New house

So, new shop, and a new house.

This is the fourth house I've had in SL.  The second one was a mistake, I realized immediately, but the first one, and the third--the one I just left--were lovely, and I liked them a lot.  But the areas where they were got progressively more and more crowded and laggy.  I stayed with the last one for a really long time, or a relatively long time, in SL terms, maybe six months.

The area was lovely when I first moved there, the houses were spaced nicely, and there was a lot of open space.  It stayed that way for a pretty long time, then they started putting up more and more houses -- there were houses right up to my property line on both sides, and there was no longer any kind of cohesive theme to the area. 

And recently, some high rise buildings went up right next to us.  It was just getting too crowded.  So I started looking for something new, and found this new area on Cozumel last night.  The scale of the houses is a little off, I think -- the ceilings are too high -- but I like the look of it.  And even though the houses are kind of close together, they're all in the same theme, so it doesn't look junky.

I chose one of the more expensive ones right on the corner, so there's ocean on two sides, but it was still only $970/month.  A little more than I was paying before, but I think it's worth it.  I needed something with a little more illusion of privacy -- the last house was almost completely open, with no actual doors, and tons of windows.  Which was nice, but kind of exposed.  When I wanted to change clothes or take pictures, I felt kind of exposed.  This house is also bigger, and I think I can create an office upstairs.  It will be fun to furnish, I think.

While I was looking for houses, I found a row of beautiful blue Cape Cod houses in Myrtle Beach.  All of them were rented, but one of them was showing 0 full days left on the rent, and 0 prims, so I was thinking maybe that person would be giving  up the house and I could grab it, because it was exactly what I wanted.  I even thought, well, I can go ahead and get the house on Cozumel, and if the Myrtle Beach one opens up, I can get it and then let the other one go.

Well, last night I went to check again, and the rent still hadn't lapsed, but this time I clicked on the rental box to see how much it was.  Would you believe L$7,000/week??  Wow.  I did the math, and at the current exchange rate, that's like US$28.  Who would pay over $100 a month for a virtual house?  That just seems crazy to me.  Especially when you can get this kind of view for a little over $15?