If I decided to purchase oceanside property knowing that 40%

[Porpotones]

oi

 

[Porpotones]

oi

 

[Porpotones]

sim

[Rolig Loon]

Yes, and you can also build under the water.

[Lindal Kidd]

Many people buy "waterland", land that is entirely underwater.  There are lots of things you can do with land that has water on top of it.

1.  Build your own island made out of prims

2.  Build an underwater home.  One of the best I've ever seen looked like a sunken cabin cruiser from the outside but was a comfortable apartment on the inside.

3.  Put a skybox in the air above your land and live up there.

4.  Get a large live-aboard yacht and moor it on your piece of water.

You can also raise more of the land up, using the terraforming tools.  Your use of these may be more or less restricted by the estate owner, if you are on a private estate -- consult with them if necessary.  On Mainland, terraforming is limited to +/- 4 meters from the contours when Linden Lab originally created the land.  So you may or may not be able to do all that you would like.  For more information, see my blog post Digging In the Digital Dirt

[Thaumata Strangelove]

There's no such thing as gravity in SL - you can build on the water, sure!  As long as your land covenant doesn't forbid it for some reason, you can go right ahead!

[Rolig Loon]

Ummm.. Not true. Physical objects respond very nicely to gravity, and so do avatars. That's why we stay on the ground when we walk. You're probably thinking of non-physical objects, which stay where you put them.