Problem with the land ownership model is it's outdated and too exspensive. Why would anyone pay to 'live' on the mainland, it's a digital ghetto wasteland. Areas like the Blake Sea demonstrate what consumers really want. That is a space that's well managed while still allowing some expression within that framework. There's a sense of community and it also looks gorgous. It's also the same with that brownstone estate whose name escapes me! They should scrap mainland all together. Offer several more entry level products....How about a 7000 prim sim? Or how about larger land masses so individuals can create communities? Time and again I explore the map and the best places are the well managed estates. Take the example of Caledon, it's not peppered with yellow, it looks gorgous, there's I suspect long term residents. This again demonstrates what people want.
On side note, Anche Chung is reputed to own 11% of the land mass of private sims, however I estimate it to be higher. So the shift in landowership has gone to renting private residential homesteads.
On the other hand you also need to take into account the destruction of the land market by the marketplace. There was a time when many people owned land as stores. So people went shopping and bumped into other people with similar tastes and thus further reinforced community. Now people don't need land except for their own little private parcels.
Really Linden Lab need to get out of the land buisness and carry on doing what they're good at, which is hosting sims and providing the framework to create whatever you want. They should lower tier, because at the end of the day, as well as my earlier points, this is the real major driving force behind SLs woes. If land was cheaper, this would increase market place sales as there would be a rush on to get land and populate it with content. As it stands, , they're footing the bill for this 'yellow peril' . Surely getting less money for a large amount of your stock is better than constantly getting no money for it.