How do I get into the buying and selling of land please help

[Jaidyn Piers]

Hello I recently been trying to find a easy way to make a few bucks then i thought why not start buying and selling land i hurd others have done this in the past and has maid pretty good money doing so but my ? is how do i start in the buying and selling of land business 

 

please help me any tips or help you can give me please reply with your help and tips 

[Scout Schwager]

IMHO, any talk of "land values" and "Linden Market Rates" and such, are merely Role Play, as are most things in SL. People talking of earing money in SL are in RP. Like the escorts who say they make "1,000L per hour" (maybe they work for 30 min every week, or month!)

You can earn more per hour working at McDonalds, and its in US Dollars. I know dollars aren't worth much, but you can buy tangible things with them.

And keep in mind Linden Lab (LL) can make as much 'land' available as they care to. Its not in their interest to make things more expensive for users by artificially creating a shortage of..  'land' (server space).

Now, that might change, if say, LL were to encounter hard times, and actually begin shutting down servers. But then the number of users might be dropping as well, no?

[Jaidyn Piers]

this does not help me at all I asked for tips from people who are all ready in the business to buy and sell of land any help with that 

[Peewee Musytari]

@ Scout .. That is a pretty negative view of SL you have there lol...I hate to burst your bubble, but plenty of people make very good RL livings from SL, you have obviously met the wrong people.

 

@ Jaidyn, having said that, the real estate buisness is a very hard one to make money at the moment. You are correct that others have made money at it "in the past", personally I did very well land dealing when land was actually worth something, but you could sell a 512 for over L$10,000 back then, whereas now you are talking more like L$500. So the margin between what you buy & sell for is so much smaller now, that you need to be dealing in large amounts of land to see any real profit & that means having a high tier level  & risking paying a lot of tier fees if your stock doesn`t sell fast enough to cover them.  The other downside to cheap land is that for smaller size plots, the owners have very little money invested in them & quite often just abandon them rather then even bothering trying to resell.

If I was going to give you a tip on where to start, it would be to look at specialising in double prim land as it is the only category that is limited in quantity & has any real value, so you would have more potential for making a profit without needing to own excessive amounts.

[Randall Ahren]

It's like poker, simple but hard. Buy low and sell high. Start with mainland. Do a search for mainland parcels for sell in your SL viewer. I recommend using a V1 type because the search seems easier to use. I like Singularity, but you can use whatever. Look for a parcel that you think is underpriced, buy it, and set it for sell for a higher price. 

[Ceera Murakami]

Honestly? You totally missed the boat, by about 4 to 5 years. Investing in land in SL has never been "an easy way to make a few bucks", and these days, it's harder than hell to make any profit at all in that game.

Four or five years ago, land prices in SL were high enough that there was a good profit margin to be had by investing in sims, cutting them into parcels, and reselling those parcels, or by finding low-priced land and quickly re-selling it at a higher price (land flipping). Back then, it wasn't all that unusual for a decent parcel to go for L$30, L$50 or even L$100 or more per square meter. So it wasn't too hard to buy some land at L$30 per square meter, and resell it to someone else days or even hours later for L$40 per square meter.

As an example, you could, back then, buy a sim for $1,500 USD.  $1500 * 250 L$ per USD / 65536 M2 in a sim = L$5.7 per M2, so buy a sim, slice it into parcels, sell at L$40 per M2, and you had a tidy profit. IF you could sell it all, before you paid another $195 USD a month for owning that land.

There was still a lot of risk involved, and to make any decent profits you had to sink a fair amount of real cash into the initial investments, and you risked losing all of that if the land market tanked.

And the land market DID tank, several years ago.

Land in SL now goes for a fraction of an L$ per square meter. You would have to risk 50 to 100 times as much of your own money to make the same profit margin as was possible 5 years back.

Do the same math now. $1000 to buy a sim (price went down), $300 a month to own it (price went up).

$1000 * 250 / 65536 = 3.8 L$ per square meter. But land is selling for about 0.4 L$ per square meter! And it will cost you $300 per month to keep owning it. No profit there, is there? So you have to spend more time and money to make the land more desirable than the avarage parcel, in hopes of earning more than L$3.8 per square meter when you sell it.

Or you have to scrounge for people selling their sims at fire-sale rates, because they can't afford the $300 USD a month to own them, so that might bring the purchase price down from $1000 USD for a new sim to maybe $500 or $300, plus $150 or so in transfer fees. Oh, but if YOU can buy those sims at fire sale rates, so can anyone you're hoping to sell land to. oops! What profits?

Or you can use bot programs to obtain land at stupidly low prices, like when someone sets the land to L$0 per M2 to transfer it to a friend, and your bot steals it from them and marks it up to L$0.5 per M2, and resells it to someone else before they can even figure out why their land sale failed, and some stranger owns the land they paid good money for. Profitable, but unethical as armed robbery.

For someone to enter the "buy and sell land for profit" arena now, it's a serious uphill battle. The survivors of the land sales wars have scripted bots that can locate and purchase and re-sell land before a newbie even can find out it's for sale. The big land barons that own hundreds of sims get price breaks on whole sim purchases that allow them to undercut anything a small-scale operator could hope to achieve. Can you seriously compete against someone whose overhead costs are 2/3 of what yours are? They can rent land at prices that wouldn't even cover your monthly tier, let alone pay back the investment to obtain the land, but THEY will be making a profit, because LL cuts them a sweetheart deal on volume purchases of land. A small profit, compared to years ago, but a heck of a lot more than you can hope to earn, unless you have several hundreds of thousands of dollars of real money that you're willing to risk on an unstable land marlet that is still decliing.

Seriously, for the time and effort spent, any minimum-wage real-world job in any nation suficiently developed to have Internet access will pay you better profits for the time spend then you are lilkey to earn in SL in the land market. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying, or a fool.

[Knowl Paine]

You have several options. You can work for one of the larger land dealers, that might be a quick way to learn more and it could be profitable if you can attract Customers (by being nice).

If you want to learn as you go and jump right in, I would take a small jump first. Premium memberships allows for use of 512m of Tier. Abandoned Land can be purchased for 1L$ per meter. Using the Inworld Map you want to locate prospective parcels. The Map can be a lag monster, deselect all show features except for Land For Sale, don't zoom out too far. When you find a plot or parcel that fits with your budget and allowed Tier, toggle show Residents to make sure the Region is not over-populated. Look on the map for favorable or unfavorable structures. Property adjacent to Protected Linden land is desired by some Residents because the space offers a buffer. Look for waterfront land, roadside land (without heavy traffic), land next to empty Regions. Only visit a Region after checking some of the basics so that you don't waste time.

When you visit highlight show land owners and show property lines. After a short survey increase your draw distance to have a look around at adjacent land. If you like the land, look for other land near you that is for sale and the price, CMA comparative market analysis. Attempt to determine how long the land has been for sale. Consider an appropriate resale price.

When you know how much Tier you want to support, add a message to your Profile stating that you buy Land, the plot sizes your interested in, the Price you pay per meter (0.30L$?? your choice) and a method of contact.   

You can place classified AD Inworld, start a Land buying Group, join an existing Group. hmm.....

I recently saw a nice roadside plot 512 square meters for 512L$, I had the extra tier and 512L, I purchased it, landscaped it with trees ect. Listed it for 1,024L$ and it sold in 3 days. I've done that about 10 x's. I use the land as a sandboxe until it's sold. It's a win win :smileyhappy:  

[Anita61 Anatine]

There's no easy way to make money in SL. The few people who realy make mony devote a lot of time and perceveirance in what they do. Real estate in SL is slow if you see how much land is available for sale at the moment.

[Ceera Murakami]

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Knowl Paine wrote: I recently saw a nice roadside plot 512 square meters for 512L$, I had the extra tier and 512L, I purchased it, landscaped it with trees ect. Listed it for 1,024L$ and it sold in 3 days. I've done that about 10 x's. I use the land as a sandboxe until it's sold. It's a win win :smileyhappy:  

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So, you managed to make about a $2 USD profit, ten times. And you also paid $79 USD for the Premium Membership that allowed you to do that. So, how much profit did you really make?

[Knowl Paine]

It is just an example of how to buy and sell land.

If a Resident could turn over 1 plot every 3 days for one year, a Resident could do this about 120x's a year

$2 x 120 = $240

[Ceera Murakami]

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Knowl Paine wrote:

It is just an example of how to buy and sell land.

If a Resident could turn over 1 plot every 3 days for one year, a Resident could do this about 120x's a year

$2 x 120 = $240

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And if they spent the same amount of time and effort outside of SL, working a minimum wage job, or even collecting cans and bottles out of trash cans and selling the scrap aluminum and glass at a recycling center, they could earn far more in a week than that land plan would earn in a year. The profit margin for land is pathetic now.

[Knowl Paine]

Both of your statements are correct.

I would enjoy sharing my insights and opinions about how and why SL is experiencing effects as you have mentioned. Should you desire to create a new thread to discuss and explore the how's, why's and possible remedies for the SL land market, I would participate.

[Randall Ahren]

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Ceera Murakami wrote:

So, you managed to make about a $2 USD profit, ten times. And you also paid $79 USD for the Premium Membership that allowed you to do that. So, how much profit did you really make?

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Premium membership is $72, not $79. Also shouldn't you account for the L$300/week stipend + L$1000 bonus + L$250 thank you for signing up for premium membership? Over the course of the year, that adds to L$16,850. You should be able to cash that out for L$250/USD or better at current exchange rates for 67.40 USD. Subtracting the one USD paypal fee, leaves you with 66.40 USD returned to you.

Subtracting 66.40 from $72, results in a total annual cost of 5.60 USD, on which Knowl Paine made two usd ten times, i.e., 20 USD. So his profit was $20 less the $5.60 cost, or $14.50. I suppose the cap rate (Return on Invested Capital) would be $86.40/$72 or about 120%. Specifically, you invest $72. By the end of a year you have $86.40 returned to you, which is the $20 from land buysing/selling + the $67.40 from L$ from LL, less the one dollar paypal fee to get it to your paypal account.

Just need to scale it up with some scripted land bots.

[Rabid Cheetah]

Everyone's brought up some very good points.  The time investment vuersus profit margin is indeed quite low at the moment.

 

So why would anyone get into this?

 

Well, I can think of two reasons.  The first would be if you really love the game, enjoy slowly exploring to find new places (as opposed to the focus on reducing the time spent searching with the suggestions of otheres, above), have a creative enough imagination that you can envision a given parcel with the improvements you're going to make, have the disposible income to blow on a hobby, and an understanding that you are doing this all for fun -- Any money that you do happen to make is just icing on the cake.  You would then want to follow the advice above, plus think about ways to improve the land if you're going to be doing rentals (like buying the land around your rental area so that you control the view and can offer more prims).

 

The other reason I can think of would be to "buy low/sell high".  With land prices at a record low, this is the time to buy up everything you can get your hands on...IF (and that'sa mighty big "if") you think that at some point the prices will go back up.  Will they?  That's open to debate.  Part of what's tanked the market are the things Linden has done vis-â-vis abandoned land, as mentioned by the folks above.  But the other thing that's had an effect on what folks are willing to pay for the more juicy areas (such as Bay City) is the RL economy:  There's less folks with money to blow on, as a non-SL friend of mine points out, "wait, they're paying all this money for PRETEND land?!?!"

 

If you feel that once the RL economy improves, people will again spend more money on buying land, the way they used to, then prices will rise, and you'd be in a nice spot financially if you are holding a ton of land.  This is a huge risk, though, as the $L1/M2 abandoned land thingy may have tanked the market permanently.  Other things to consider are whether you feel folks will begin to spend again, or will they have a new habit of saving money and not spending it on, well, "PRETEND land?!?!"  And even prices do rise, will they ever be at the levels they were at when SL was a new thing and everyone wanted a piece of the action?  Or were land prices inflated to begin with, and despite the economy or the abandoned land thing, their would have been a market correction ANYHOW?

 

There's no right answer to that.  No one can predict the future.  It's all just matters of opinion.  The main problem is that, just like RL, if you invest in SL real estate and plan to hold on to stuff for a few years, you're going to be paying "property tax" (tier) through the nose.  Each person would need to decide on their own what they think the market will do, and act upon that feeling.

 

IMHO I'd reccomend against bying up everything in sight, unless you can afford it and have a fantasy of owning lots and lots of land.  Yes, some of us DO have a land fetish lol

 

"My name's Rabid Cheetah, and I'm a landaholic..."

 

"HI RABID!"

 

"It all started when I saw this great place by a lake, and..."  :womanvery-happy:

[Melita Magic]

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Jaidyn Piers wrote:

Hello I recently been trying to find a easy way to make a few bucks then i thought why not start buying and selling land i hurd others have done this in the past and has maid pretty good money doing so but my ? is how do i start in the buying and selling of land business 

 

please help me any tips or help you can give me please reply with your help and tips 

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Yes. You can buy both parcels I currently have for sale. That is an excellent way into the land business.

Just kidding.

Right now land is a waiting game. Land barons are paying .3 or .4 per meter for land, and hoping to flip it for just under a single Linden dollar per meter.

I tried finding my own parcels for sale in search and could not - they are hidden by eleventy million rental ads. (I think those listings should be separated but that's another topic.) In other words, it's a buyer's market. Are you sure you want in?

[Thex Lecker]

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Ceera Murakami wrote:

Seriously, for the time and effort spent, any minimum-wage real-world job in any nation suficiently developed to have Internet access will pay you better profits for the time spend then you are lilkey to earn in SL in the land market.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying, or a fool.

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I make more than minimum wage in the SL land market (and in Michigan the minimum wage is $7.40 an hour). Since I'm not a liar, I guess I'm a fool!  :matte-motes-wink-tongue: