Flipping.

[Snowy]

Hi, as everyone knows there's a rule against flipping properties. And I get that, the rule itself is probably not made because flipping apartments are considered unrealistic, more likely because a lot of people would do it with the full intention of making money, instead of focusing on the roleplay part of it.  Therefore PM made the solution that you can apply to become a real estate company or a landlord, to make sure that everyone flipping properties are doing it with a high level of roleplay. I fully understand this, and I agree with it.

 

The issue here is the vehicle market, every day you see ads filled with people that flips vehicles and makes a high amount of money doing it.  I'm very tired of seeing ads such as "Buying any vehicle without a budget" and people flipping cars with minor roleplay included, just to make cash. 

 

As fipping apartments are not allowed, I feel like people without a dealership shouldn't be able to flip cars either. In the end it's basically the same.  A possible solution to this could be adding a max profit percentage or something like that? ( Would work on apartments aswell ) but I don't know. This is definitely one thing that fucks up the economy and should be looked into.

[H04X]

Vehicles are very damaging to the economy overall. From an outsider's perspective, I feel as if there's a lot more effort put into an interior or property (because there's a lot of logistics and guidelines you have to follow to begin with) as opposed to just upgrading a car or putting a GPS on for $500. Generally speaking, mechanics make abnormal amounts with half as much effort. I highly suggest tighter restrictions on vehicles too in order to prevent the economy from collapsing from 700+ online mechanics. As for the properties, I don't personally have any issues with it as long as - relatively speaking - it's balanced out (hence the suggestion to work on vehicles.)

[QuadTurboW16]

Yes, cell phone dealerships are extremely unrealistic. For one, realistically you would need a place to store the vehicles instead of /vpark all of them. And two, you wouldn't have any advantage compare to actual dealerships because there's no warranty, vehicle inspection, payment plans, etc. Even though these things don't exist here, it's still completely unrealistic to have in game ads section as well as vehicle advertisements forum filled with buying and selling of all these cell phone dealerships just for the profit. And yeah no roleplay whatsoever aside from /me takes paper and signs them is also a huge problem.

 

Something we can do is to make a rule similar to property flipping. Player should be able to sell their own cars normally but selling vehicles like a dealership need to be prohibited. That also includes topics on vehicle forum that are buying and selling any cars as well as BUYING ANY VEHICLE. Or we can remove the 5% tax for dealerships because in real life, dealerships don't pay sales tax when customers trade-in their vehicle.

 

 

Edited March 5, 2021 by QuadTurboW16

[K3V]

I completely agree - Vehicle dealerships right now have next to no use as ANYONE can just stick up ad's and trade all of their vehicles.

[HB]

I support this plan 90% I completely support the ban of cell phone dealers. I didn't claw through a mountain red tape to get a dealership only to be taken ove by shmucks with this invisible dealerships that pop out of no where. I believe in a complete ban of these dealers. If they want to work in this industry they need to go and apply for a property. Register it, pay for security, staff and what not and then sell. The 10% I don't agree with is the profit limitation. Due to these so called cell phone dealers the trade in prices of the cars are screwed, players don't realize they are driving a depreciating asset. They dump 40k in mods and expect to get every penny back from us. They want retail value for it. That's not how the world works. The cell phone dealers offer a few grand more and guess what we lose the car cause they have no over head costs, we do.

[Bixo]

The number of private "flippers" have increased in the last months and the amount of adverts seen of people buying all cars is so high that it becomes annoying. I agree with the fact that only a selected group (dealerships) should be able to sell vehicles in mass, not only because businesses are also supposed to create roleplay opportunities, but also because phone flippers are lately changing the market by adding a few grands to what dealerships offer, even buying cars close to the market price, and re-selling those vehicles at a way higher amount, above the market price. The idea of used car dealerships is to have good deals for people and this is unfortunately changing because of the aforementioned reason. I don't think profits should be limited, but cell phone sellers that inflate prices and create no roleplay should be limited.

[Charlie76]

Absolutely in favor. 

[Ink]

So there are a few perspectives in this issue which I think bear respect no matter which side of the fold you are on.

 

• Realistically, used cars are sold in both dealerships (public market) and through private listings by the seller.
• Realistically, used car dealerships are a safer way to purchase cars and offer you more services and guarantees, as well as financing. As a result, used car dealerships tend to charge competitive market rates for their used cars--they have overhead and need to make a profit for the dealership and the salesman.
• Realistically, private sellers make up a large portion of the used car market. Because you're dealing with a person directly, there's more risk of fraudulent sales, but in exchange these sales are often easier and less expensive.
• In game, dealerships are limited in number and require a lot of OOC work to get approved for. 
• In game, the benefits of buying from a dealership are mostly not portrayed, and the experience of buying from a dealership or a private seller is mostly the same.
• In game, there is definitely a trend of people operating "virtual dealerships" and skipping all the OOC process of running an actual dealership.
• It does not make sense to destroy one or the other.

So how about a compromise? What if we used a bit of uncomfortable OOC regulation (it could even be IC) that private dealers have a tighter sales cap than dealerships? if you want to sell your car on your own, sure, you can, but you can only, say, sell it for 70% of the car's values at maximum. Or perhaps there's an additional 10% sales tax on private sales. This is enough of a hit that if someone just wants to sell their car, it's alright, but if someone wants to run a car-flipping business it's just no longer tenable. Alternatively, maybe there can be some new benefits created for cars sold by dealerships, such as +7 days of insurance free as part of the sale (and if people abuse this that's obviously punishable) and an automatic car wash--just as examples of possibly ways we can incentivize actual dealerships instead of just punishing private sellers.

 

I'm not the biggest fan of this, but I feel like this may be one of the best possible ways to solve this issue rather than making a hard rule about "you can't sell your own car without a dealership." 

 

At the end of the day, dealerships are still useful to run. You are creating a car marketplace where people who are both buying and selling know they can stop by. It's expensive to find a buyer for one specific car, but if you have a variety of cars you're more likely to find a buyer, or you're more likely to have people show up to browse and decide to buy on a whim. But I agree that the trend of "virtual dealerships" is really flying in the face of the people who put in the time and effort to RP an official dealership on a server where there is no functional difference between buying your car from a reputable dealer versus some random guy you met on /ad.

[Snowy]

1 minute ago, Ink said:

So there are a few perspectives in this issue which I think bear respect no matter which side of the fold you are on.

 

• Realistically, used cars are sold in both dealerships (public market) and through private listings by the seller.
• Realistically, used car dealerships are a safer way to purchase cars and offer you more services and guarantees, as well as financing. As a result, used car dealerships tend to charge competitive market rates for their used cars--they have overhead and need to make a profit for the dealership and the salesman.
• Realistically, private sellers make up a large portion of the used car market. Because you're dealing with a person directly, there's more risk of fraudulent sales, but in exchange these sales are often easier and less expensive.
• In game, dealerships are limited in number and require a lot of OOC work to get approved for. 
• In game, the benefits of buying from a dealership are mostly not portrayed, and the experience of buying from a dealership or a private seller is mostly the same.
• In game, there is definitely a trend of people operating "virtual dealerships" and skipping all the OOC process of running an actual dealership.
• It does not make sense to destroy one or the other.

So how about a compromise? What if we used a bit of uncomfortable OOC regulation (it could even be IC) that private dealers have a tighter sales cap than dealerships? if you want to sell your car on your own, sure, you can, but you can only, say, sell it for 70% of the car's values at maximum. Or perhaps there's an additional 10% sales tax on private sales. This is enough of a hit that if someone just wants to sell their car, it's alright, but if someone wants to run a car-flipping business it's just no longer tenable. Alternatively, maybe there can be some new benefits created for cars sold by dealerships, such as +7 days of insurance free as part of the sale (and if people abuse this that's obviously punishable) and an automatic car wash--just as examples of possibly ways we can incentivize actual dealerships instead of just punishing private sellers.

 

I'm not the biggest fan of this, but I feel like this may be one of the best possible ways to solve this issue rather than making a hard rule about "you can't sell your own car without a dealership." 

 

At the end of the day, dealerships are still useful to run. You are creating a car marketplace where people who are both buying and selling know they can stop by. It's expensive to find a buyer for one specific car, but if you have a variety of cars you're more likely to find a buyer, or you're more likely to have people show up to browse and decide to buy on a whim. But I agree that the trend of "virtual dealerships" is really flying in the face of the people who put in the time and effort to RP an official dealership on a server where there is no functional difference between buying your car from a reputable dealer versus some random guy you met on /ad.

I agree but honestly it's not all about these "virtual dealerships vs regular dealerships" More like comparing them to the current rules of properties. If you buy a property with the intention to sell it after 14 days with a 100k profit it's against the rules. But buying a Pariah for a quick 100k flip is completely fine. 

[eTaylor]

9 minutes ago, Snowy said:

But buying a Pariah for a quick 100k flip is completely fine. 

Wait, how does a car suddenly increase value from one minute to another?