Buying virtual land on Second Life – the price tag

When I went virtual land shopping for the first time on Second Life®, it was very confusing. And now being a Virtual Estate Manager, I get asked all sort of questions…

After weeks of research and shopping around I found a spot I really loved and decided to go ahead with it.

I bought my first virtual land on Costa Rica for L$24,000. It was a 8192sq.m. parcel with 1875 prims.  I bought it in the middle of the month so I did not have to pay the tier immediately as all tiers on that particular estate are due and payable on the 1st of each month.  My monthly tier was L$15,400 -with a late payment fee automatically charged if you did not pay on time.

When I decided to move on to another sim, I had 2 choices: I could either abandon the land back to Costa Rica or I could sell it to get back at least the L$24,000 I had put in which mean I would have to still pay the monthly tier until someone else took over.

So why pay L$24,000 when you can find most land for sale at L$1? – and the only reason it is at L$1 and not zero, is because you cannot set a up a parcel for sale for zero linden, it is just one of those little technicalities….  But I have seen Estate that will even give back that L$1!

Why some land are “nearly” free and some have a high price tag?

First look around the Estate and see what they have to offer…. like the surroundings & their community spots if any….  but mainly, it is just a smart business plan from a business owner point of view…

You see, the beautiful island you see as a whole, not just the parcel you intent to buy, cost money to acquire in the first place: US$1,000.

Yes US$1,000 will get you a sim called a full region with 65,536 sqm and 15,000 prims. Once you have acquired the full region you have a monthly “maintenance” fee to pay which is US$295.  There is no exception to the rules, all sim owners have to pay that monthly fee so the monthly tiers you are paying are basically covering the owner’s expenses. Note: there are different type of regions with their own pricing schedule and in this post I am only talking about  full regions.

A good business move when you first acquire a sim is to get back the US$1,000 you just spent.  You can achieve that by dividing the full region into 16 parcels and sell parcels for about US$62 each. And of course with time and depending on the sim estate and its popularity or atmosphere, prices will vary…

I sold my parcel back for L$27,000 within 48hrs as Costa Rica is a popular place to live on and there is a lot of demands there and you will not find free land there unless the resident would pass it on to you, but I am not sure if that would even be allowed, you would have to check the covenant.

Covenants are basically a list of rules of what you can and can’t do on a region. It is up to the sim owner.

But wether you pay a purchase price or not, does not make a sim good or bad.  As for any businesses, there are a lot of factors that residents are not aware of for the sim owners  to decide whether they are goign to put a purchase price or not and there is alos a lot of competitions….

What about the monthly tiers, how are they calculated?

You can basically follow the guidelines on the Second Life website.  But this is just a guideline and since it is a business, prices will differ.

But a general pricing for monthly tier fees you will often see is:

2048sq.m with 468 prims = L$3,850 per month = approx US$15

4096sq.m with 937 prims = L$7,7000 per month = approx US$30

8192sq.m with 1875 prims = L$15,400 per month = approx US$60

….so on….

At the end of the day, no matter how much you spend on a virtual piece of land, you still have to pay the monthly tier.  Only you can decide whether it is worth paying a purchase price on top of your monthly tier by looking around the sim and see what it has to offer…  as they say: do not judge a book by its cover…

What about prims & sq.m???? That will be my next post….. but feel free to comment with your questions or share your experiences as a buyer or business owner.