I had a sudden urge to look at homestead and openspace sim rentals this afternoon. I don't know what brought it on, except possibly a surge of envy at the seemingly unlimited amount of prims available. Oh, I know they're not really unlimited, but hey, 3750 prims on a homestead compared to 440 on my current land seems almost unlimited!
But as usual... economics. *sigh*
Although I remembered that for a period of time, when my ISP was behaving badly and refusing to connect to overseas servers, I used to spend $200 a month (in Malaysian dollars, or Ringgit) on a VPN connection just to get into SL... so it does seem, if I really wanted to, I could spare $200. Which is roughly about USD$60. Which means maybe I could share half a homestead with someone. [Homestead tiers are USD$125 a month]
[EDIT: Gogo has just informed me that homesteads are currently USD$95 a month, but tier is rising to USD$125 in July 2010]
Unfortunately I can still think of a lot of better ways to spend $200 than on half an SL sim, especially when I'm thinking of buying a house in RL. Finally. (My dad's been after me to buy a house ever since I started working 8 years ago. Why help to pay someone else's mortgage when you can pay your own? he says.) Which means... no half sim. Stop thinking about it, Quaintly! *baps self*
I 'd go for the RL house, Q! :))
Btw check Banana's post here http://bananavella.blogspot.com/2009/10/land-prices-semi-explained.html
and you can ask her for advice. Her whole sim isnt that expensive, i think, and i am building there with NO LAG YAY!!!
I firmly believe that SL land price is too expensive; also, I used to have a OpenSpaces sim (now they are called Homestead) and I lost it when LL suddenly decided to double its manteinance cost. Shafted once...
So go for the RL house! It is so wonderful to have one! Once you finish paying for it, at least *winks*.