On being a landowner

I did actually buy land after upgrading to a premium (paid) account, 512 square metres of mainland. It's near the coast, with what should remain an unrestricted view of the sea: the triangle of land between me and the ocean is "protected land." I've started building there, and have already run into the limits on land use.

In the real world, 512 square metres would qualify as a reasonable plot in many European cities; in SL it is tiny. The need for "camming distance" behind and around your avatar means that SL builds have to be at least four times the size of an equivalent space in RL — or have open sides, which is the alternative I chose.

I'm building a kind of tree-less treehouse: Platforms in the air, connected by ramps.

The second limitation is that a plot of this size can only support 117 prims. With two platforms, a sofa, two couples' dances, and a seating arrangement of cushions from the Lost Gardens of Apollo, I am already at 114. Oh noez!

I had noticed that there is a lot of land in this region for sale, three or four large plots going relatively cheaply at L$2.8 per metre, and considered upgrading my alts to premium accounts too, to bundle our tier allowance, but then left the idea there. Next day, the land had been bought up and was for sale again — for L$6 per metre. Bah. Missed my chance to become a low-density suburban-sprawl slum landlord.