new linden homes

[Tenly]

my favorite home is one you cant get when you sign up to be a premium member, but you can get it free in a box on one of the islands. The BSD Archer house. but there isnt a house even remotely like it in the premium batch of offerings. Can we hope to have a home like this? simple elegant, low prims, it simply works and doesnt feel like a shoebox like most of the premium homes do.

If it possible as a premium user to find a bit of land to put this house on, and not have to pay additional fees? I know Ive looked, but most people offering land dont state how many prims the land is and when they do, its next to nothing.

anyway, it would be nice if AL took some imput from its population. The premium houses are just unattractive and with the small prim allotted its very difficult to make one space really unique, let alone several floors.

How about a smaller size home, but higher prim alottement? dunno, just asking questions. Id say v1 round of houses, cool idea, but lets get some variety, because whats there, isnt variety enough.

me, I still want that BSD archer house next to the shore somewhere.

and why cant I buy a homestead? gosh. most of the people I know would love a homestead as opposed to an entire sim.

[Qie Niangao]

Interesting.  I don't think I've heard anything good said about that Archer house since 2007.  

Anyway, that's the whole point of Linden Homes: to provide an early, easy introduction to land ownership -- not to cater to everybody's individual taste in homes.  That's why there are whole continents of Mainland and tens of thousands of estate sims.  As a premium member, you'll likely be more interested in Mainland, and yes: you can dump any Linden Home parcel and purchase a Mainland parcel (up to 512 sq.m. -- that's generally 117 prims) without incurring any additional monthly tier.  

Note that, unlike Linden Homes, on regular parcels, the land impact of your house must come out of the parcel prims; this is why Linden Homes have proven to be such a dismal failure at graduating new landowners out to the rest of the grid. On the other hand, as you noticed, the lack of variety in Linden Homes does eventually encourage folks to graduate.

There are some special area of Mainland where you can get double prims -- so a 512sq.m. parcel could support 234 instead of 117 prims -- but such land is generally very expensive to purchase.

It's also possible to use group land ownership to hold up to 560 sq.m. within the premium bonus, without paying additional tier.

Or, you could drop out of premium and switch to renting from an Estate.  There is a great (perhaps bewildering?) variety of prices, primcounts, and parcel sizes available from different Estates.

---

and why cant I buy a homestead? gosh. most of the people I know would love a homestead as opposed to an entire sim.

---

That's a much bigger topic.  The mistake, I think, is the assumption that Homesteads would have to be offered to their current customers (owners of at least one full-primmed Estate sim) at the same monthly fee as to the rest of us.  There's some price difference at which standalone Homestead ownership would not much hurt existing Estate customers, but would draw new people to buy Homesteads.  (On the other hand, those new Homestead owners would have to come from somewhere, so if they're not Estate renters, they're mostly going to be Mainland owners -- and that's already a tough market.)