'sky tower' developments, a place to park with minimum cost and low need to be involved. I never actually rent one of those platforms though.
When I run out of ideas, and have made yet another ugly build, I am more inclined to be tolerant of some hideous monstrosity garbed in 2008 textures made by another user.
There are times when the world view of a 'land baron' seems perfectly reasonable, and other days when a socialist values based community would seem ideal.
Some years I am grateful that SL keeps finding a way to survive, and other times I am utterly frustrated by the toxic neglect and lack of planning which leads to the issues everyone has mentioned here.

It is not ok that parts of mainland have fallen into abuse, decline, and selfish exploitation. It is not ok that the powers that be have either no idea how to tackle it, or a lack of willingness to do so. This is despite the fact that I can't think of a way to do that either, without making considerable financial investment.
In this way virtual worlds mimic real life, and solutions take decades, never completely solve the problems, and end up in a tussle between our various needs to belong and selfish desires.
 

[Qie Niangao]

10 hours ago, animats said:

Here's a thought: mainland tier discounts should be local only. That is, you get the tier discount for owning more land only if it's in the same region. So you get a discount if you buy lots of land in one place to build something large, but owning lots in many places does not pay. This breaks the business model of land flippers.

10 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Or a 10% increase to your tier cost for each non adjacent parcel you own.

As you might guess, I'm not a fan of penalizing ownership of dispersed parcels; it's plenty expensive as-is to keep a string of ancient VRC outposts around the SLRR.* I'm not tracking why we're looking for ways to penalize ownership of land that's not even for sale (and in my case, hasn't been for sale in a decade).

I do like the idea of escalating tier over time on land that's for sale, although I'm not sure how to make that work in practice, to keep flippers from swapping ownership between alts and beating the system by taking the land off sale for whatever interval is required.

For that matter, it might be good to reward community by decreasing tier as time passes with the land not for sale. (Of course I would say that; for all I know, though, my neighbors may be thinking a change-up is long overdue.)

All that said, I too don't understand the economics of Zindra land for sale holdings—like, not even close. I don't think it's Lindens in disguise because I see no way that benefits the Lab, nor anybody else for that matter, unless tier gets a drastic volume discount we don't know about. But I think we would know about it, so I remain baffled.

_____________
* Although, as I mentioned in another thread, I may have to give up SL anyway if LL hits me with a choice of sales tax in a state I don't live or paying currency exchange fees in both directions.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

18 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

This is an issue that desperately needs a policy shift from @Linden Lab @Patch Linden, a good start would be prohibiting rental of mainland and offering a transition deal to allow landlords to consolidate their holdings and migrate to private estates. Caps on the amount of mainland a single 'real person' can own and throttles for transfers of ownership.

 

This suggests that land ownership is inherently "good" and rentals are inherently "bad." My extended alt family has some land that has gradually become a town and has been in the same location for ten years or so. Over those years, I've seen many chunks of the surrounding land be bought by a wide variety of owners for a wide variety of projects - some lovely and some not so. However, they all seemed to vanish in a few months, leaving jagged chunks of abandoned land that would lie fallow until the next owner came up with the next project.

A few years ago a lot of the surrounding land has been bought by a rental company that divided it up into medium size plots. They have renters who've built a wide variety of projects - some lovely and some not so. Most of them seem to vanish in a few months. So, what's the difference in my eyes? Basically nothing.

Meanwhile, that land has been making money for Linden Lab for as long as the rental company has owned it.

[Mollymews]

if Linden did want to stop land flipping then they could do it quite easily.  Make the sale price for all/any size mainland parcel L$0

not that Linden would do this ever as far as I can imagine. Just that it would be easy to do (at least technically)

 

[StarlanderGoods]

14 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

if Linden did want to stop land flipping then they could do it quite easily.  Make the sale price for all/any size mainland parcel L$0

not that Linden would do this ever as far as I can imagine. Just that it would be easy to do (at least technically)

 

They would have to change the "abandoned" system too, or they would be buried in work having to prepare all the new abandoned land everytime someone wants to reclaim a parcel.

[Sid Nagy]

6 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

People have to pay LL for L$ with real money. If LL sells me L$ for USD, and I pay LL with the L$, LL still gets the USD, so it makes little or no difference to them.

Most of the L$ sold are from other residents who want to cash out. Than LL only gets the commission and would loose money. L$ don't not have the same value for them as it has for the residents. 
LL only sells new printed L$ the moment the demand is higher than the money offered at the exchange.
And that is not really often.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Marigold Devin]

11 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Like @StarlanderGoods, I know of a number of really robust, dynamic, and also quite beautiful mainland communities. Most of these, I might add, depend upon rentals to help support tier -- I doubt that they'd be possible on the scale at which they currently exist, were it necessary to relocate them to estates.

At the same time, you're quite right that a great deal of mainland is an eyesore -- that's part of the problem that a restriction on land flipping is designed to solve, or at least mitigate.

I should also say that one of my favourite leisure time activities is walking(!) the routes of the SLRR, or scootering the mainland highways. Not so much because I'm a "vehicle" person (I'm an awful driver!), but because it's astonishing the hidden gems one can find on the mainland. I actually don't think it's as bad as some would have you believe.

Me too! Intending to travel a long distance, I usually find myself noticing something shiny along the route and veering off for the session's unique adventure. There is even a Jack the Ripper museum somewhere (wish I could remember where, but I'm not able to log in and look at my landmarks just now). Nicely put together, good historical facts.  I had a conversation with a Portuguese man via a blackboard one day last week, that was interesting, and the Linden Bear museum is also along mainland. 

But land flippers. I really had assumed these were a thing of the past. I've learned a lot from this thread.

[Anicha Heartsong]

Hate

[ChinRey]

Throwing in my two kopeks of thought, one thing I learned back when I had land in SL was that in the long run the purchase price was trivial compared to the tier. It may seem like a lot at first but you only pay the purchase price once whilst the tier is chraged every month.

[Lindal Kidd]

5 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

if LL hits me with a ... sales tax in a state I don't live

They can't do that, Qie. Sales tax is based on the state you DO live in.

[Qie Niangao]

18 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

They can't do that, Qie. Sales tax is based on the state you DO live in.

I hope so. But as I whined about in another thread, the complexity here is that I live in Canada but use US dollars for practically everything except basic living expenses for which I eat currency exchange fees converting to Canadian dollars. Problem is, unlike everybody else I deal with, Tilia won't accept US dollars from Canadian accounts (presumably so they can charge me their currency exchange fee to convert it back to US dollars), so my SL account is nominally "US" and hence presumably subject to some state tax or other.

(As US citizens living abroad can attest, we already pay extra tax because each jurisdiction has their own idiosyncratic exclusions of foreign tax credits, to say nothing of the cost of the incredibly complex accounting and reporting. This is why so many ex-pats end up renouncing their US citizenship.)

[Sid Nagy]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

Problem is, unlike everybody else I deal with, Tilia won't accept US dollars from Canadian accounts (presumably so they can charge me their currency exchange fee to convert it back to US dollars), so my SL account is nominally "US" and hence presumably subject to some state tax or other.

Strange, I live in The Netherlands, my account with LL says The Netherlands as country and I always pay in USD through Paypal without Tillia getting an exchange fee for converting Euro into USD.

The Paypal exchange fee is very moderate.
I normally use the Euro as currency for my Paypal account.
 

Edited March 8, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Odaks]

@Sid Nagy - I use the same ploy from the UK. Paypal does the £ -> US$ conversion and Tilia/LL only ever sees a plain US$ transaction.

[Jennifer Boyle]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

... so my SL account is nominally "US" and hence presumably subject to some state tax or other..

Not all states levy sale tax. Just pick one that doesn't.

[Qie Niangao]

Hmm. Actually, I'm paying through PayPal now, too. I forget now but maybe the problems arose when Tilia wouldn't accept my US credit card because I had a Canadian SL account. Naturally, that card has a Canadian billing address which may have tripped some system, maybe. I remember then struggling to link one of my PayPal accounts to a payment option that was acceptable to Tilia, which also took some trial and error (revisited just last month as an alt's premium subscription came due). I swear, the Lab is harder to pay than any other vendor, and I deal with a few on both sides of the border.

Anyway, if they try to charge me sales tax in some random US state, I'll try using my Canadian address one more time and see if it works. Thanks for the reassurance.

And sorry for the tangent. How 'bout them flippers, eh? FWIW, I'm pretty sure I've lost money on every piece of land I've ever sold, so we just need more land-flippers like me!

[animats]

9 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I too don't understand the economics of Zindra land for sale holdings—like, not even close. I don't think it's Lindens in disguise because I see no way that benefits the Lab, nor anybody else for that matter, unless tier gets a drastic volume discount we don't know about. But I think we would know about it, so I remain baffled.

That's a puzzle for me, too. I have a workshop and store in Vallone, in downtown Kama City. This area has major Linden builds - the mall in Mosh (privately owned, mostly vacant) the Port of Kama City (can you find the water rez zone?), two big bridges, and two urban parks. It's a nice looking area. I originally bought land there because I thought a motorcycle shop should be in an area like that.

About half of Kama City is vacant and for sale or rent. There are about half a dozen major landowners. Renters come and go. Too often, they build yet another club, nobody comes, and they leave. There are successful clubs, but they've been around for a while.

There's been a little progress. Over on the east coast of Zindra, there's a waterfront area with many small lots for sale by various landowners. Some come with buildings. Some amenities have been added, such as light surf and sharks in the water. Most parcels are vacant. Some have no-warning security orbs. so looking around is difficult. Prices are around L$14 to L$20/m^2. At least someone is trying.

[Sid Nagy]

Adult land on private sims is most of the time 0 L$ per m^2. Just saying.

[Coffee Pancake]

Whole regions .. just sat there .. year after year.

and who owns all of it .. 

[Paul Hexem]

11 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

As you might guess, I'm not a fan of penalizing ownership of dispersed parcels; it's plenty expensive as-is to keep a string of ancient VRC outposts around the SLRR.* I'm not tracking why we're looking for ways to penalize ownership of land that's not even for sale (and in my case, hasn't been for sale in a decade).

No, you're right. I was spitballing ideas there, and only for land that's for sale. If it's not for sale, it shouldn't be affected.

We do definitely need some incentive to get prices back down to reasonable amounts, though. Allowing them to hold good land for years, waiting for someone to pay an outrageous price should have a cost. Right now it doesn't.

28 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Whole regions .. just sat there .. year after year.

and who owns all of it .. 

It's almost all one guy, isn't it? Last time I looked, it was.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Paul Hexem

[Coffee Pancake]

4 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Allowing them to hold good land for years, waiting for someone to pay an outrageous price should have a cost. Right now it doesn't.

You would think that needing to pay LL a small fortune in tier every month would be sufficient cost.

I'd have a whole region on Zindra if it wasn't for the eye watering recurring monthly costs, I'm sure we all would, build cool things on them too. Just so weird that people who do literally nothing with land are able to own so much of it .. indefinitely.

[Paul Hexem]

20 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

You would think that needing to pay LL a small fortune in tier every month would be sufficient cost.

That's my confusion, too. There's no way they're making money to cover tier at the rates we see. You have to actually sell the land for that.

Or maybe @Solar Legion knows something we don't, based on those reactions.

[Solar Legion]

Ah yes, the usual complainers on a fair few "topics" as well as at least one that is keeping alive an impossible "suggestion" ...

1. L$ are tokens, created by Linden Lab - they have not and will not take them as Tier Payment, deal with it.
2. Land Flippers? Seriously? You're going to complain about a continual revenue stream for the Lab? Work around them. I'd much rather they be able to collect the Tier payments.
3. A "suggestion" to have Mainland be like Belli? No.

[Solar Legion]

Just now, Paul Hexem said:

That's my confusion, too. There's no way they're making money to cover tier at the rates we see. You have to actually sell the land for that.

Or maybe @Solar Legion knows something we don't, based on those reactions.

Or maybe I just don't care if flippers make any money to cover their Tier and am instead seeing them as providing revenue to Linden Lab for as long as they keep their money losing shenanigans up.

Let them be squeezed.