On April 4th Linden Lab made an offer many estate owners couldn’t refuse : Want Lower Tier? Now You Can Get Grandfathered Land Rates! The offer, which remains on the table until at least October gave estate owners to permanently lower their tier rates for an upfront fee :
Full Island:
- One-time buy-down fee: $600
- Grandfathered maintenance fee: $195/month (regularly $295/month)
Homestead:
- One-time buy-down fee: $180
- Grandfathered maintenance fee: $95/month (regularly $125/month)
So how is this going? Well Tyche “Statto” Shepherd has been on the ball and reveals some of the progress in an awesome Private Estate Survey April 2016. The survey revealed that since the March 2016 survey there had been a net loss of 35 regions (down 0.2%). However when it comes to the new buy down rate, Tyche reveals :
20.8% of Full Regions of all types are now at Buy Down tier rates while 3.8% of Homesteads are now Buy Down, homestead uptake of this offer has been low because most homesteads are already grandfathered (85% of them) .
Overall to date I estimate there are 1960 buy down full regions taken up since announcement and another 302 Homesteads , the margin of error on these estimates is +/- 145 and 117 regions respectively.
As Tyche points out, there were already a high number of Homestead regions with a grandfathered rate, to be honest I’m surprised that 302 have been converted to the new rate. When it comes to full regions, 1960 is quite an impressive figure.
Tyche further explains :
Taking these figures a good estimate of private estate tier due each month is now US$3,071,000 +/- US$44,000 . (Calculated using known grandfathering rates but excludes any academic reductions and is rounded to the closest US$1000), this figure is US$314,000 down on March’s estimate of US$3,385,000 (9.3% down) and about US$205,000 can be explained by new Buy Down Tier Rates.
With nearly 2300 buy down regions activated in the past month, Linden Lab have raised an additional US$1,096,000 +/- US$69,000 when we take into account the buy down setup charge includes the first months tier.
In short, the majority of the tier drop we’re seeing since March is due to people now paying less tier each month because they have taken Linden Lab up on their buy down offer. This has given Linden Lab an initial cash boost of course, when you factor in the buy down fees.
Another point to note from Tyche’s data is that we have over the last few weeks seen net growth of Private regions. On the 3rd April Tyche told us that there were 17,491. That came after a weekly net loss of 24 private regions. This was the day before Linden Lab made their Grandfathered Tier announcement.
On the 2nd of May Tyche told us that there were 17,505 private regions on the grid. This is a small net growth of 14 private regions. Whereas these aren’t staggering figures, they do suggest that the early progress of the Grandfathered tier offer is showing signs of promise. The real proof of the pudding will be revealed over the next six months or so I would imagine.
Overall this year, private regions have shrunk by 270, or 1.5%, so any signs to reverse that trend are to be welcomed.
For more Tyche goodness, please visit her site at : http://gridsurvey.com/
How is it that you can tell a sim has the status of grandfathered? Where once this was indicated by the class of sim, I’m not getting how this is done now. If you downpay, do you get a slower class sim? or what?
It should tell you in the Parcel Details when it lists the region type, it says something like Full Region/Grandfathered.
Class should no longer be a factor, but I think if you run a busy region they try and put you on better hardware where available.