Buying Land

In Levels of the Game I stopped counting on four. Let's make a step forward. Let's buy some land. A friend of mine is launching himself onto the next level in the big game of second life, so I set myself on a mission of learning the craft of buying land. After reading SL wiki and getting some tips from other friends here comes the summary of important things:

• Mainland or private estate? One of the important characteristics of land is who runs the servers under it. In the case of mainland, servers are run by Linden Lab. Severs for private estates are owned by Linden Lab, but they are leased to other companies or residents. It is the question under whose government you want your property to be.

Conditions under which you buy and own a parcel on mainland are very clear, and the same for the whole continent. Private estates are much like middle age (not in the scenographic or theme sense). You are the owner of your land, but there is a set of rules that the owner can insist on. E.g. some properties are residential only, which means you cannot run anything commercial there. Also, some sims are themed, so your builds must follow the flavour and/or lifestyle of the whole sim. There can be some rules about behaviour. Ask if you can make parties on your land. Those restrictions are not necessarily bad, some of them can make your second life a whole lot better. Just be sure that the particular property is what you want and need. Get to know your future estate owner, meet your future neigbours, take a walk through the hood. If it looks ok to you, if the conditions are meeting your needs (don't hesitate to ask for any clarification you need) and if people and especially the owner are nice and fair people, then you have probably found the estate of your dreams.

Understand that the estate owner (not you, but the one that runs the sim) can be an idiot who can cause you trouble, cut your prim number (we'll get back to prims later), who can terraform or control the sky, or delete all the things on your property. Chances are that it won't happen, but you should have a reason to trust the owner. The mainland is a different story, you will not have to worry about those things. But, there are lot of other things to worry there. When you go to see your future parcel on the mainland it can look nice with a beautiful view on a lot of other empty parcels around. Have in mind that those parcels will be sold too, and you don't have a clue if one day there will be an ugly casino with all the noise and camping chairs on the plot next to you. On the mainland you have no right to be angry about it. Your neighbours have the freedom of doing whatever they want on their land, just as you have on yours. If the plots are small, there is a huge chance that the hood will look like a yard sale in a week or two.

Have in mind that very soon, Lindens will give some of their rights to the estate owners. What will be considered abuse will depend on the estate owner, not on ToS. Maybe future rules of the sim will collide with your beliefs, maybe you want some extended freedom.

• Price Check the price per sqm. Prices vary, so teleport a lot to see what makes something so expensive or so cheap. Taking some time in this can save you a lot of money.

• Tier Price you paid for your land is not the end of the expenses. If you own more than 512sqm of land, you will have to pay a monthly tier. Be sure to know how much you are expected to pay. If you are on the mainland, you pay your tier to the Lindens. If you are on a private estate, you pay to the estate owner. One more good thing about having land on a private estate is that, in many cases, you don't need to have a premium account to have your parcel. If you are on mainland, you also have to pay your premium subscription.

• Size, shape and prims Obviously, each parcel has its size. Check the shape of it. They are all rectatangular, but both 2×256 and 16×32 are 512sqm. The question is if there is any sense in your trying to build and live in a corridor two meters wide? Does the house of your dreams fit the shape of your land? Also check if you can divide your parcel and if you can join it to the neighbouring one if you decide to get more land.

Prims are maybe even more important than size of the land. Each parcel has the limit of the prim objects it can support. That number affects the number and level of details of objects on it. If you are not building, talk with a friend who does and go to the store of buildings and furniture. See something similar to your likings and see how many prims it will take you.

• Ground configuration and climate Do you want to live in permanent snow? Or on the beach? Grass or stone? Those things can be unimportant if you are going to make a skybox and forget that there is a ground beneath you, but if you want to walk on the ground be sure to check if that is the ground you like to walk on.

It is not only the texture over it – is your future land on a side of a hill or is it flat? Some estate owners don't stop at terraforming, but make brooks and stones and some other nice things. Those things take your prims, but make things look nice. Check if you can change these things (this is a case only with estates, you can change everything on mainland). Nice addons to the land usually raise the price of the property. Maybe it is wiser to buy something for less money than to make the environment yourself or to buy it in a store.
Another point here is whether you want it to be on the edge of the sim. The good side of this is that there are no neighbours on one (or two if you are on a corner) side but maybe you don't like to live near the bottomless pit.

• Neighbourhood Believe me, you don't want anything with camping around you. You also don't want your first neighbour to keep damn greeters who will spam your chat telling you every couple of minutes that somebody who's height is x and whose age is y has entered their club. Maybe you don't want a sex club around you. Think twice if you want to live or do your business in a mature or PG area. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Check the traffic of nearby parcels. If there is a very popular club around, it can get all the traffic of the sim making you unable to teleport to your own property. Have in mind that those things change fast, especially on mainland. One day you are living near a nice and peacefull buddhist monastery, the next there is an architectural crime with 20 avatars dancing and whoooting!
• Server type Not all the servers that run our world are the same. Some computers are older and some are newer and with better performances. As I got it Class V is what you should look for.

Have I missed something? Do you have any more tips and tricks? Share them with us!