House Hunting …?
Anyone who knows me will know that one of my favorite past times in Second Life is shopping. Sunday mornings are my favorite, when I curl up at the computer bright and early with a cup of coffee, and start making the rounds of all my favorite stores- ETD, Nyte N Day, Callie Cline, Blaze, Mischief.. But gradually, that urge to shop has started evolving and sending me out to look for other things besides just clothes. For the most part, I haven’t really seen much need to have a house in Second Life. But at the same time.. lately, I’ve been starting to rethink that a bit. I’ve gone through three houses since I came to SL. I was lucky enough to have them rent free for a couple of months, but they just weren’t ‘me’. For one thing, they were really small.. which seems to be the case with most houses I’ve seen in world. I’ve always known that eventually I would switch to a Premium account when I knew I was ready, and I think I’m finally to that point, now. Over the past couple of days, I’ve been looking around at some houses. Like I said before, most of them are entirely too small. I tend to be terribly picky, and if I do get a house, I want it to be perfect. I want it to fit the image in my mind about what I want. For one thing, I want it to be BIG.
I want to have room to go all out on decorating. Yes, that might take a lot of time and money. But I’m ok with that. I just bought my very first home in real life less than a year ago, and for the most part it still isn’t really decorated the way I want. The walls are mostly bare, I haven’t gotten any art up yet. And my furniture is hand-me-down. But the place is mine to do what I want with, no matter how long that takes. I may as well repeat that in Second Life, no?
Not only must my home be big.. but I’d like for it to be modern. I’m not a fan of traditional wood style houses. I like marble and stonework, and contemporary styles.
Surprisingly, the cost of the actual homes themselves isn’t all that bad. But I’m wondering what this will cost me as far as the premium account. Maybe the houses I usually see are so small because thats what the $10/month tier allows. While I don’t care for the style- the size of the home I’m looking for could be best compared to the first picture.. its 430 prims, 48m wide/40m deep. And thats without being furnished. Would something like that fit on a regular 512×512 bit of land? (I think thats what you get at the starting premium rate, anyway.) Would I be over in prims? How much would something like this cost me, assuming I’d be able to fully furnish it with all the art and furniture I wanted?
I wish I could ask around online, but most of the people I’d really like to talk to about this aren’t around at the moment. Luckily, perfectionist that I am, I have plenty of time to decide. I think half the fun in this will be the house hunting itself. Its just another form of shopping. I’m having fun wandering around the pre-fabs, checking the size and layout of the houses and imaging how I’d decorate it if I did get one. I could spend weeks on this part alone before I actually make a move to upgrade. And that would be alright with me.
Through my eyes.. 
Hi Nika. That house would definitely not fit on a 512m piece of mainland, as it only holds 117 prims. Have you checked the Knowledge Base on the Second Life web site? There’s lots of information there.
It took me 5 months to buy some mainland, and I only bought 512m because I don’t want to pay tier (which is an additional cost to the monthly premium membership). So I’ve decided to just live outside, lol
Apparently the parcels aren’t uniformly shaped. My landlord’s 512sqm is 16×32, whereas I’ve seen treehouses that are 21×24 (still within 512sqm — you just do the straight multiplication to get the area size) but they wouldn’t fit on his land; I’d have to get two adjacent lots for that.
I don’t know if there is a standard number of prims allowed. My landlord gives us 234 prims per 512sqm plot but I heard that’s very generous!
I also heard that tier is more expensive on islands compared to the mainland, but islands might be lower-lag especially if they’re Class 5 Sims. I don’t even know what I’m talking about, I’m just repeating what IcyQueen told me, lol.
Plus if you purchase on an island I *think* you don’t need to be a premium member. You only need premium if you’re purchasing on the mainland.
There are stores selling low-prim furniture. I think a friend of mine might have the LM – if you want it, remind me so I can get it from her to pass to you 🙂
Lunette-
Yeah I spent some time talking to Chugabug last night and I think I’d need a 4096 lot.. or multiple lots. This is still very confusing to me, basically what I need to know now is how much the tier upgrade will cost me. Chug was guessing maybe I’d be paying about $20/month, which isn’t bad for what I’d be getting. But she wasn’t sure, and there doesn’t seem to be any information I’ve been able to find that gives me specific numbers as far as cost or prims go. The land size numbers don’t mean anything to me right now. I’m going to try asking a couple more people, plus send a notecard to the realor asking her what tier I’d need to support the house I’m looking at.
Quaintly- you don’t have to be premium to buy land on a private island? Now thats interesting.. I don’t want to buy from mainland at all- in fact, that would probably be a deal breaker. I want an area with as few residents around as possible.. absolutely no retail stores, and hopefully little to no crap floating around in the air. Yeah I know.. good luck with that. But I plan to do a lot of intense searching to find something along those lines. If I could afford it, I’d buy an entire region for my house and have it all to myself- LOL.
Nika, ask IcyQueen about the land she bought. She told me the tier is lower than most and because of that, the land is selling off really fast. She herself bought 3 lots! lol (and I know she’s definitely not a premium member ;-))
Oh, plus it’s strictly residential. She said the sim owner will not allow residents to open up stores or have business offices on their land. (does this sound ideal or what?? lol)
Hey Quaintly, I talked to Radar and had him look at the house I have an eye on, and he says it looks like I’ll need a 4096 lot in order to have enough prims left over to really furnish it.. something like that would probably cost me $26USD/month which isn’t too bad. He also recommended CZEstates to me.. maybe Icy can send me an IM or drop a comment on here letting me know what island she’s at. I plan to do some shopping around for land this weekend, and it would be nice to have a couple more places to look at. 🙂
I’ve told Icy already, but you might need to remind her by dropping her a notecard in-world — she’s out of town this weekend, but she brought her laptop with her, so she probably will still go online. So exciting, getting your own place! I’m looking at treehouses because I think they’re unique and picturesque, but they’re all fairly huge (at least a 1024 lot) and I’m wondering if I really want to make that much of a commitment to SL!
Thanks, I’ll do that.
I don’t have any pictures of the house I’m looking at just YET.. the first house I liked was the one in the top photo in this picture.. I’ve since dubbed that one as ‘The Beast’, lol. Its just SO HUGE.
The one I’ve really fallen in love with is very big as well, but it has a lot of neat features that I really like. Two tone painted walls, a hallway, various rooms (thats something you don’t see often in SL houses, so many of them are built like studios), an interior bathroom with its own door, built in planters, a small upper deck on the 2nd floor and a HUGE lower deck that is literally its own backyard. Its just WOW. I’ll probably post pictures over the weekend, assuming I’m going to get it.. there’s just a final critical detail I have to get figured out, first..