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To play the devils advocate for a moment, you know what you paid for, you got what you paid for at the time and there was never any guarantee when you bought your land that you would be able to sell it at around the same prices as you bought it.

Has your islands changed at all? No, they are still the same square meterage, still the same prim count and still the same hardware. You still have exactly what you paid for at exactly the same price and you made the choice to buy at that price.

Big businesses change the prices of things they sell all the time. If I bought a big screen TV yesterday to see its price cut today I may be a bit annoyed but if I bought it a month ago or a year ago, not so much.

So lets look at resale. Well everything being equal you pretty much had a reasonable chance of selling (and I mean Island transfer here, not just selling estate plots and charging tier) at the same price you bought. But you had to realize there was a chance you couldn't. There was a chance LL would go to the well, there was a chance you would have to sell quickly and under market value (I don't know, maybe due to illness say) and of course there was a chance you could sell for more than you paid. Either way your taking a calculated risk (you said so yourself) that you should have walked into with both eyes open.

So, lets look at the economics. On the sim I rent my land, the land owner now charges 10,000L$ per 4k plot per month (it recently went up too). That does seem to be average for commercial land from reliable sources that does allow people to use weapons. So, given 16 plots of that size on an island, he's making 160,000L$ or (at LindeX rates) just over 600USD a month on a full island. Take tier from that, and you've paid back your initial investment in 6 months (assuming the old SIM price). After that its pure profit and the ability to sell the island after, even if you get 1L$ for it your coming out ahead.

If you buy from him rather than rent, its 39,999 per plot (IIRC) and 8k tier. Thats 639984L$ (2400 USD so he immediately gets the price of the SIM back plus 800USD profit) and 128000L$ (480 USD, 185USD profit) a month tier.

So will we see a decease in rent/tier prices on estate land? I'd love that but I doubt it. People still have to cover their tier plus you never see an estate owner put the price down once they consider the island purchase price to be recouped. Will we see more islands? Yes, but will they be from reputable people? Who knows. Personally I'd always go with someone with a decent reputation, like Sarah Nerd or my current SIM owner, than some new unknown.