How Land Auctions Work

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1) Find a parcel of abandoned land you want to buy

2) Ask LL to set it for auction

3) Bid on it, occasionally checking to see if you are still high bidder

4) As the time for the auction to end draws near bump your proxy bid to the highest you are willing to pay.

5) As the auction ends find out you were outbid, sigh and walk away

6) Go back the next day and see the parcel is now for sale at over double what it sold for at auction

Land barons constantly watch auctions and bid in the closing minutes. Their rational is that anyone biding on a parcel really wants it, and if someone will pay X amount of Lindens for it, they will almost certainly pay double or more.

In my case it was won for $2510 and was up for sale the next day for $5500. I sent the land baron a notecard saying i'd give him a 1000 L profit but no way was i paying his asking price.

He sent me a notecard back saying he'd drop it to 4700 for the next 48 hours so i could get a "deal"

I replied, not a penny over 3500, and if i wait more than 10 days, its 3000.

The parcel is now over priced so he can sit on it untill the end of Second Life.

I can get road frontage twice as big for less than the price he wants.

I advise anyone wanting to buy land at auction to forget it, Land Barons will buy it every time so they can try and gouge you afterwards.

Lets put an end to their devious game by refusing to buy it from them after they beat you out, because the price will go down considerably after a while. They can't afford to hold unsellable land, they need to be able to bid on fresh auctions hoping to get more losing bidders to buy at their outrageous prices.

:)

 

[Alwin Alcott]

if you bid enough on the auction you will win it... i see totally no need to flame another resident down for trying to make profit .. you didn't win the auction, live with it.

It's not your bussiness how much his profit is.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Did I flame anyone? I mentioned no names.

In your rush to attack me for "flaming" an  unnamed person, you miss the point, which is, no matter what anyone bids in an auction, a land barron will out bid them thinking the losing bidder will pay him the profit he wants in order to get the land that was lost at auction.

He told me in an IM that he would have gone higher if i had raised my bid.

I know its none of my business how much profit he will make, he's just not going to make it from me.

He already offered to lower the price $800L. I'm sure in another month or so he will agree to my most generous offer to buy it from him at the price I want, assuming of course I still want it.  If I don't want it, he might have to lower the price further just to get rid of it as unsold inventory.

Tier doesn't wait for the seller to get the price they want.

And, Mr Alcott, I am a total believer in the free market, but it goes both ways. Land is only worth as much as someone is wiling to pay for it

Have a nice day

 

 

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Maybe Mr Alcott is one of those unnamed land barons that I've "flamed".

Is that how you make your money on SL sir?

Still wishing u a nice day

[wherorangi]

i agree with your underlying sentiment. Dont buy anything that doesnt fit within our budget

parcel auctions come up for discussion now and again. My advice is always: When participating in a parcel auction then:

a)  dont place any early bids at all. Dont signal our own interest in the parcel to anyone else

b) Work out what price we can afford and are willing to pay

c) place our one bid as near to the final close datetime as we can manage

might not win the auction bc somebody else has done the same thing at a higher bid price, but it does give us the best chance of winning the auction at the price we have decided is affordable for ourself

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Believe it or not I used all your tips today before I read your post. I waited till less than 5 minutes to auction end before bidding on a parcel no one had yet bid on. There was a small flurry of bids from others watching as well, but i ended up geting it for $1 L per m. Its road frontage on a moderate sim, and totally flat, perfect for building on.

Now i'm wondering if i should play Evil Land Baron and list it for sale at double what i paid for it.

 

[wherorangi]

good score. Good on you (:

dunno about turning into a land flipper. Can be the road to ruin that can. Like as mention already, can easy get stuck with the tiers and end up with nothing to show for it sometimes. Is up to you tho. And tbf some people do ok as a real estate dealer

+

can always build another factory on it. Is not all that many factories on mainland. Like a working factory with moving machinery and stuff like that. Be quite interesting a project like that I think  

 

[Prokofy Neva]

It's a free market, more or less, although with important gaps (like lack of a deeds registry and transparency about who wins the auction).

You have had one experience and it's not one to judge the system by. I have bought land on the auction many times, and have had your experience, but also have had the experience of buying waterfront property for $1/m because no one cared.

Usually a land baron who is in the land selling business will have a margin. He isn't going to recklessly jack up an auction because the costs are too high for him given the time period over which he might sell it. What he bid though is normal for waterfront, say. You don't say what the type of land is, but meadow flat is like $1-3 and waterfront is going to be $4-8 these days or more in Zindra. You have to hunt for bargains like real life.

The landlord has no incentive to go under what HE paid on the auction. The tier for that size of a parcel is low enough that he can afford to put a high price and wait months on end for it to sell, as the tier he will have paid, and the purchase price, will still be less than what he makes from the final sell. This is why huge swathes of Zindra are for sale at outrageous prices.

If you can get road frontage, then get it. Believe me, it is ALL OVER and for $1.3 or less in some places.

Sorry but I won't join you in boycotting people in the market for no reason. I'm happy to call boycotts when I have evidence of unscrupulous, gouging, bad behavior or even TOS violation. I don't see it here. The guy paid a normal price and you bid low. He set at a normal price and you don't want to pay that. So find a bargain, there's 5000 plus sims to chose from.

If the land barons really gouged as you claim, it would be easier to get a boycott going. But they don't. So many sites don't even get bid on! or they go for below market. To be sure, there are certain areas like Zindra where this is not the case, but I leave it to those who care about that continent or own there or want to buy there to do what they need to do.

[Prokofy Neva]

It's not true that "no matter what someone bids" they will be outbid.

I'm not a frequent user of the auction, but I will bid perhaps 6 times a year. I'm often outbid but that's because I don't want to pay over $2/ or $3/ per meter. I have gotten nice auction pieces for $1 and nice for $4.5 that were worth it and could recoup their value in rentals or sales.

Tier in fact DOES wait for the seller to get their price. That's what you fail to understand.

Landlords buy in bulk so their tier rates are less than the premium account buyer's tier. The tier they pay is 0.013 x prims. That's $12 US per month for a 4096 plot, whereas a premium account holder pays $25. If he's selling this land for let's say $40,000 because it is waterfront or even flat roadside at $7 or $8 a meter, he could clear US $148 from the sale, and pay for even *a year of tier* ($144) and still make a profit -- not a very big one, but given that he has thousands of such parcels, it may be worth it. Wait only six months, and make US $76 in profit. And so on.

A free market is where a willing seller meets a willing buyer. Our market is not totally free for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that we don't have the rule of law and a free media, required for a free market not to become oligarchy. But it's free enough. A willing buyer will buy that fellow's land likely in the six months it would take for him to make a handsome profit.

[Prokofy Neva]

Funny how having just one more experience on the auction -- now you have 2 -- using the tips people learn as they get into it -- makes you flip your views 180 degrees.

I agree with my former tenant's tips here!

You should never go on the auction while sad, hungry, etc. -- like you shouldn't go shopping in real life LOL.

Have your wits about you, decide what you want to pay, and WAIT to bid. Don't show early interest because sometimes that can flush out land barons who think there is a reason they may not have seen to pay more for land. They don't visit every single plot they buy.

Make sure YOU visit and check everything up and down -- see Rufferta's tips for buying land. Take off "volume" and "water" to see if there are any griefer parcels hidden among what you think is your parcel. Check neighbours' claim dates to see if they are stable. Put your draw distance to 300 plus and see what you will actually have to live with for a view. Watch the green dots to see if you missed a club in the air with 40 avatars who will mean you can't even come home to your own home you pay tier for. Etc.

Also, when visiting land, don't land right on the parcel, showing interest. Cam in from a road or something. Or visit when it seems no one will be there but you never know when the baron will TP in and then jack up.

And there's another thing you can do, although risky. If you want a land really badly, say, it's next to your existing property, IM some of the frequent buyers on the auction and ask them if they would mind refraining from this one because you are an end user with adjacent property. Some of them are nice enough to oblige.

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Oh, i'm not calling for a boycott. In fact i got another abandoned parcel on the sim i live on set to auction, and won it for the opening bid. True, its not road frontage and its irregular shaped, but i really just wanted the prims anyway.

The land baron can sit on the other parcel forever now, because I don't need it any more.

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

That second parcel I won I put up for sale after I won another auction on the sim i live on. I just wanted to get rid of it because I didn't want to pay a higher tier rate. I offered it for sale for what i paid, $1800 L  for approximatly 1800 m.

Someone imed me and said they wanted to buy it, but could only take 1536 m, so i subdivided it and let them have it for $1500 L, thus reducing my tier.

I went back the next day and saw they had created two road frontage 512's and were offering them for sale for $1500 L a piece, with the last 512 abandoned.

I got rid of the land and it was theirs to do as they wished, but i was still like wtf.

 

 

 

[wherorangi]

---

BilliJo Aldrin wrote:

 

I got rid of the land and it was theirs to do as they wished, but i was still like wtf.

 

---

back in the day when there were a whole lot more people logging in to SL regularly, land flipping on mainland was quite a regular pastime activity for heaps of people, even if tho it was a tulip activity pretty much. Some made a profit overall, most didnt. Still, lots of people enjoyed doing it 

as you say. You sold, they bought. They can do whatevs with it. Same now, same then  

[wherorangi]

---

Prokofy Neva wrote:

I agree with my former tenant's tips here!

 

 

---

(:

that boho apartment was really nice. The way you appointed the place was really inviting. As soon as saw it I went ooo! I think I move in

am a bit of a gypsy tho. I move a lot. Am currently kinda share with a friend at the mo on this other place. I did enjoy my time in that apartment tho

and all the other times I rented a home space off you. Like as I remember the time before was by the wall after I left the french ish place

+

i just wanna say that of all the landlords I ever had, which has been heaps, then you (Prokofy Neva) are easily one of the best landlords in SL. You know your stuff. Is all a tenant needs really. A landlord who knows their business well

 

[Bozz Larsson]

Where to follow the bids on land - is there a site to follow. As I have only seen it on "search" and under-label "auction" ?

 

[Chic Aeon]

23 minutes ago, Bozz Larsson said:

Where to follow the bids on land - is there a site to follow. As I have only seen it on "search" and under-label "auction" ?

 

Note that this is a TWO YEAR OLD thread and actions have changed some and will change more in the future.  The official blog is your friend and posts can be seen on the home page of your website backend page as well as by going to the HOME button in the header of this page.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 22, 2018 by Chic Aeon

[kevin Jerrold]

53.000L$ Auction listing for a  Bay City parcel 512sqm. How can someone afford to buy that. Why would they want to pay that on such a small piece of land. That's over 200 USD

[Rowan Amore]

9 minutes ago, kevin Jerrold said:

53.000L$ Auction listing for a  Bay City parcel 512sqm. How can someone afford to buy that. Why would they want to pay that on such a small piece of land. That's over 200 USD

Aside from this being a 3 year old thread, go check prices at Horizons.  The one next to me is for sale.  Only 500,000L.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

23 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Aside from this being a 3 year old thread, go check prices at Horizons.  The one next to me is for sale.  Only 500,000L.

He's posted about this blasted auction three times (so far!) this morning. Someone is a wee bit obsessed.

[kevin Jerrold]

10 minutes ago, Sylvia Tamalyn said:

He's posted about this blasted auction three times (so far!) this morning. Someone is a wee bit obsessed.

What's with the attitude. No reason to give me a hard time about my posts. 

[Quartz Mole]

I'm locking this thread because, to my mind, there's no need to necropost in threads from 2016 about land prices.