LuckyKips

Hmmm, so Dreamland ACS drops another 16 regions this week, and the week before, dropped 24. This is a total drop of 40 regions in just two weeks. Previous to that, Dreamland ACS dropped from having 7% of Estate regions down to 6.6 %. It seems to me that Dreamland ACS has developed a slow leak.

There are several expressions in the English language about mice, cats, and rats. One is, when the cat is away, the mice will play. Jack Linden? Was he the cat? And then there is the other one, in that the rats are the first ones to leave a sinking ship. I guess it is up to everyone to sort out who are the cats, mice and rats. Regardless, I am sure that the large land barons hate these weekly reports of yours Tyche.

It has been said that Atlas shrugged his shoulders. I suppose he did that when he had to take a leak?

ZoHa Boa

QUOTE: "The largest change this week were the arrival of 23 new regions owned by Jessica Chung Estates (fronted by a 6 day old avatar) which include 4 old regions returned to the grid. The other less mysterious major change was the loss of 16 Dreamland ACS regions. "


Seems that this is an alt (sister of anshe chung?)
Did they transfer the sims to that account ??

This is from the profile of "lilavs Resident"
"Currently works for Jessica Chung Estate. Contact me for available HS and FP for a very reasonable price!

Has 3 groups listed in her profile, 2 of them are: 'dreamland citizens' and "dreamland 2007 land sales'
Prices listed for the sims are also the current prices of dreamland.

UPDATE: Went to the sim Jessica Chung Estates, there was a box in the sales office: "Anshe Chung Sims"

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ZoHa Islands: SL Real Estate Management since 2007
Looking for land ? You will find it @ ZoHa Islands !


http://slurl.com/secondlife/ZoHa%20Islands/222/227/27
website: http://www.ZoHa-Islands.com

Wildefire Walcott

Yeah this is the first thing I thought when I saw that in Tyche's post. I wonder what's going on over there?

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Khamon

I believe the official buzz word is "rebranding."

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A Journey Through the World of Lever Harping

LuckyKips

Ahhh, thanks for that research Zoha. It all makes sense now - no leak, but just a different pot. A rebranding, as was suggested? Perhaps.

Ingo Gnito

ACS seems to be in big big trouble. I heard they have over 250 homesteads empty and nobody really wants them after bad experiences with some of their subletters. They have sent notecards to other estates saying if they send them customers to fill their homesteads they get paid 10k $L for each. Of course no serious estate would ever do so.

ACS counts on others who sublet their land and this is a highly risky business. Nice if you can sell 10 or 20 or 100 sims to a single customer, that makes you looking like a popstar in Tyches weekly reports but chances are that one day it all goes south if your business partner poofs and you get a hundred sims back with no warning

Better to stay small, have all land filled up and sleep like a baby

Ayesha Lytton

I don't get why anyone would want to get sims from Anshe and sublet when they can cut out the middleman and just pay (less) tier to LL.

I don't think many people in the land business are sleeping like babies right now. I certainly am not.

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Solace Beach Estates: Beautiful Residential & Commercial Land for All Budgets!
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Solace%20Beach/193/48/23

Desmond Shang

I'm sleeping ok, because I've been fiscally conservative and not overextended myself. I sat on substantial reserves for 4.5 years without needing them much; now the inherent security is really paying off. Not that I need to use them now, but that I *could* use them and have options.

True, I've been having to scale back a region or two, but honestly? Out of 50 regions, I wonder how many would even notice if I didn't tell them. I've been taking pretty good care of the affected people, I think, from feedback.

And yes, I could possibly 'tough it out' but quite frankly, after years of poor management decisions at Linden Research, I'm not going to tough this one out on my own, at the cost of several hundred a month. Like any real partner, they are going to actually feel some of the same pain I'm feeling. When things get better, we'll consider growth again.

But I'm convinced that simply continuing to pay through thick and thin doesn't teach a corporation anything.

* * * * *

Do they really have 250 empty homesteads? Looks like they are trying to shake out the market and crush some competition. Which is actually a viable strategy long term, possibly. Depends how weak the competition generally is.

Won't crush me though.

LuckyKips

The latest trend in renting out full prim and homestead sims amongst the land barons is that the intitial "purchase" price is from 1 L$ to around 99 L$. So that gets rid of putting out a large investment into land you really don't own anyway. Also, nowadays, one can pay week by week, instead of putting out a whole month's tier payment.

Thus, one can have estate admin rights to a sim, and have ownership control rights to all its land for minimal upfront costs and just pay week by week. And, these weekly payments are really about 5 to 10% above the actual costs of the tier payments paid to LL.

I check every day to see the trends. What I have described above is what is happening. The land barons are just trying to maintain their inventory by leasing out their sims at margins wherein they really make no money at all, since never are all their sims leased out.

However, what I have also noticed is that these really great deals are not being sucked up by the market place very quickly. And those that they do lease out, sometimes go back onto the marketplace fairly soon. It seems to me that even the large land barons are barely keeping their heads above water. If they are breaking even, they are doing well.

Something has got to give soon. I can not imagine that all of these land barons are Pollyannas. Some surely are realists and can see that given the current state of SL, and the continuing mismanagement by LL, things are going to get far worse than better in the upcoming year.

Ciaran Laval

There has been a big hoo-ha about Anshe related sims appearing on the grid and being rented out for less than what the cost price would be to a new customer with LL.

Tyche Shepherd

Here is an early Tyche Christmas present , The Private Estate survey for December to estimate Full/Homestead/Openspace penetration. As with previous months the Sample was 5000.

The main results are as follows

• Full Regions : 2454
• Homestead Regions: 1859
• Openspace: 31
• Closed to Public :656

Of the 4344 accessible regions , 56.5% 56.9% are Full Regions, 42.8% are Homesteads and 0.7% are Openspaces. The Margins of Error are +/-1.34% , +/- 1.34% and +/-0.23% respectively for the three figures figure at the 95% confidence level. This is a small but non-significant rise on Full Regions down from 55.3% turning round the last two months small drops in % share.

During this period Private estates had a net decrease of 84 Regions to a total of 24858. The proportion closed to public access was exactly (spooky) the same as last month at 13.1% .

4 of the Full Regions and 1 Homestead were Linden Developed Regions (i.e. sold new with content). Again as with all previous months this is too small penetration to reliably track.

687 of the 1859 (37.0%) Homestead regions were at the new non-grandfathered rate, this is a small rise of 2.9% from last month (34.1% ).


Taking these figures a good estimate of private estate tier due each month is US$5,173,000 +/- US$62,000 . (Calculated using known grandfathering rates but excludes any academic reductions and is rounded to the closest US$1000), this figure is marginally up on last month's estimate of US$5,130,000 by $43,000 , a rise of less than 0.9% within the margin of error, the small increase in full regions just covering the relative tiny loss of total Regions.


The top 20 landowners currently control 31.0% (+/- 1.3%) of private estate regions, This is marginally up on last month (30.7%) , using list prices their holdings represent 25.0% of total private estate tier.


The figures for the top 10 landowners are 25.0% (+/- 1.2%) of regions and 19.4% of tier (the larger estates tend to have a bigger proportion of homesteads than smaller estates). This share for the top 10 is up on last month figure of 23.6% of private estate regions.

The Top 10 Full Region/Homestead/Openspace proportions are 31.4%/68.0%/0.7% and 32.3%/67.1%0.5% for the top 20


The Top 10 Estates by number of regions held are as follows:

• Dreamland ACS 6.4%
• RGF Estates Inc 5.2%
• Fantasy World Estates 2.4%
• Zoha Islands 1.7% tied for 4th place with ...
• Dreamseeker Estates 1.7%
• Azure Islands 1.7%
• Jewels Islands 1.5%
• Bell Estates 1.4%
• Ohana Land 1.0%
• FantasyLand 1.0%

The Margins of error for these Estate shares range from +/-0.65% for the largest down to +/- 0.26% for the smallest, many of the changes in % were within margin of errors however the growth of Zoha Estate to 1.7% of the Grid is quite significant as is the drop of Fruit Islands Estate out of the top 10. The rise in share of the ACS owned Azure islands is also notable.


These rankings are purely on number of regions owned and are not based on FRE numbers .
Decembers list for the Estates in 11th to 20th position (In alphabetical order) is

• Atoutland
• Burdeyna Islands
• Fantasy Ventures (Fantasyland)
• Fruit Islands Estate
• Kendallwood Virtual Estates
• Kristaki Hudson
• Luxory Estates
• Reality Moller
• Serena Estates
• Surreal Estates

The smallest of these is about half the size of the current estate in 10th position

The regions were running on the following distribution of server classes:

• Class 501 41.6%
• Class 502 6.1%
• Class 503 45.5%
• Class 701 1.5%
• Class 702 4.4%
• Class 703 0.7%

There seem to be a slight decrease in regions hosted on Class 7 servers down to 6.6% from 6.8% last month

Survey Details: This survey was based on a random sample of 5000 private estate regions drawn from all 24858 private estates on the grid on 23rd December 2010. The actual surveying took place on 23rd & 24th December 2010.A further 3 regions were randomly selected to top up the sample, replacing those regions which were unavailable (other than closed to public access) at the time of surveying.

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Brenda Archer

Wonderful info. Thank you so much, Tyche. Though I'll never be in the land business, I continue to be interested in the potential of SL for hosting large groups, and the culture around land is an important part of that matrix.

Ingo Gnito

Who is Reality Moller ? I never heard about this estate before and now they suddenly rank under the top 20...

Tyche Shepherd

Sounds like your own knowledge of the world of Second Life Estates is rather limited then . The Reality Moller estates has been around for at least 2 to 3 years and is one of the larger Estates and has appeared before in the top 20 list back in September. There are 30 or so Estates with at least 100 regions such as Reality Moller the smaller 15 or so of these top estates will tend to appear in the 11th to 20th list from time to time, due to the margins of error inherent in the surveys.

Atashi Yue

Chung is still a name you can get?

Tyche Shepherd

If you are ACS ... Then yes .

Atashi Yue

I want the last name Peon! Oh wait....

Little Lost Linden

HOLY MOLY!

Once Rod addresses the dynamic shadow problem, perhaps land prices will get back to normal.

I still find it odd that LL is able to still charge as much as they do for land however. They really should lower prices on land.

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LuckyKips

You may find it strange for me to say so, but LL's lowering land prices would be the kiss of death for SL. Instead, what I believe LL has to do is get into the mind of all kinds of land owners and see things through their eyes. If LL can do this, it can then alter some of its absolutely stupid land pricing schemes that are counter productive.

Zena Juran

Looking at this from my viewpoint as a business owner who has rented one Full and two Homestead sims over the last 3 years, I do prefer to stay in one place for as long as possible and have continued to pay a tier rate that sometimes was higher than I could get elsewhere only if I were willing to uproot and go thru the hassle of relocating an established business.

But as the economy (or lack of) has caught up with me, I have consolidated, economized, optimized, and packaged my business to be able to move at a moments notice for a better price deal. I really need my overhead to be as low as possible now to stay in business.

Just looking around, I see weekly homestead prices dropping... lower than what I'm paying now. Over a years time, a few hundred to a couple thousand $Lindens a week savings adds up!

It doesn't really matter to me anymore if a Land Owner/Agency has been around for years or how many regions they have under their belt, they all seem to be subject to collapse without notice. Anyone who can give me a great deal right now will have my business!

Little Lost Linden

Sometimes I think Second Life may be subject to collapse without notice.

Hopefully it doesn't come to that. Hopefully Rod realizes that the future of Second Life rests with perfect working dynamic shadows. Once they are fixed, anything will be possible.

LuckyKips

Rod is known to give some notice when there is a major closing down:
'EA Land' closing just weeks after debut | Geek Gestalt - CNET News

Desmond Shang

Keep a copy of your region in your inventory at all times then

It's entirely possible to get entire regions for less than tier.

Desperate estate owners who are clueless about business decide that it's 'better to hang on' and get Some money in the door, rather than face the full tier of an abandoned region every month. Dozens and dozens make this decision.

Of course, this isn't sustainable, and you can imagine what it's like dealing with someone who is at their wit's end in business, and about to go under.

There's an old rule in business ~ if all you compete on is price, there's only one way to improve your product... which is to charge less. Until you are giving your time away.

I'm quite happy to surrender that end of the market to anyone who wants it. There's still quite a large segment of residents in SL who are willing to pay a fair price, pfft, even a few bucks more so long as they don't have to put up with the typical nonsense associated with the discount end of the market.

That said, the discount end of the market is still there, and in a death struggle with the opensource grids. It's kind of awful to watch.

Zena Juran

Although I'm not that familiar with your land holdings, my feelings are that you attach a "service" above the mere offering of land that a typical agency would provide. And that service people are willing to pay a "premium" for.

The "discount" land offerings that I am paying attention to atm are being offered by the top ten land holders in SL. Curious to know what would be the typical nonsense associated with the discount end of the market?

LuckyKips

From time to time I do see full prim estate sims coming up at leasing rates below, and sometimes well below tier. However, in these cases, I usually find out that these are some of those grandfathered full prim sims that have a monthly tier of 195 USD. These are real bargains. But then, a lot of them are not standalone sims - to me meaning part of an estate which has a convenant, and thus, one can not get estate manager's rights because then one could effectively change the convenant and settings for all the other sims under that estate.

Another red flag about these grandfathered bargains is that if the owner has come to this state of affairs of leasing out one of these low tier gems at such a low price... well, the end is probably very near for them. One usually can not get them at weekly rates either, and only by monthly rates, which makes the risk of leasing them even worse.