Linden Lab Official:Private Region (Island) Transfer Process

Linden Lab hasn't traditionally been involved in Resident-to-Resident transfers of Private Regions (Islands) other than to perform the transfer itself upon receiving permission from the buyer and seller. This has meant that Residents have had to arrange payments privately between themselves, and has proven to be problematic at times.

For transfer requests submitted on or after Monday 10th March 2008, we allow the buyer in a Region transfer to pay the seller through their Second Life account. This is now our default transfer process.

How do Private Region transfers work?

Both buyer and seller must create support tickets, via the Support Portal, that name the Region to be transferred and the transaction amount they have agreed upon. This amount can be in either U.S. dollars (USD) or Linden dollars (L$). Both sides also have to confirm other details about the Region being transferred.

There's a special ticket type for Region transfers:

• Ticket Type: Land and Region Issues
• Region Request: Region Change
• Region Change: Transfer
• Transfer type: (either buying or selling)

If both tickets match (that is, they state the same details and value), we charge the buyer through their Second Life account, either in USD or L$ as specified in the tickets. Once the charge has been successful, we credit the seller the same amount minus the transfer fee that we normally charge. The transfer of the Region then goes ahead as usual.

The Region (Island) transfer fee, always payable by the seller, is USD$100 (or L$28,000 for L$ transfers).

This does mean that buyers need valid payment information on file with Linden Lab (or have the necessary account credit in USD or L$). The [1]Increase Credit link on [2]your Dashboard (shown when you click the Manage link under the Linden Exchange heading on the left) can be used to add USD credit to an account.

If buyers use PayPal as their payment method, they need to have their PayPal agreement set to a high enough spending limit (by default PayPal limits are relatively low).

If the buyer's payment fails for any reason, then the transfer is cancelled and no action is taken. Both Second Life accounts must be in good standing (not delinquent/in debt) for the transfer to take place.

We hope that this makes the process of transferring Regions quick, safe and reliable for buyers and sellers. If you have any questions, please contact the Concierge team.

How long does a transfer take?

After both the buyer and seller have submitted their tickets to Support, you can normally expect your Private Region transfer to take 5-10 business days. Depending on the size of our current Region transfer queue, your transfer may occasionally take longer than 10 business days. If the next billing date for the Region is coming up soon, and both the seller and buyer want to have the transfer done by then, we will try to make that happen. We need to have at least 5 billing days' notice from both parties. Please submit your transfer ticket and include the next billing date in the summary line (for example, "NOVEMBER 12 transfer Oleo Isle to Pony Linden"). Then contact Concierge support through chat or phone, provide your ticket number, and confirm that the billing date has been noted.