Come and get your Homesteads (P+ only, of course)

[LittleMe Jewell]

If you are Premium Plus and have been dying to get your own Homestead without buying a full Region first, they are now available.  How many will jump at this chance?

 

[Elora Lunasea]

Me me me me me me me!

Ghosty has been back inworld for a while, so would be nice to finally have a place we can control ourselves.

[Nika Talaj]

Not me; although I could definitely see SHARING a Homestead region with a trusted other person.  (My partner and I did that in the past).  

It's important to realize that there is no change in Homestead pricing, which I believe is $149 to purchase/setup, and $109 monthly tier.  Plus the obligation of having to maintain your PP membership for the duration of your Homestead rental.  Of course, you also get the other PP benefits, including 2048 tier.  Am I correct in assuming that there is no way to apply that 2048 to your Homestead tier?

[LittleMe Jewell]

9 minutes ago, Nika Talaj said:

  Am I correct in assuming that there is no way to apply that 2048 to your Homestead tier?

Correct

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

Not me! It's too big and still too expensive. I had a full region last summer and gave it up after just a few months. Even though this would cost less (ignoring the fact that I'd have to get a P+ account), I much prefer smaller spaces.  

Edited November 1, 2022 by Sylvia Tamalyn

[Gabriele Graves]

Just joined the ranks of the people with more money than sense, upgraded to P+ and put in my order for a Homestead.

[Elora Lunasea]

1 hour ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Just joined the ranks of the people with more money than sense, upgraded to P+ and put in my order for a Homestead.

This me too - went P+ when it came out 😁 

 

[Cougar Sangria]

I've leased a full region for a few years, then upped it to a 30K region about 4 years ago.  I love digging in pixel dirt so this is my playground and classroom of sorts.  If(and it's a big if), I ever decide to downgrade to a homestead I might consider getting one.  Then again I can lease one for essentially the same amount and pay in lindens.  Oh, and my tier never increases as long as I am a tenant.  Yeah.  I will stay where I am at.

[Gabriele Graves]

I would never rent an island from anyone though.  I only want to have to deal with LL for land so this at least gives people like me a way of owning an island at a much reduced cost.  Some of us have been hoping for this for years.  I wouldn't expect it to tick everyone's boxes but for me P+ with the Homestead option turned P+ from something to which I would never subscribe into something that makes it worthwhile.  Kudos to LL for that.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Gabriele Graves

[Cackle Amore]

Nice that they finally made it an option to get a homestead without needing to go through a fullsim,.

Though atfirst did kiund of feel lousy they locked it away behind premium plus, but after lookin over the sim costs again, you'll basically be paying the set up fee as your monthly cost since it's 140 to buy a homestead, then 110 for the monthly, and then 30 for a month of p+.

Still kind of lousy you have to pay a premium for it [ba da tish] but not quite as bad as my initial gut reaction felt about it.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Cackle Amore

[Paul Hexem]

This is a nothing burger. The cost is still exactly the same, despite already paying the insanely high price of Premium Plus. There's almost no benefit whatsoever.

If the 2048 counted towards it or there was some kind of discount, this would be an announcement. Without that, this is just Linden Lab being typically shortsighted and greedy.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Paul Hexem

[Gabriele Graves]

The cost of P+ however is much, much less than the cost of a full private island though.  These are the only two routes to getting a Homestead directly from LL, one costs a lot more than the other so the is benefit there otherwise I wouldn't have signed up.  YMMV of course.

[Istelathis]

It is tempting to subscribe to P+ and get a homestead, but I only find myself really invested in SL for a few months at a time.  Essentially, for my style of play it would become a monthly obligation where I would have to work more hours in RL to afford something I would not use for months at a time, and that is primarily what holds back my impulsive desire to just do it.  I do think that it is a great option for a lot of people though, and can understand the desire not to rent as you never know if all of the work you have invested might at some time vanish. 

For me, a regular premium membership works great - and when I want to have more than 1024 I can get 1/4 sim skybox relatively inexpensively and setup  a multiscene rezbox that I can save my scenes to.  Leaving no real obligation thus, less time invested in my RL working for something I may not be using and instead be focused on saving up for a sweet sweet gaming PC 🥰🙃

[Alwin Alcott]

9 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

How many will jump at this chance?

not me, rental is much really múch, cheaper.
no VAT's, no P+, no fees

[Elena Blossom]

So they only advantage is that you don't need to own a full region first?

Well, considering the initial P+ subscription fee, this doesn't look like a benefit to me...

[Stephanie Misfit]

I was premium plus already and I am thinking about it, and selling off all but 2048m of my mainland in preparation in case I do make the decision to do it. It will take a while for all my land to sell of course, and I don't just want to abandon waterfront. Half of it has sold. It gives me time to think about what I want to do at least. A homestead sure would be fun and I have always wanted one. I see people complaining about how the homestead is not free (!!) but honestly, it is just so great that they are offering what people have been asking for for so long, a way to own a homestead without needing to own a full region. Renting has advantages for some people, as Alwin pointed out, but some people really want to own and some of us are P+ already for the other perks, or were considering it and this just makes it all the more worthwhile.

[Gabriele Graves]

1 hour ago, Elena Core said:

So they only advantage is that you don't need to own a full region first?

Well, considering the initial P+ subscription fee, this doesn't look like a benefit to me...

The benefit is the significantly lowering the cost of ownership.  The alternative if you don't want to rent is to own a full private island and then add the homestead costs on top.  That comes to a significant amount more than going the P+ route.

[Elena Blossom]

58 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

The benefit is the significantly lowering the cost of ownership.  The alternative if you don't want to rent is to own a full private island and then add the homestead costs on top.  That comes to a significant amount more than going the P+ route.

Yes, but you are paying almost 300€ to lower that cost.

If it works for others, great! But to me, the numbers don't work 

 

[Gabriele Graves]

2 hours ago, Elena Core said:

Yes, but you are paying almost 300€ to lower that cost.

If it works for others, great! But to me, the numbers don't work 

 

1. Cost of full private island + Homestead = USD 349 Full Private Island Setup + USD 229/Month Full Private Island Fees + USD 149 Homestead Setup + USD 109/Month Homestead Fees = USD 4554 for first year and USD 4056/year after that.
2. Cost of P+ Membership + Homestead = USD 249/year + USD 149 Homestead Setup + USD 109/Month Homestead Fees = USD 1706 for first and USD 1308/year after that.

Clearly the costs of 2. are lower than the costs for 1. if you want a Homestead regardless of the fact you are paying for P+

Edited November 2, 2022 by Gabriele Graves
Fixed math

[Gabriele Graves]

Even to take just a full private island instead of the P+ Homestead option would be:

Cost of full private island = USD 349 Full Private Island Setup + USD 229/Month Full Private Island Fees = USD 3097 for first year and USD 2748/year after that.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Gabriele Graves
Fixed math

[Qie Niangao]

22 minutes ago, Elena Core said:

Yes, but you are paying almost 300€ to lower that cost.

If it works for others, great! But to me, the numbers don't work 

This came up in another thread, and it's all a question of how important it is to own that Homestead (paying directly to Linden Lab) vs renting it from an Estate. For the end user, there are advantages to ownership, but it can be significantly less expensive to rent instead (especially with VAT, if I understand correctly).

(I'm not promoting one way or another, I'm just anticipating Estate owners complaining about this new offer "competing" with them, which I don't think is a very compelling argument. If people are willing to pay this much extra to own their own Homestead, Estates might want to look at why.)

[Gabriele Graves]

I'm lucky that in my country while we have GST (simillar to VAT), LL does not charge us GST on LL purchases so far.

[Gabriele Graves]

12 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

If people are willing to pay this much extra to own their own Homestead, Estates might want to look at why.)

Let's not forget that the P+ with Homestead option you don't just get the Homestead and that is it.  You also get the 2048 tier along with all the other P+ things.  True that without the Homestead option it wouldn't have represented good value to me but I do want the Homestead and those other things are still very desirable to me.

Even if I could have just rolled on up and paid for just the Homestead on its own without P+ on top, I would still have retained my Premium anyway due to wanting the priority access to events, the extra groups, the stipend, the extra animesh attachment and the tier for my existing mainland which I will be keeping.

So they got USD 150/year extra from me over that option.  So yeah not as low cost as any of us would have preferred but all in all the price point definitely represents good value to me.

[Qie Niangao]

31 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

So they got USD 150/year extra from me over that option.  So yeah not as low cost as any of us would have preferred but all in all the price point definitely represents good value to me.

I'd seriously consider it, too, if I weren't so attached to all this Mainland I've accumulated. In fact though, once I ran the numbers, I briefly considered renting an Estate Homestead for myself, something that never before crossed my mind. Same "Mainland inertia" problem though. I'm maybe less motivated to own a Plus Homestead because there's not much else in Plus of value to me over Premium; I might feel differently if I did a lot of uploading for example.

[Gabriele Graves]

3 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'd seriously consider it, too, if I weren't so attached to all this Mainland I've accumulated. In fact though, once I ran the numbers, I briefly considered renting an Estate Homestead for myself, something that never before crossed my mind. Same "Mainland inertia" problem though. I'm maybe less motivated to own a Plus Homestead because there's not much else in Plus of value to me over Premium; I might feel differently if I did a lot of uploading for example.

At least now there are more options and PI ownership is more accessible than it has ever been before.  If ever you feel different it will probably still be an option.