Buying land in Second life

In the blog post What are Second Live land tier fees?  TD mentioned you have to have a premium account to own land in Second Life, which is true, but there is a way around this little problem.  There are several people who own whole sim and deal the real estate.  A person with a basic account can buy land for them and have full use of that land without having to buy a premium account.

In fact the leading money maker (other than the Lindens) in Second life is Anshe Chung.  Yu may recognize the name, because you can see it every where on for sale signs.  Many people don’t like her very much, calling her a land baron and all kinds of nasty things.  I personally admire her and what she has done in Second Life.

According to reports in several major news sources Anshe Chung is Second Life’s largest in world business. And is doing business to the tune of 500,000 Lindens a day.  At current market value that is $1800.00 US dollars a day, that is 12,600 dollars a week, 655,200 dollars a year; of course her expenses need to come out of that.  Still that is a lot of money to take out of a virtual world.

This quote comes directly from her page on the web at www.anshechung.com.

Beside the ANSHECHUNG.COM name, that stands for general land sales
and financial services, several other brands have been established. Centre Ville
and Plush are Second Life’s largest telehub mall chains, together featuring more
than 700 retailers in over 30 locations. The Dreamland brand with its more
than 50 regions stands for the cutting edge of zoned community development. SLExchange.com, in which ANSHECHUNG.COM holds a 30% stake, is
the most popular Web-based trading platform for Second Life content and land.
In Anshe’s world the tiers are a bit more expensive and the smallest parcel of land you can buy from her is 1024 sqm.  So her tiers start a 8 dollars a month fro that 1024 sqm then up to 3072 sqm is 15 dollars a month, 5120sqm $25, 9216sqm $40, 13312 sqm $60, 16384 $75, 32768 sqm $125, 49152 sqm $170, or a whole sim at only $215 a month.  And here land cost run a bit different than the lindens do also.  The  piece of DreamLand I bought is in a brand new sim, Tiara and I are the first to purchase there, so probably on the newest “bestest” server and as of now completely lag free.  This land cost me 6,000 lindens per 1024 sqm.

Now if you compare this to what Second life has for sale and their teirs.  You will find she really doesn’t have that much of a mark up… so a lot of customers are spending their money with her.
The Linden tier system works like this …  the smallest piece of land you can own is 512 sqm with no tier to pay… comes with the premium account… so to have to pay the first tier you would actually have to own 1024 sqm at a tier payment of $5 monthly then land above that figure is 2,048sqm $15, 4096sqm $25, 8192 sqm $40, 16384 sqm $75, 32768 sqm $125, or an entire sim of 65536 sqm for $195.

Now here is the thing that really makes me, as a new comer to Second life, go hmmmm is the fact that you can get more land at tier value by dropping your premium acct and buying Anshe and appear to be saving money, except for the fact that you are losing 450L a week because of the difference between the basic and the premium allotment of money.  Hmmmmmmmmm….. Maybe this one slipped by the Lindens before they realized what they were letting go.