Safety in Renting?

[Benson Gravois]

I am looking to rent a parcel of land to place a home on. I want a fairly substantial one and this is my first time doing something this big. But I have some concerns. 
I have heard stories of people renting a property, paying in advance for a length of time, and then the sim owner sells the sim and the renter loses all his money, and Linden labs won’t get involved.

Is this true and how do you protect yourself from things like this?

[blissfulbreeze]

Yes, LL won't get involved. It's a resident to resident issue. Best thing to do is rent from well known Rental companies. Don't pay too far in advance, for any company. A month is usually good, and some offer a discount if you pay for 4 weeks at a time. However, only pay as far ahead that you won't mind if you do lose it. 

[Da5id Weatherwax]

You can't. You go to landlords with a decent rep to minimize the chances of it.

This is the tradeoff for 1: Not having to be a premium member, 2: not having to pay a sizeable chunk upfront to buy the parcel, in addition to your monthly tier, 3: (for some people this is a big deal) not living on mainland.

 

[Seicher Rae]

Sadly, as others have said, landlords can up and run. This happened to me, years ago, and there was zero to do about it. Funny, not ha-ha, that landlord had had a good reputation at the time. I always assumed something rotten happened in his real life and he had to pull out of SL fast. We still lost a huge chunk of change.

[Rowan Amore]

I agree with @blissfulbreeze.   When I rented, I always rented from one specific rental company pretty much since the beginning.  They rent everything from smaller parcels to full estates and homesteads.   

On the grid survey website, they have a list of the top real estate owners.   Try one of those.  I have always had excellent customer service from DreamSeekers.  I normally paid a month in advance with them but would never do so if they hadn't been a huge company.

 

The Top 10 Estates by number of regions held are as follows:

Richmond Land Management 6.2%

Azure Islands (ACS) 4.9%

Dreamseeker Estates 4.9%

Zoha Islands 4.2%

Surreal Chung (ACS) 3.1%

Weezles Real Estate (WRE) 3.0%

Victoria Chung (ACS) 2.9%

Miriam Chung (ACS) 2.5%

Lorena Chung (ACS) 1.8%

Fruit Islands Estate 1.7%

 

Edited August 12, 2022 by Rowan Amore

[Sid Nagy]

If you rent from one of the long standing land business companies, you should be okay.
Never pay more than one, two weeks in advance before you are certain you have rented the right spot with the right land company.
That limits your risks.

Compare what different landlords have to offer.
The bigger long standing landlords have a web presence.

Whatever you do, read the covenant first (if one is applied) and make sure you understand all of it and are prepared to live according to those rules.
A lot of disputes between landlords and tenants have their origin in not following the covenant. When it as example says no clubs allowed, that is what it means. Same goes for fair use of resources,  breeding, farming, set up a shop, rotating objects, minimum height above the ground for platforms etc.

Don't hesitate to communicate with the landlord or their representative about your wishes before you decide rent.

Edited August 12, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Count Burks]

Hello Benson I did send you an IM in world. I can provide you with a solution where you have near zero risk when you rent land so that should not be a concern. Feel free to contact me directly in world. 

 

Count Burks

[Lindal Kidd]

You don't necessarily need to limit yourself to the big land barons. Many smaller operators are also very reliable. One person I'd trust with my L$ is Desmond Shang, the owner of Caledon. It's an excellent choice if you like a Victorian Steampunk setting, because Caledon also has an active community of residents.

The FairChang estate is another one with a long reputation. Although ownership changed hands a few years ago, the "new" (not so new, now) owner also seems reliable.

If you are interested in Mainland, Shadowknight Falconer runs a tight ship, too. I rented my spare tier to him for many years, and he has many satisfied tenants.

[Ceka Cianci]

I'm gonna put Skybeam in there also.. I've been there for 15 of the 16 years of my second life and  have always felt comfortable paying a month ahead of time..

 

[Prokofy Neva]

5 hours ago, Benson Gravois said:

I am looking to rent a parcel of land to place a home on. I want a fairly substantial one and this is my first time doing something this big. But I have some concerns. 
I have heard stories of people renting a property, paying in advance for a length of time, and then the sim owner sells the sim and the renter loses all his money, and Linden labs won’t get involved.

Is this true and how do you protect yourself from things like this?

When you look at a rental, the first thing to check is whether the owner and/or officers of the rental group are still in the People list and haven't left SL or had their accounts suspended for non-payment. To be sure, there are venerable companies with excellent reputations where the founder happened to die in RL and still shows in groups but then there are other officers visible. The best kind of rental group is one where you can join it and see the owners and their tier displayed on Mainland groups -- the system is different for islands where the owner pays for the entire island to LL, not by amount tiered, but you can still look for "online" status. Many companies will have offices where they display the owners and officers online on boards you can click and IM.

You shouldn't pay in advance more than a month or even a week, starting out. Most rentals go by the week. Some have discounts for a month or more. But many rental boxes are set up not even to take more than a month.

Most of all, you should see if a rental is refundable, for a small early cancelation fee. Cancelation fees have to be charged or too many people would just flit from rental to rental and never pay. Ravenglass Rentals has refundable rentals and there are others.

You should also make sure there is a lease, which on Mainland rentals is in the form of a notecard, not a "covenant" in the land, and on private islands, is right in the land usually. 

You should also make sure you have an ability to count your prims, as the single greatest reason for being evicted, in some cases without warning, is going over your prim limit. On group land, where it is harder to track your own prims without a special prim counter, even watching the "about land" menu, this is easy to do, so plan for it.

Yes, it is true, that disputes concerning rentals and sales are resident-to-resident disputes and LL will not get involved. Yet the proliferation of rentals with many customers indicates that it is not the scary minefield imagined from a few notorious stories.

Mainland rentals are cheaper than private island rentals because the land is cheaper to buy and maintain tier on than island land which costs more. But because islands offer more controls especially given that the surrounding view is Linden sea (while not navigable unless the owner puts out multiple connected islands), the big island companies offer more potential security even if higher costs or more rules than Mainland, which is cheaper and often has less rules as to what you yourself can place in your rental.

Yet the island owner faces a challenge staying afloat as he has to pay the entire tier for that island, even if he has "sold" or enabled individual residents to buy parcels and then pay him tier monthly.  He can't just abandon or sell an individual parcel and keep the rest of the sim or sims he owns.

That's how you get a situation where someone who has "bought" a parcel and pays tier to a scripted device can suddenly find themselves with all their possessions in Lost & Found and no island visible -- the entire island has been seized. This is a rare occurrence but obviously hugely annoying and damaging. With Mainland, you buy land outright and pay LL directly for tier, or if you rent from a Mainland owner, you pay a scripted device and can see the status of the land on the "about land" menu. Obviously if you wake up and see "abandoned" on that status, you will not have long before LL itself will come and clear the land of all its builds, so you will need to get out of that situation. This can take days or rarely weeks but still is inevitable.

My real-life rental has faced more disasters from Hurricane Sandy and other hurricanes, fires, doormen strikes, and COVID than my SL rentals have ever faced in 18 years. 

 

Edited August 12, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Claireschen Hesten]

My advice would be never pay more in advanced that you are willing to lose if things go títs up. Based on what i have witnessed on mainland if the land owner does disappear off the face of the grid and stops paying tier you won't log in one day to find the land gone and at best everything returned to you, ban lines will go up and you have time to rescue your objects before the parcel is cleared. which i find reassuring as a mainland renter. I've rented the same parcel for more than 13 years from "Rent Mainland". If you do go mainland i would say it's preferable to be on group owned land as that means you can be given use of the "about land" options a land owner would have

[Benson Gravois]

54 minutes ago, Claireschen Hesten said:

My advice would be never pay more in advanced that you are willing to lose if things go títs up. Based on what i have witnessed on mainland if the land owner does disappear off the face of the grid and stops paying tier you won't log in one day to find the land gone and at best everything returned to you, ban lines will go up and you have time to rescue your objects before the parcel is cleared. which i find reassuring as a mainland renter. I've rented the same parcel for more than 13 years from "Rent Mainland". If you do go mainland i would say it's preferable to be on group owned land as that means you can be given use of the "about land" options a land owner would have

I would love to rent on mainland. Especially along a Linden road. Do you have any ideas of available rental land on linden roads? 

[Sid Nagy]

There are no such complete and up to date lists Benson.
Finding the right spot is a lot of work and means a lot of footwork along the roads of the mainland continents.
Some landlords have their own websites, some advertise on the marketplace, some have a central rental office with landmarks to the available parcels, some only have rental boxes on their mainland parcels.

Edited August 12, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Claireschen Hesten]

53 minutes ago, Benson Gravois said:

I would love to rent on mainland. Especially along a Linden road. Do you have any ideas of available rental land on linden roads? 

I happened to come across a 2048sqm roadside parcel just now in Changmi (neighbouring region to my home region) offered by Life properties for L$825/wk this company have been in the rental game a long time and have lots of rentals all over mainland.

MarkLand has a number of plots available along Route 9 (Kyung) also in Jeogeot. Anyone offering land for rent will have at least an obvious rent box often there will be additional info objects right close to the roadside.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

8 hours ago, Benson Gravois said:

how do you protect yourself from things like this?

Rent directly from Linden Lab themselves.

[Quistess Alpha]

1 hour ago, Benson Gravois said:

I would love to rent on mainland. Especially along a Linden road. Do you have any ideas of available rental land on linden roads? 

Many if not most roadside parcels set to sale are also available for rent, and it's not hard to find parcels for sale via the in-world map window.