Do people really pay $10,000L for a house or skybox?

While I was searching for homes and skyboxes in the last few weeks, I quickly discovered that there was a huge range in listed prices...and that higher prices did not necessarily indicate higher quality. Yet, there are many vendors listing houses and skyboxes on XStreetSL/Second Life Marketplace for $1000L, $5000L, $10,000L and more! I'm not sure why that's the case, since even a newbie could easily find low-pried homes on the site.

As with any other category, there is a lot of junk in the residental structures section, There are some real finds as well. Here's a listing of some of my favorites, from $22L to $500L. Since I was looking for a house with about 100 prims or less, and a skybox in the 15-20 prim range, I have primarily focused on those specs. If a designer has a shop in-world, I've tried to add the SLURL so you can hopefully see rezzed samples of the homes. If a designer has a lot of different houses on the XStreetSL site, I've provided a link to the search results for those houses.

• DIGS: (SLURL) (XSTREETSL)
• Skybox 25 prims, 15x20 w/ loft, $75L
• Skybox 12 prims, 20x20 w/loft, $50L
• Skybox 28 prims, 17x10 w/loft, $50L
• lei Freiman
• Simple Skybox with Changable Window Views 23prims, 20x20 w/loft, $125L
• {NP}
• Simple Studio Loft Skybox 12 prims, 20x20, $99L
• Sebastian Standish
• Upscale Skybox 20x15, 25 prims, $22L
• BELINA Corvale
• All glass skybox with loft 17prims, $75L
• capriccio (SLURL)
• Simple Skybox 10x10, 7 prims, $70L
• Finch Endrizzi
• Urban Skybox w/Changing Window loft, 24 x 24. 30 prims, $75L
• Single Story Urban Skybox w/Changing Window , 24 x24, 13 prims, $50L
• Pamela Galli - 3 prim one-room skyboxes, $299L
• Red Brick Arch Windows
• Drick and White Windows
• OD
• Serenity White Skybox 2 story, 75 prims, 32x32, $250L (I'd use this for a primary home)
• ce (XSTREETSL)
• Summer House 47 prims, 1 room, $80L
  Not all of the ce skyboxes are low prim, but these two are:
• Diona Skybox 22 prims, $80L
• Simplicity Brown/Green Skybox 24 prims, $70L
• Molto Bene! (SLURL) (XSTREETSL)
  Many more than I can mention in one post, but here are some highlights:
• Simple Skybox 10x10, 16 prims, $50L
• Mini Harwich Colonial House 105-128 prims, 17x20, $750L
• The Boathouse 92-108 prims, 30x15, $500L
• Sweet and Simple Skybox 10x10, 6 prims, $100L
  There are two or three other low prim skyboxes in the vendor search.
• Starwind (SLURL) (XSTREETSL)
  Price ranges from $50L (for some retiring items) to $400L
• The Cheri Skybox is only 26 prims w/loft (cylinder shape), $200L
  Other houses are mostly too high in prims for a secondary skybox, but very pretty for a primary home
• The Dusty Skybox 96 prims, 2 stories, 20x20, is only $50L
• Summer House, 118 prims, 2 stories, 30x15, $400L
• Daydream House/Skybox, 52 prims, 1 room, 20x15, $99L promo
• Thayen Eberdene (XSTEETSL)
• Variety of very low prim skyboxes(3 prims single story, 7 prims with loft) with bright colored walls or dramatic grey/black styling, $75-$100L
• Bang Bang Liars (SLURL)
• Modern Beach House 20x20, 57prims, 2 story, $399L - tried this one already and it's nice
• Bird's Next Skybox 26 prims, 10x15, $299L
• Modest House (SLURL) (XSTREETSL)
  $400L to $500L homes, most are two stories or w/ loft, most are moderate prim size for primary homes
• White Chalk Farmhouse 77 prims, $500L
• The Scilenzio House 94 prims, $500L - tried this one already and it's very nice and roomy!
• The Sleepyhead House 74 prims, $500L
• Mad Echo
• Ember Skybox 20x20, 24 prims, $100L

The adventures of Horatia Abonwood, mainland homeowner, part 1

Linden Labs has put so much effort in the last 8 months or so into attempting to make the new user experience easier. As someone who came back in Second Life in the last year, I can appreciate that. However, I think that a little effort could be made into further integrating those new users further along the path of Second Life participation  - in particular, the transition from Linden Home owner to land owner.

After several months of Linden Home ownership I finally gave in, abandoned a Linden Home for the last time, and went in search of land to buy. I had several reasons for doing so, but the biggest came down to one word: LAG. Since I write a fashion blog, I want to capture images almost every day, and my time to do so is in the evening (east coast USA). Most of those images I capture in a photo studio, so part of my "owned" home or land needs to accommodate one. Every Meadowbrook home that I tried had extensive lag in the evenings. Many of the Tahoe homes did as well.  For various reasons I had already ruled out Elderglen (too small and I wasn't into the hobbit-fantasy styling) and Shareta Osumai (every single home in this line that I tried had a malfunctioning control panel).

So off I go, attempting to find out what I need to know to own land, and what kind of land to buy.  I think about what I really want to accomplish with a land purchase: put a house on the ground for furniture/home decor sets (and occasionally change out that house to try out new ones), and a simple skybox in the air for a photo studio. I determine that I want about 1024m of land - 512m will be too small, and with too low of a prim allowance.

Based on what I read around the web, it appears that mainland will be cheaper in the long run. First I look on XStreetSL/Second Life Marketplace, and then I dig around on the Second Life web site, finding the land auctions. This seems promising. I watch for a few days, then start visiting land.

(to be continued)

New Beginnings

This weekend I moved from being a Linden Home owner to being a Linden Land owner. Only one word difference, but a big difference as far as the Second Life experience. I'll be sharing more about my journey shortly, but rest assured, 117Prims will still be focusing on low prim home furnishings, even though I'm on a 1028m plot of mainland now and have a larger prim allowance (for those who don't know, when you own land, all prims, including your home, count toward the allowance). I'm just going to also be commenting on homes under 100 prims and under $600L.



Above: inside my first home on my land, as I begin furnishing. House: Modest House The Silenzio House, 94 prims, $550L. Fireplace and Accessories: LISP Restoration Stone Fireplace, 20 prims for all pieces, $250L.

Jewell Tones

I love the richness of jewel tones in home furnishings. Ever since I first saw the MudHoney Water Sectionals with color-changing features in bold tones, I knew that I wanted to put together a living room featuring them. Finding pieces that go with them has been a little challenging, but I'm beginning to pull it together.



The rug is from Tatty Soup, which is a new store to me. I'll be featuring more of their items in future photos. The "wallpaper" on my Linden Home walls is one of Daisy Designs' 40 Grunge Wall and Wallpaper pack (should be available on XStreetSL.com). Most images in this pack have top and bottom border already included in the image.

Linden Homes tip: wallpaper those boring MeadowBrook walls!

A quick tip for the morning...getting bored with the limited choices in walls in your MeadowBrook Linden Home? For just a few prims, you can "wallpapper" an area or even an entire floor. It's a lot easier than, for example, trying to create a loft in a Tahoe home!


Here's what to do, for those who haven't figured it out on your own. Go to your building tools and create a cube. Change the depth to something narrow, like about .005. Move the prim near a wall that you'd like to "papper" and stretch the height and width to fit. Adjust positioning as needed. Right-click on the prim and select "edit." In the texture tab, chose a texture from your inventory.


Now, as far as finding textures...the grey texture above is from the vivid - suede textures pack2 on xstreetsl.com. The cost is $79L for 10 textures, which isn't bad. I like the dimensionality of the sueded "fabric" texture on the walls.


There are many other textures available on xstreetsl.com. Here's a suggestion on how to search for them and cut out a lot of those you really don't want to look through. Go to category > home > building products > textures. Scroll up to the top of your browser window to the search button. Click on the "advanced search" link.

Make sure the "Search within the current category" checkbox is checked. Put in a description for the style you'd like to search for. Put in a price range (for textures/texture packages, 0 to 150 is a good range). You can optionally add permissions, but leave blank if you don't care about that right now. Sort by age - ascending if you want to see the newest ones first. Sort by price - ascending if you want to see lowest priced ones first. Now, click on the green search button at the top. You'll find that this cuts out a lot of the clutter and junk that you'd typically find if you were just browsing through the textures category.

Way to go, 3-Oh!

There's a new shop that specializes in room sets that total 30 prims...so a Linden Home owner could put three of these sets in their home and still have 27 prims left over! The shop is called 3-Oh! and it's in the BugTussle sim, home to Sher's Cottage Gardens and LVS & Co.

Not only are the sets only 30 prims each, but each is only $300L for everything...lamps, rugs, plants and other accessories included.


Not surprisingly, most of the sets available now are living rooms, but there is a couple of bedroom sets and one breakfast room. Above is the Beach House Living Room.

For low prim furniture, the quality is about in the middle range. Some objects have shadows. Texture quality varies by the piece. Most of the sets are variations on a country theme - from the Victorian influenced Earthflowers Living Room to the Farmhouse Breakfast Room.

For the price and the low prim count, most of the rest you can find in SL is from is sales/promotions. PopArt, of course, is still the low price leader (but there most of the furnishings are going to be modern). For those who don't have the patience to put a room together from multiple sources, this is a great way to get a jump start on furnishing your Linden Home.

This is a concept I hope other stores will consider adapting.

Baustein Humpday Bargain!

Take a look at this great living room furniture set available at Baustein this week for Humpday Madness. Prim count on the sofa is fairly high - 17 prims - and the set is no mod - but it's such a great deal for really good quality furniture I wanted to pass it along to you. I didn't check the entire group's prim count but I suspect it's in the 40 prim range. So, you could still put the whole group into a Linden Home, especially if you were only doing, for example two furniture rooms/sets.