[Land Sales Crash]

21 minutes ago, Clem Marques said:

Brown and Boardman parcels have both shown up in the auctions this year. Two Brown parcels and one Boardman parcel to be exact. I did not say they got the Brown parcels for "cheap", because that is not the case. I said they got it for a price that is significantly cheaper than what they are trying to charge now. Half, to be exact. I know this for a fact because I participated in one Brown parcel auction in June and was outbid at the last second.

Other than the two parcels that were auctioned off this year, there are other parcels in Brown that have been left there for several years without anyone buying them. So you are right about those. And yes, definitely way less L$ than Blake.

Very good point. I agree.

Well I would say in fact NOT so significantly less. And some of them eyed a certain monopolist who actually brought his prices DOWN and actually sold one long lot there for a not-bad price I think more than a year ago in the depths of the pandemic, and then JACKED UP their prices fairly recently. 

If such parcels got on the auction, that means someone abandoned them, which really puzzles me then, because anyone could very quickly sell those lots for a good price. To be sure I recall once -- just once! -- an abandoned plot there by someone who may have died, and I asked the Lindens for it, and got it.

So it's possible there was a situation where one of those truly ancient oldbies with the 4096-for-life -- who would leave parcels there for decades and never log in -- finally went to Our Father's house which has "many mansions"....

Could it be that the Lindens actually cut into their park land and auctioned it? They do that now. But I recently combed Brown looking for small parcels I might in fact get for prims and found nothing. People put those sheds in the "marketplace" at ridiculous prices although that has no traffic, is not a marketplace, has a few odd little art displays or ancient vendors, and is not worth what is being charged.

But prices in SL don't always make sense or follow even the logic of virtuality.

[Land Sales Crash]

7 hours ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

Kama kind of reflects the evolution of cities in SL. When the Lindens opened up Atoll, it was the 1st new continent added. They didn't know the "gold rush" for new land would result in a hobo encampment around Magellan's crash site, or that a city would form around the tracks. For most of its life Calleta was so laggy and chaotic it was virtually unlivable.

By the time they built ZIndra, just 6 or so years later, they knew to expect the area where people landed in the continent to become a city... so they put it on an island, surrounded by water, with designated "single prim" zones in the core and "double prim" zones on the outskirts along the waterways. They made most land unchangable as far as cutting and terraforming. Most regions were given a substantial amount of protected land - there's waters, trails/greenways, monorails, and streets.

This design mitigates texture lag, and makes it harder to overload the server with scripts too. That, combined with it still getting lots of visitors, makes it a better place for clubs/hangouts/shops than virtually anywhere else in Zindra.

 

It's simply not true that Calletta -- the hobo encampment -- was formed around Magellan's Crash site. Go and look. I have been there for nearly 20 years now.

Magellan's Crash is on Columbia, not Calleta. It's a small site by Linden standards and the Moles can't be bothered to put a BBB stamp there in the stamp game, although I put one on our UFO there.

And there has never been any hoboes at all in Columbia on my properties or the ones owned previouisly next door, which for many years was a huge furry sandbox.

Originally we had the space theme in keeping with the Magellan crash sim. Gradually, since space is very niche as a rentals, it turned to just ordinary houses on 512s and 1024s mixed in with skyboxes. I can't recall a single tent or hobo-like thing there in all this time -- because the hobos are further down the tracks in Calleta.

Calleta was never laggy. I also had other land adjacent to it and never, ever experienced lag from their primmy and sculpty builds. it was a cool place, it had a good long run, the people were very creative, and now pretty much I think they are gone -- occasionally the hobo-in-chief drops in and talks to me at my other sims and he now goes to another open sandbox if he's on, not there.

It's simply not true that Zindra land is "unchangeable". Again, you must not have ever gone there or owned it. You must mean *Horizons* which indeed they made unterraformable and unable to be parceled smaller or joined -- like a kind of Bellisseria early variant. They put space houses on it originally, but you could return them -- and virtually everyone did because they were ugly and primmy and PS did I mention, space is very, very niche in SL. It's for full-sim end user's RP, occasionally some cheap exotic rentals, it's not a thing. Do I know it!

It's also not true that Zindra got "substantial protected land". Yes, there are some roadways and railways that by contrast with all those later continents like Jaegeot that have zero infrastructure and vast tracks of no water bodies inland seems like an easement paradise. But Zindra also has entire sims of chopped up uglies. Fly around and look.

The Lindens originally offered a trade: take your adult venue in M that they wanted you to remove from the view, and get the exact straight equivalent in Zindra. So some of us got Zindra early with that but I personally got rid of most of it because I really didn't like the strange black vinyl type textures on the roads and the bridges, and it did not rent in fact as people might imagine -- originally it was mainly clubs. Only gradually did it develop an end-user residential population over the years -- and PS this situation is artificially maintained by the lead land baron monopolist who buys and holds, jacks up bids on the auction, and keeps prices overly high. Sl is oligarchy. Were a few of these types to disappear from the scene, and the areas get a lot of diversified small holdings, the society would be better and prices would normalize and value would be added.

The Lindens did not mitigate lag in Zindra -- it is a fast sink hole of adult furniture and if you fly around with a XOPH sensor your radar will go off the charts. The script time is abysmal and the lag terrible in places, which is one reason I don't do rentals there except for a few small cabin areas. As for Horizons, I think some of the top stores in that continent wouldn't be up in the sky if the lag was so absent on the ground.

Zindra enabled the Lindens to tell the brands that they had the adult content that the brands didn't want to be next to (Twitter, anyone?) well out of the view -- adult was not findable if you set your search without "AL' and also literally out of sight and out of mind. Philip also had this idea that everything really objectionable, whether boring university classes or Gorean empires, would be on private sims. He thought the Mainland would be like "a nation of shopkeepers" under St. Jane Jacobs. I actually shared his idealism.

 

[Land Sales Crash]

1 hour ago, Clem Marques said:

Some of the parcels that are currently being sold in Brown for very high prices were bought for much cheaper in the auctions earlier this year. Less than half of what they're being sold for at the moment. The sim is very old, as you said, and any modern mesh building there would stick out like a sore thumb, which is a problem for whoever buys it. Another problem the buyer faces are the strict zoning rules that must be followed to live there, restricting the appearance of buildings. Though, of course, some might see that as a perk.

Boardman is the better version of Brown, and it also has some land for sale there for high prices. They haven't sold in several months. Those two regions have their charm, and some people might really like them if they have an interest in SL history, but the very old buildings and zoning rules paired with a G rating are hard to deal with. Even more expensive than the controversial port stations - and not worth it in my opinion.

I'd definitely be surprised if anyone bought those parcels for the current asking price. But if they do... well, I hope they enjoy it. I certainly can't judge

LOL

And thanks.

The Lindens used to bother with Boardman (which is the better sim because the Boardman Preservation Society had the top builders of that era and they did some nice things with that sim -- a few of the buildings survive) and Brown (which has more of the ugly dead palm trees we couldn't get Jack Linden to fully remove). Yes, they used to physically appear and enforce things like "no skyboxes because it's G".

But now they don't. My God, who has the time. They have Bellisseria to police now, where the green dots are.

So skybox all you like. However, if you have enemies, they will seize the opportunity to AR you. You also can't terraform there, not that you need to -- except on those really funky external lots abutting the next sim with a bad job on the seque-way.

You can put out a mesh house, but basically, it's a weird sim with some really ancient stuff on it like Ryan Linden's FLW knock-off.

In fact, those people you see holding the land there did NOT get it for "cheap" -- I've watched Brown for ages. But they got it for less than Blake, and they've been holding literally for years thinking someone will bite. Then rarely they get someone who is nostalgic and they make a sale. I have done that, at far less than what they are charging, but still more than regular Mainland.

There really isn't a reason to move there, to buy or rent, versus Bellisseria which has much better mesh houses, although some of the items in the packs are strange odd sculpties, and much better landscaping. It just doesn't make sense to spend more than $13.05 a month (in NYS at least) if you want flat suburban tree-lined streets, you can get them in Belli. To spend US $150 or more to buy a plot there is nuts when you could annualize a premium and have a much prettier set-up. I'm all for SL nostalgia. But you can pick better nostalgia, truly.

I think Sharp continent is much more wild and free and pretty if you don't mind G.

 

[Land Sales Crash]

18 hours ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

No, I said a lot OF THOSE I SELL. Comprehension gap between information you have and what you get from it has already been observed. You seem to just need to shame yourself.

It's always best when people self-discredit, eh? This thread delivers!

I totally grasp the restrictive clause -- we had good English lessons where I come from back in the day. But that's just the point. What you sell is not representative of all the developments across the vast Mainland by any stretch. I can go find you two abandoned 1024s next to each other, and find them with the names of clubs -- one of the most frequently failing ventures in SL. 

What's in the view tells us all we need to know about a land dealer, despite their blustering : )

[Land Sales Crash]

16 hours ago, Clem Marques said:

The 400m Mosh parcel is 2x protected and is located inside the Port of Kama City, a special building made by Linden Labs. It functions as a monorail station and has a rez zone in the river right in front of it (Mosh South). It also has connections to the road on both ends of the building. By owning one of those port stations, you are able to build within that huge modern glass building. It has some historic value for those who care about it. Another perk is that the port's building does not have any impact on the prim count of the parcel. Those factors make it special.

The other parcel in Mosh is 544m and has a strange shape, but it is 1x protected by the road.

I'm the one who bought the parcels. I willingly overpaid for them due to the fact that I had my eyes on that 400m port station in particular for years now. I own a port station right next to it and was pleasantly surprised when it was suddenly abandoned. The 544m was purchased for that amount of L$ solely because I needed extra prims for a project and land in the Mosh region is very rarely available to purchase.

In short, both of the Mosh parcels that sold for high bids at the auctions were a one-off event and do not accurately represent any uptick in land sales.

Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Mosh/129/25/26

Well, that's something! I never went out and looked at Kama City although I vaguely recall people talking about it. Yes, it's an aberration and doesn't reflect anything about the general Mainland land market, a story which is better told by all those parcels with NO bids, bids under $1, or bids that lead to land flipping and serious, blighty land-cutting and ad farming. 

Like the many children we poor Catholic folks have had historically -- two to work on the farm, two to die in infancy, two to give to the priesteens, two to keep Mama company in her old age and visit Pops in prison -- land cutting is a sign of poverty and distress, not wealth.

Yes, land inside a Linden build like that which I find interesting and aesthetic, even if made of prims, would indeed be valuable for nostalgic if not for actual reasons.

I find people still charging -- and not getting -- fantastic sums in Brown, a very old Linden-maintained sim that preceded Linden Homes and Bellisseria, even though it is in G, has ugly dead palm trees on it from the library and junky old Linden and oldbie builds -- such is the power of the incantation "Linden protected".

I'm so old some land dealers put in their ads "protected" for being next to MY land LOL. Not for long.

But congratulations on that win of land you had your eye on, I know what that's like, and what matters most is your own valuation. 

 

[What are you listening to?]

 

[If It's Phantom and Invisible...]

 

[If It's Phantom and Invisible...]

The larger question is what kind of tortured soul needs to inflict mischief like this on others, merely to take glee in others' misfortune. Most people don't feel the need to root a floatie on their land and put it out in the middle of Linden water and then impishly tell everyone that it is on phantom and invisible. They stay on their land. 

[Land Sales Crash]

1 minute ago, Qie Niangao said:

I must apologize, I knew better: Those instantaneous counter-offers are not the sign of a web bot bid. Quite the opposite: they're the way the Lab records automatic bidding above another offer, toward the winning bidder's limit. Hence, it's perfectly possible that the auction today really was won by an individual resident.

Well this must be rigorously tested with more attention span than I can give to the game of Second Life now as I'm busy in real.

But I say, watch those back links rigorously if you have world enough and time. They're the key. Some day in a boring Zoom meeting I will try to attempt this.

 

[Land Sales Crash]

Just now, Qie Niangao said:

It went for just over L$8/m2, and even though it's still owned by an individual resident at the moment, it was definitely bought by a web bot, judging by the timing in the bid history. So yeah, very likely a flipper.

FWIW, the Zindra parcels yesterday went for:

• L$ 5.03/m² (a 4096 now for sale at L$8/m²) and
• L$ 4.41 / m² (a 512 now for sale at L$4.5/m²).

Both bidding histories had the same pattern of instantaneous counter-offers. Both are also landlocked in the middle of nowhere, the second with banlines on one side and an enormous ugly screen at one end, really only suitable for a skybox.

Well, you beat me to it, Comrade. I am out here now and looking at Ms. End User and I missed the bot interlude. The bot might have *bid* but it didn't *win*.

She is shown as the winner of the auction as well, so I wonder if there *was* a bot.

Although it is quite possible that the way this system works, it shows the current owner no matter what, so it might go from Governor Linden to Bot to End User in the course of 15-30 minutes, who knows. I sure don't.

Yes, I've just discovered a very interesting thing about the auctions if you are quick enough catching what shows on the link above, which will be gone soon.

I didn't feel any ban lines there but I did see a big ugly plywood from a prominent land baron which will likely come down soon, it looks like it is merely being measured. (You know guys, you can take off the view of "water" and put on "show property lines" and get the same information without uglifying the view).

My objection to this lovely water is the big photo-real board in one direction. I personally cannot stand those things and ban them in my rentals. Nothing says buzz kill faster than photo-real boards in a virtual world that requires a slightly more painterly, somewhat cartoonish look to fit in.

If she looks only in one direction, Ms. End User could be quite happy here.

 

 

 

[Land Sales Crash]

Oops, I was dead wrong! It was indeed an end user from all appearances and a lucky winner of Zindra adult water for only like $7/m. I hold to my view that overall prices are down but I don't really know Zindra that well, I don't like the adult business much and prefer G and M rentals.

My God, look at these dogs, except for Mosh, which might be a pit, I haven't had a chance to really study it.

This as much as anything lets you know of the land crash -- to get back on topic -- although it is more about being a particularly loud thump on what has been a long, bumpy ride DOWN.

Will the Lindens do anything to fix this leaky boat? I really doubt it, as it really has no bearing on their main objective which is to sell Belli, which they are doing, now with a Russian mafia Bright-Beach style McMansion which should be wildly popular!

And you have to look at the LindEx and not the land market in isolation as they are intimately tied. In the last 48 hours, I've seen 246 appear regularly again (my God, remember when it was 245? 242???) and when that happens suddenly in the middle of the night, that can be Supply Linden or Demand Linden at work, although I suppose with Shop 'n Hop and Arcade opening, there's that...

 

 

[Land Sales Crash]

42 minutes ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

Regular old people that just wanna live there will sometimes pay insane prices for any water parcel in Zindra. The average person looking at auctions may have never seen any adult waters parcels available to bid on since they started looking for land. Many people who are eager to open an adult business/club will overpay for *any* adult parcel they can use with their premium or premium plus account *now*.

In my limited experience so far, abandoned water parcels you can throw a mesh island and little else in, and immediately sell cheap are one of the easiest things to flip.

The name of the sim is driving the bids, it has a cool factor. Never underestimate that. 

And 6.84/m is nothing for Zindra given that it's water only and could have ban lines around it, I haven't checked.

I'm willing to bet real money that this is going to be won by a flipper and not an end user...we'll know in like 30 minutes.

 

[Land Sales Crash]

14 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

that water parcel 1024 on auction is now over 7K, so some people still see the value of living on Zindra. I doubt its a landflipper with the high bid though, because 7 K has already eaten the profit they might make

You cannot know the mind of a land baron, what their alts are, what their holdings are, what's happening here and there.

I have seen auction winters take a prime Blake Sea waterfront sim that they paid a fortune for and cut it in half, and abandon the hind part because they can -- what they make from rentals or sales on the waterfront enables them to do that. It may enable them to take a loss bidding on a $7000 waterfront in Zindra even if it appears to "eat their profits' because...it doesn't. 

That's why anecdotal arguments are silly, and only the Lindens know what is going on as only they have access to server truths.

And even they may not have the staff to pay attention to everything.

[Land Sales Crash]

24 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Agreed.  Land prices and availability have been up and down for over fifteen years -- just like the RL land sales at least in my part of the US.   When there isn't ENOUGH mainland to buy (not lately since the LHs anyway) folks complain about that.  If you think about it there is a lot MORE MAINLAND now with Zindra and Horizons etc.

I have probably moved well over three dozen times in my years here and with some looking I have always found a good place to live on the cheap -- either buying or renting.  Many of those times it was mainland simply because mainland is usually cheaper.  

I really enjoyed my time in Belli that first year but over time it got so very laggy (like everywhere that I went there) that it was pretty much unlivable. Way too much heavy mesh.  Happily it seems our no name "shaming" posts did let creators know that a lot of folks really DO CARE about stuff like that. It does have an impact.  So small steps forward.     

No, Chic. No.

They haven't been "up and down".

They have been in a slow but steady overall DECLINE.

In tandem with the LindEx value of the Linden which did increase for a time but now has steadily DECLINED. This is easy to prove if you keep records, even if the Lindens stopped publishing the statistics because they show DECLINE.

There used to be Mainland Glut induced by the Lindens' yens for constantly rolling out "new, fast sims" as they were called (newer servers with no one on them and therefore less lag) on the auction. They shoveled those puppies out for years and at one time crashed the market themselves by having Ryan Linden try putting out flat bids for all kinds of land, when the system had already established valuations for telehub-adjacent, waterfront etc.

But now the glut comes from Belli, and more to the point (often overlooked point), homesteads untethered from islands.

As I sit on my Belli Sakura home doing a job, I have the entire sim to myself. As I did yesterday and the day before. No lag, and while prims are low, they're low at my other homes as well these days, I rented the areas out. I see a neighbour like three sims over and don't wave to him/her. My view is unspoiled. Linden-manufactured insects are buzzing and the flora is to die for. Even the bench is not so primmy out of that Sakura packet.

Since you have so much success with "no-name shaming campaigns" can you get to work on the skybox manufacturers who continue to inflict mesh bounce on their products? The sharper, more skillful mesh skybox makers don't do that any more and you can lay mesh and a prim down on their handiwork without doing all kinds of gyrations.

[Land Sales Crash]

4 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

then why when i was shopping for snowland the other day everything was $4L per sqm.

Oh wait there was one parcel cheeper , but it had a grade of about 400%

Perfect if i wanted to do SL avalanches I suppose, but they would be stopped by the no entry rule when they hit the LL road, so what’s the point of bothering?

😂

Because it's a bad buy, and people who bought too much of it thinking everybody would want it at Christmas are now trying to unload it, and finding out that a lot of people would rather texture a prim on their chemical waste-land Heterocera land than be stuck with a snow texture all year.

Wait a week, it will be a $3.

 

[Land Sales Crash]

1 hour ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

Well, I was thinking that too. But since then, I've noticed this: a lot of 1024s I sell that are side by side are now getting purchase two at a time, and merged. The new parcel name/build often reflects something that wouldn't be allowed in a LH neighborhood, such as a small club or store. Location may also be adult. It appears the limits of LH are making some of these new Premium Plus people choose mainland:)

There aren't "a lot" of these. There are some that you see in your view and your view is limited to how many sims you can see in a day. I scamper around and see a LOT of sims every week, my own, those in the BBB stamp game, and all kinds of stuff, and I recommend others do the same.

But it is no longer possible to walk across SL in a day or even a week, as Wally "Keep Back Wide Load" Walesa once attempted rationally to do in 2004, although in the end the ban lines got to him.

I have a lovely ranch home myself because they really are huge, it's actually harder than you think to lay down the 702 prims but the beauty part is, the house and fencing doesn't count on your count, like in the rentals of some landlords I know. So you get a house that doesn't count, and a managed view, with rules, which is really beloved by a lot of people. Rules for Living. Not those silly rules on that blighty kiosk. But rules that are enforced. For example, against ban systems that force people home like they're in some MMORPG shooter game.

I have tenants also who have both Belli and Mainland homes. I think the secret of SL is that a lot of people do a lot of different things. I am never surprised to find some over-primming prim-a-donna owning an island empire while she slums it out on an alt in my el cheapo B&Bs away from her Gorean bf. It happens. I've also lost more and more tenants to Belli. I used to say unequivocally that Belli does not compete with Mainland rentals and sales, because it did not in fact, whatever gloating forums griefers would tell you.

But now it does, because any of us can read Daniel's estimates, or the Grid Survey or in the end, just fly around and look at the map. I don't know at which point in 2023 the Belli continents surpassed total resident-held land on the Mainland (subtracting out abandoned and Linden roads and parks) -- and Patch got a bonus -- but *that* it did I no longer have any doubt. I know, because I can open my eyes and see, as I am an owner of 5 Belli homes myself, that it is also not stable, there is a lot of churn, a lot of alts, a lot of empties heading for default.

Anyone, critical as they may be, can only wish the Lindens to succeed in their endeavours, as wrong-headed as some of them think them to be, because our world depends on them, and not us. They don't live off the taxation of content that we create, or contracts for private white label corporate hook-ups they might land, but off tier.

Tier generated mainly by island dealers, but also by hard-scrabble Mainland subsistence farmers like myself or the newer, flashier micro-barons of which Philip dreamed when he envisioned a day when a guy with a name tag that said "Hi I'm HOWIE CROFT! Who the Hell are YOU, Bud?" swooped down on defenseless newbies in the telehubs in a helicopter and took them off to look at new condos.

But what kind of tier is best? My anecdotal understanding from following the fate of many long-lived islands that disappeared in recent years among educators and international sims is that the Lindens prefer Americans and Europeans who buy premium accounts and are content with playing "Game of Homes" or even just sticking with one Belli home. Not Poor Folks from the rest of the world -- their idealistic days are over, they long ago shuttered their foreign offices. Such accounts are more stable in some ways, once they reach a critical mass, I think. More people than you might imagine annualize.

[Land Sales Crash]

4 hours ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

"I never did that" are words first uttered by you, not me. Comprehension. I've been in SL since '04 and clearly might even know a bit about it. And I'm still new to flipping mainland. You clearly don't want to hear, or see, anything but the story what you want to tell. No one here is going to be able to make you open-minded or logical.

Calleta City spreads across multiple regions or it would be called "Calleta town". Google is so easy and most of us have adapted to it by now:) Like mesh:) "Seaview" is another you term. I didn't even use it to describe the grid-edge copies of that tower in Euryalus because "seaviews" are common AF and there's only one "Historic Calleta". People who were children in RL when it was being made think its like a living museum, and value it as an "authentic experience". Many newer SL residents are bored with remote tropical islands surrounded by water you can't swim or sail in.

Unfurnished apartments are a nice little fringe market, but... "Hey there's no INM shower" (and that's a necessity). "How come my Lovebridge oscii doesn't work?" "What's a prim?" Privacy and media skyboxes are popular but not everyone wants to pay for a small parcel when its so much cheaper to share one. We've got those offering for the minority of the market that wants them. How many prims you give furnished skybox tenants is not of any particular importance, most won't use them anyway. More than 50% of my own prims aren't even out most of the time, because it would lag too much if they were. They rez on demand. Single-scene units still have "options" that make almost  everything really multi-scene. Automated scanning of objects rezzed and the associated database and analysis tells a creator what's popular, so they don't necessarily have to rely on preferences. I update my stuff a few times a year, it keeps getting cheaper, lighter, bigger, and faster. Scripted skyboxes are a service; land is a commodity.

Things do evolve whether you notice or not, sir. You sound kinda grumpy for a guy with 14 sims, and your rentals need work. Things outside my parcels would be the last thing I'd be worried about in your position, and people who claim to have filed ARs about stuff across the street are just silly to later claim they're not worried about it.

People do still buy land and resell it for a profit. My own sales picked back up after I posted this. It's less stable than rentals. More ups and down, more arbitrage, greater potential risk and profit.

Which brings us back to the topic of "Mainland Land Sales". If you wanna create another thread about Robin Loop, Calleta City,  or rental business models/ philosophies, be my guest. I won't be responding to further attempts to hijack this with what's really a disagreement about "turf" you chose to ABANDON.

Thank you.

*Chuckles*  Glad to learn the definition of "city" means "spreads across multiple sims". By that definition, gosh, I am the mayor of multiple "cities" in SL, but I never thought to award myself that title.

I think it's marvelous that in all your ad copy about Calleta, you never once use the word "hobo" -- but then, your birthdate is only 2004. Yet the hobos are what still make up the life and spirit of Calleta, and I still have a few of their things like the hobo "distillery" actually out inworld, despite the prims. Hobos! Reminds me of my RL neighbourhood, where a synagogue was razed and the new apartment tower had the temerity to call itself "Temple Apartments".

Tell my 25L customers from all over the world that their 50 prims are not important to them. Go ahead, I'll wait. PS Ivar was heavy-weight champion in Pristina in 2004, I'll have you know.

Sometimes irony and sarcasm fly right over people's heads, I find. I stand firmly by my telescopic seaview in Zindra! In fact, I peer right through my telescope because it has an automatic animation on it! Like...oh never, mind, this is a family newspaper.

Perhaps my neighbours on several sims, my tenants or other land-owners, aren't as concerned about the eruption of ad farms on their flanks because after a flurry of ARs, most of them are...gone. I'd invite you to have a look again at the abandoned land tags on my flagship no-tell motel sim : )

I think someone like yourself who profits handsomely from flipping abandoned land shouldn't question the dynamics or motives anyone has for abandoning land, but then, that's just me, attached to out-of-date prim builds and old-fashioned morals, I guess.

Yes, sadly I had to pocket the US $135 I made off G-rated 4096 which I had for years in a lovely river basin area where I maintained a waterfall for others in the view, which gave me more revenue than rentals in G would ever give me, but downsizing is what one does in a buyer's market where the house always wins and competes against their own previous products, as Silicon Valley titans often do. 

The land sales "crash" (actually a steady decline of some years if you had been paying attention) is intimately tied to the valuation of the LindEx (now the instant cashout is 247; increases in cashout fees; US sales tax -- I was just looking at a 2007 record where the cashout fee was only $1.00, not 5% as it is now). Virtual though it is, the toy economy of SL can't help being tied to RL pandemics, wars, and recessions. What's the price of gas and orange juice where you are?

The Lindens need to pay for their servers and staff, and land remains their main revenue generator -- not sales tax on content, not special contracts to big third-party media companies, not anything. They don't like it, and they punish themselves and us for it periodically. While a Bellisseria sim with 20 premiums x $12 on it seems like it brings in more than an island, they are not all chock full, walk around and see. Islands remain the bulk of the product, not Mainland, not Bellisseria. It's to the advantage of the island owners to keep Mainland looking ugly, to ensure large swathes of it are carpeted with blight and concrete transportation games and that certain bottom-feeders succeed in pitting natural allies against each other by making a continual grab.

Even so, I still admire the view on to a funny old Linden build and river on the Sharp continent, as long as I face towards that river and not the checkerboard of abandoned micro-parcels and giant glowing spars from some man-child's game in space. 

"But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished."

 

[Land Sales Crash]

15 minutes ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

I already explained my newbie mistake with small roadsides and what I learned from it. I even apologized. 

That area you're talking about a tower and returning a tree is called "Calleta City". It's also been addressed. No one who understand how to look at parcel traffic (or nearby avatars for that matter) would ever imagine it's "empty".

It's human nature to worry about the people across the street when our own bed's not made. But clean beds kinda attract tenants, and I'm now hoping that making a bed isn't too technical for you. There's a rather evident gap between the information readily available to you and your perception.  

Lets talk about mainland land sales.

 

Oh, so we've gone from "I never did that" to "ok, maybe there was my newbie mistake" -- except you aren't so new. Mkay.

The tower is not likely "Calleta City" because it's not in Calleta although perhaps it's like "seaview" -- you put out a telescope, maybe get a glimpse. I have a place like that which is called "Seaview" which provides my lovely residents with a telescope to see the Linden sea like a sim or more away, and to teleport there handily, should they desire "beach". It's all good, they're all happy.

The traffic of 4017 is not gained from intense activity, but from stacking up multiple tenants on to one property where they cannot have dedicated radio streams (devices that pull them out to an Internet site are not optimal) nor dedicated ban list much less privacy. A few people can ratchet up a whole bunch of traffic that way! Why do I know? Why, I use that very method to put "traffic" on my mall by making the busy ferrets in the apartment put down the traffic for those who care about such things on the mall stores. Except, I always tell tenants, "Traffic doesn't make sales; sales make sales". Their search words are far more important than "traffic" which is gamed and ganked constantly in SL and constantly nerfed by the Lindens such as to be meaningless.

Your tower was indeed vacant for many a moon, and if it has a few takers for this enterprise now, we can't know if they are your alts unless we invade possible privacy which we don't like to do.

I personally give people 50 prims when I charge them 25L -- I think 10 prims for 25L is not really fair and only encourages overprimming.  I like to give dedicated lots as well.

But hey, SL is vasty and deep and has something for everybody.

Oops, there goes another piece of sidewalk.

I don't worry about the people across the street when I am busy enough tracking my parcels across 50+ sims totalling 14 sims of land. I also try to cluster the communities so that the "people across the street" are...my other tenants.

Flamingo Court/Motel of Last resort has very very clean sheets, I assure you, and that is indeed the reason it is known in the area as a "hot sheets hotel". Very hot. Like Mom used to iron.

My apartment buildings don't inflict my choice of furni on people -- they put out their own with my ample prim count : )

I don't do mainland sales if I can help it, it's a buyer's market now and has been for years. 

I say, buy term and invest the difference.

 

[Land Sales Crash]

55 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

There is less land for sale now where my shop is than has been in a  long while (mainland) BUT I scored a very nice (with buffers) snow parcel in a mainland sim with other snow parcels with buffers for 700 li and 350 a week.  I am nowhere near using those LI points but it is a very nice place.  I don't see that things are a whole lot different than they have been over the years. 

 

If one wants to point fingers then I would say that the new Premiums Plus 2048 homes are a big part of any problem that there may be.  And since there is a new theme for those coming out it seems like they have worked well (monetarily anyway) for LL.   But what is good for some folks is less than great for others.   I am only a renter and happily so.     

 

Snow is never a good buy, or at least, not a lot of snow, because people really only want snow this time of year when they want to make something for the winter holidays. Sometimes people rent snow year round or go to it for a week when it's July and they're hot. But snow is never a good buy -- repeat -- look around not just your sim, but all the winter sims, and do the math. I saw land I abandoned in a mountain/snow sim go for 0.5/m off the auction, flip for 0.9, and sell for $1 -- like abandoned land. I myself have put snow out to sale for $3/m (lower than that risks acquisition by ad farmers and choppers) on roadside, good for stores and drivers, or on mountain tops with pristine views -- and they don't sell. I once sold snow for like $8/m last year to a neighbour who had blocked all of us with land she obtained in a channel where we couldn't sail out then. So she got her way. But generally -- did I mention this? -- snow is just a bad, bad buy. So it goes for less, it gets abandoned more, and the Lindens will wait MORE THAN A YEAR as I've personally seen before they will auction even good snowland with nice views (which I maintain).

 

[Land Sales Crash]

2 hours ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

My rental towers you're talking about in Calleta City aren't actually empty, except for the newest one where one tenant has the tower to themself. The rest are over 80% full, with an undisclosed number of rented out, on-demand skyboxes stacked above them, hidden in scripts within a few prims, ready to rez if a tenant comes home, not lagging the sim the rest of the time:D

Those are the kind of homes I wish new SL residents had available to them when I was new and that area was just being opened up. Being new or casual doesn't mean those residents don't raise the avatar count, thereby keeping that historic area from hibernating, AL in those regions not being auctioned, and all but the port & waterfront just fading away. Those apartments might not have any snob appeal, but they're considerably more profitable per prim (not to mention creatively designed) than anything many people have ever built.

Did following all that old school conventional wisdom ever get you remotely close to economy of scale, single-stacking skyboxes with them always out, always lagging? Why do you imagine most of Sansara and Atoll are virtually unlivable with lag compared to islands, or even where you yourself live, far from your tenants?

Back to that lakeside hotel...I moved the 10L skyboxes because I found other AL in better parts of Atoll more worth saving. I'm sorry one idiot who bought from me after I moved the skyboxes ruined that row of little plots for the other people that bought land there, causing them to quickly sell what they just bought, but I'm not in any way associated with anyone who put anything there making political statements, trying to re-flip the land at silly prices, or adverting anything unrelated to my business.

Now, back to the topic, I appreciate what was said about COVID artificially raising prices. That happens to be when I moved to mainland, had extra tier to play with, and started flipping land basically for fun. Its making more sense to me now. I think I just need to adjust my expectation that everything sells as fast as the often underpriced quick flips I started with during a time of inflated demand.

Oh, so you *were* selling "little plots" then. Glad we cleared that up!

Regrading empty towers, I think you need to contemplate deeper a sim where you yourself often find the time to return a tree that accidentally waves into your property.

As for my homes, I don't live far from my tenants. I live right in the middle of my tenants, and have seasonal houses where I stay right there on the sim. I might occasionally repair to a sandbox if I think they worry I'm hovering around them.

 

 

[Do land barons get a tier discount?]

49 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I'll have you know I have just constructed a perfectly respectable build on a 16 sq m parcel. Why shouldn't I be allowed to build on micro parcels if i have the creativity  to do so?

Not all of us needs a 4096

My work here is done.

 

[Do land barons get a tier discount?]

13 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Than a big baron has pulled out or changed their business plan because they needed that 10% bonus to stay afloat, I guess. 
Let's say that baron had 50 sims without the group bonus, that would mean they would pull their 5 bonus sims out of Zindra. That would make a nice chunk of abandoned parcels.

You have to start with a keen awareness that anyone in the land business in SL is someone who enjoys virtual worlds for their own sake and has other fish to fry, shopping or building or romance, or they are small business people unable to get out much in RL or facing some sort of disability or somehow got hooked on the thrill of the virtual land business thinking it might eventually bring quick riches....some day.

I'll never forget what a famous land baron once IM'd me in sad desperation once in the middle of the night: "I'm addicted to land."  They can't *not* buy the newest, fastest sim or bestest Blake-iest waterfront because then they can't maintain their market share.

I have given this example before. Let's say you have $5000 to invest. You could buy Google stock; you could invest in your brother-in-law's boutique grocery store in Manhattan; you could buy lottery tickets; whatever path you like that doesn't require you to leave your couch or chip your nails or overly click your mouse.

Or you could invest in a scheme of some kind in real life (if there were such a thing) that requires you to deliver the mail to every apartment unit within a 20-block radius, to pick up garbage twice a week in a 20-block radius, and also to physically move the parked cars that failed to move from one side of the street to the other due to alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules -- you'll need a sturdy tow truck for this one.

That's what owning land in SL is like as an "investment". To be sure, some people automate it with Casper, hire third-world employees for peanuts, etc. etc. But they still have to sometimes get up off the couch and do that tow-truck work to remove prims or take care of some annoying neighbour or some pesky Linden demand. It's always something.

Would that be an efficient way to invest that $5000, something that requires you to walk through sleet and snow to deliver the mail in 60 mph winds? Once your time and effort is involved, it's less attractive.

Normal people with $50,000 to invest don't sink it into virtual real estate; they sink it into a real condo in Florida they can flip or Air BnB by phone or they put it into the money market in some safer place.

[Do land barons get a tier discount?]

8 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I dont buy land from LL to flip or adfarm. In fact i have never had an ad farm parcel. I engage in networked advertising,  but for some unknown reason you refuse to see the difference. Add farming is ALWAYS banned, networked advertising is allowed if all the rules are followed.

I only use 2x protected 16sqm parcels for my ads. LL wouldn’t sell me one if i didnt have property on the sim already

Really if you hate networked advertising so much, submit a jira to LL asking them to ban the practice, because ad farming is already banned

I’m sure they will quickly act on a request by such an esteemed personage as yourself.

The Lindens need to study their handiwork for more than the short window of the immediate resident ticket in front of them and notice how "my land on that sim already that is a 512 or 1024" in fact gets chopped up later, when the Lindens allow said bottom-feeders to pick up yet more micro-parcels or trade them -- something I often see happening, especially when some malicious blighter can trade next to MY land to annoy me deliberately because I regularly AR their shenanigans. The Lindens preside over this system and can end it any time they want to raise their view level up to 512 m2 inworld and 30 days on their ticket system, if not 60. They're in a position to see how all the alts attach to a main; we can only guess.

PS The Lindens should require that in order to post on the forums, you must pick only one of your accounts and can only post with that account. They could go further and allow only posting by those with PIOF, but that would unnecessarily discriminate against people from places like Russia or Turkey where it can be hard to get a credit card. They could go further, and allow posting on the forums only by the account you use to buy land on the auctions, for example, or cash out most of your Lindens from your inworld "networked advertising" business, let's say. 

[Do land barons get a tier discount?]

8 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I dont buy land from LL to flip or adfarm. In fact i have never had an ad farm parcel. I engage in networked advertising,  but for some unknown reason you refuse to see the difference. Add farming is ALWAYS banned, networked advertising is allowed if all the rules are followed.

I only use 2x protected 16sqm parcels for my ads. LL wouldn’t sell me one if i didnt have property on the sim already

Really if you hate networked advertising so much, submit a jira to LL asking them to ban the practice, because ad farming is already banned

I’m sure they will quickly act on a request by such an esteemed personage as yourself.

As I've stated many times, the Lindens need to create a state monopoly on networked advertising (PS that's not what you do), and run it properly with rules and signage that doesn't blight the view or encroach on their own road or others' properties. They need a transparent and accessible pricing system that is run in an automated fashion and reviewed to make sure it stays within the sims ratings (the Lindens anticipate this is a big staff chore so they won't do it, but in fact there aren't THAT many people who will buy advertising and they will want to stay in LL's good graces and will follow the rules).

They will outlaw all other forms of roadside "networked advertising" which is in fact actual ad farming or goes under the radar with midnight flippings and "rentals". They should also install such advertising boards (as they used to have at telehubs!) at all welcome areas and infohubs and other properties like Bellisseria community centers. This is a great source of revenue (or a Linden cash sink, depending what they need). It regulates an unregulated and wild industry that annoys everyone except the few gleefully malicious individuals who game it and which devalues both Linden and resident land considerably.

To enforce this, they will make it impossible to build on roadside land in some reasonable easement strip and also outlaw building on microparcels of X size. It can be debated whether this should be "less than 512" (I think that's what would be required) or 128 or whatever.

There is a path to the ending of the micro-parcel horror of SL, just as there was a path to the *curbing but not ending* of the ad-farming blight in SL after 4 years of land baron and resident lobbying. The path can be taken with the right combination of political will and coding.

 

[Land Sales Crash]

20 hours ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

I stopped selling small roadside parcels because you'd get a little row of people making nice tiny shops and homes until idiot #1 moves in, erects a giant plywood prim and a bigger pink dildo to never return, everyone else decide to sell, idiot #2 then buys them out, tries to resell it for 10x as much, and may still be trying to move that last silly 256 m2 of moderate roadside for 5k 6 months later.

I still sell a few in the water; typically connected to channels and docks I own that are also used for tenants. No one that bought one there has ever used it for any purpose but docking a boat. They've never been cheap, and people that buy them typically want me to keep their ocean access open so they don't piss me or my tenants off.

Most of my current small parcels are in small parcel neighborhoods I made, with small structures that thematically go together, furniture, security, etc. They're rental only.

 

 

 

I think it's good you stopped selling two weeks ago after multiple abuse reports and failures of anybody to "bite". Yes, you were able to flip a few.