Newbie questions on buying mainland

[Rohan Dockal]

I'm not a newbie to SL, but I am new to buying land. After 12 years or renting land, I think I might as well buy it instead. Preferably a plot between a quarter and a half region, somewhere along the Blake Sea.

So tell me if I got this straight. 

I find the land for sale, I purchase it for whatever amount, but then I still have to pay monthly fees to LL, right? Per their site, probably between $67-112 per month. Are there any other fees involved? Are the fees the same no matter where on the mainland it is? Are there zoning restrictions? Like if it's my land I can use it for commercial or residential, right? 

If I stop paying the fees, then I assume it becomes abandoned land available to anyone to buy? And if so - how late do the fees have to be? One day late? Or is there some grace period before it officially becomes abandoned? 

Also, since I have a free Linden home that I never claimed and never used, can that 1024m allowance go toward reducing my fees? 

[MoiraKathleen]

Once you purchase a mainland parcel, the only on-going monthly charge is the tier fee. 

It's automatically charged each month against your payment method, so your payment won't be late unless you removed your payment method or there was some type of issue with your payment method.

There aren't any zoning restrictions on mainland - you can do what you please with the land (as long as you stay within the TOS, of course).

If you have an unused LH, the free 1024 wouldn't necessarily reduce your monthly tier at the 1/4 or 1/2 region levels, but it would let you add an additional 1024 sqm to your holdings without moving you up to the next tier level.  For example, you could own 17,408 sqm meters for the tier cost of 1/4 region. 

[Persephone Emerald]

Depending on how much land you want, it might be cheaper to create a land group with a couple Premium Plus accounts and one Basic account . Each Premium Plus account would get 2048  meters, plus a considerable bonus & stipend. When you buy mainland for a group, you also get a 10% bonus on how much land you can have without paying extra for it.

The Basic alt is insurance in case your others get locked out for any reason, such as payment problems. Give all your alts full co-ownership of your land group & full permissions over each others stuff.

There is no grace period for late fees. Fees would be automatically deducted from your pay source (eg. bank or PayPal). You would also have to sell or abandon your land before you could downgrade to Basic. You would also need to abandon your Linden Home before you could use that 1024 m toward the land you want to buy.

Edited August 26, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[MoiraKathleen]

To follow up on the group bonus for land that Persephone mentioned above, it really is worth considering at the amounts of land you are considering.  If you create a group and have tier donated to it, you get a 10% bonus in the amount of land you can own without an increase in tier level.   For example, if you donated 17,408 sqm to your land group (1/4 region + 1024 free tier), you would be able to own an additional 1728 sqm* of land and still pay at the 1/4 region tier level.

You could create a group with your premium account as the owner and a basic account alt as a member - a minimum of 2 members are needed to keep a group alive, but they don't all need to be premium accounts. 

It's been a long day - hopefully I've got all the calculations correct.

 

* Even though 10% of 17,408 is 1740, the smallest increment of land is 16 sqm, so I think 1728 is the largest amount of full 16 sqm's you could get out of 1740.

[Qie Niangao]

You may want to spend some quality time with a spreadsheet to get the very best deal, if that's important to you. This to juggle the "bonus" tier of multiple Premium or Premium-Plus accounts, plus however much additional monthly tier, all with 10% bonus for group-owned land.

I expect such a spreadsheet would find multiple non-Plus Premium accounts (annual) would be the most cost-effective way to fund that much group-owned Mainland, but there may be other benefits of Plus to make it worthwhile for one (or maybe more) of those subscriptions.

Once upon a time, there was something called "Concierge Support" that kicked in for accounts paying half-region tier; I don't know if that even still exists, or if it does, how it compares to the special benefits of Premium Plus. (It only ever covered support stuff, so if you need cheap uploads, etc., Concierge would be no substitute for Plus.)

[diamond Marchant]

4 hours ago, Rohan Dockal said:

a quarter and a half region, somewhere along the Blake Sea

If you can find that it would be a very expensive parcel. Linden Lab charges (membership+tier) the least (per sqm) for 1024 sqm ownership but rapidly jacks up the price for the additonal sqm until you reach 1/4 reqion then it starts to decline. Persephone describes a common tactic for reducing fees... premium stacking. or using alts and multiple accounts to exploit the cheap entry level pricing. Bottom line, do the math for the number of sqm you wind up with to make sure you are not overpaying tier. Linden Lab makes it very difficult for non-spreadsheeters to figure out how to structure tier.

But initially, buying the land in your desired location is going to dominate the economics.

Also, if you don't care about the Premium Plus "vegas perks" like picking a Linden Home or uploading a huge number of textures, regular Premium is almost always cheaper.

Also (again), the fairest way to compare pricing is to subtract off stipend (what LL pays you per week)  because you can convert this back into dollars and use it to make future tier payments.

Yes... it's complicated.

Edited August 27, 2022 by diamond Marchant

[belindacarson]

7 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Depending on how much land you want, it might be cheaper to create a land group with a couple Premium Plus accounts and one Basic account . Each Premium Plus account would get 2048  meters, plus a considerable bonus & stipend. When you buy mainland for a group, you also get a 10% bonus on how much land you can have without paying extra for it.

The Basic alt is insurance in case your others get locked out for any reason, such as payment problems. Give all your alts full co-ownership of your land group & full permissions over each others stuff.

There is no grace period for late fees. Fees would be automatically deducted from your pay source (eg. bank or PayPal). You would also have to sell or abandon your land before you could downgrade to Basic. You would also need to abandon your Linden Home before you could use that 1024 m toward the land you want to buy.

Not entirely correct.

 

There is a small grace period if they can't collect your fees that month, I think it was 7 days (I could be wrong on the grace period time) but they don't lock your account/claim land until 30 days after.

 

Keyboard warrior alert - this came up at some of the user group meetings once, before you start spamming disagreeing.

 

Rohan - please don't fall for the extortionate prices that some land sells for.  Do your homework and look for abandoned land, and ask support to sell you it for 1l$ a metre.

 

As some said above, make a group to deed it too, and you'll get 10% extra land.

[Persephone Emerald]

10 hours ago, belindacarson said:

Not entirely correct.

 

There is a small grace period if they can't collect your fees that month, I think it was 7 days (I could be wrong on the grace period time) but they don't lock your account/claim land until 30 days after.

 

Keyboard warrior alert - this came up at some of the user group meetings once, before you start spamming disagreeing.

 

Rohan - please don't fall for the extortionate prices that some land sells for.  Do your homework and look for abandoned land, and ask support to sell you it for 1l$ a metre.

 

As some said above, make a group to deed it too, and you'll get 10% extra land.

Look for regions with abandoned land. Buy a parcel you can afford, on water, etc. Then file a support ticket for more abandoned land in the same region. LL will usually sell abandoned land @ $L 1/ m, unless they plan to auction it off. 

[Katherine Heartsong]

1/4 or a 1/2 sim along Blake? Wow, will you marry me?

I've seen parcels like those for sale listed for upwards of one MILLION Lindens.

At roughly 250L/$1 that translates to outlaying US$4,000+ for virtual land.

Wow.

[Quistess Alpha]

5 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Buy a parcel you can afford, on water, etc. Then file a support ticket for more abandoned land in the same region. LL will usually sell abandoned land @ $L 1/ m, unless they plan to auction it off. 

IIRC LL will even sell you abandoned land if you don't own a parcel nearby now.

[Rohan Dockal]

20 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

1/4 or a 1/2 sim along Blake? Wow, will you marry me?

I've seen parcels like those for sale listed for upwards of one MILLION Lindens.

At roughly 250L/$1 that translates to outlaying US$4,000+ for virtual land.

Wow.

For the past 5 years, I've already been renting a plot of land that's something over 1/4 sim along the Blake sea for around 28,000L, roughly $105 month, so over $1200 per year. I can handle that fine, but it's still quite a bit to spend when I'm using it for purely personal reasons and not commercial ones. If instead I was just paying fees to LL, I would save at least $30 a month. 
 
Yes, I would have to outlay a lot of cash to buy the land, but theoretically I could sell it for at least that much when I'm done with it. 

[Katherine Heartsong]

Thanks for taking the time to elaborate!