Buying houses in cities

[Rhun]

And there is always the real estate to consider...if you are buying a house in Slumville, you should get a substantial discount. If you are buying it on Golden Hill, then it should probably be much more expensive.

 

[Phlebas]

And there is always the real estate to consider...if you are buying a house in Slumville, you should get a substantial discount. If you are buying it on Golden Hill, then it should probably be much more expensive.

Good point, the pc's have already decided what area they want to live in (its the artisans quarter) - talking to one of them last night about what they want and one wants a warehouse he can convert (so i just need to work out a gp / 10'sq cost) its the only the other one who's being awkward (mainly 'cos he doesn't know what he wants exactly so thats why he wants some options)

My SO just suggested getting onto some modern estage agent sites, downloading a selection of house plans and then just costing them up, but modern semi's dont translate that well into medieval walled city houses

I've encountered this before. I had a player once who insisted on me itemizing everything in any shop he went into. "oh, there's trinkets? What kind of trinkets? Intresting. What else has he got...I see...what else has he got?" and so on. Maybe its a playstyle thing, but I don't have time for that stuff. Same with houses.

Ultimately I've just told my players: "Tell me what you're looking for exactly and I'll tell you if you find it."

my pc's aren't normally that bad, but its not helped by the DM in another game some of us play in giving out detailed floor plans of houses we were looking to rent (i think they were copied direct from city of sharm which he wont let me borrow) unfortunately its raised expectations......

I'm going to just sketch out half a dozen options and price them and see what happens next

 

[Phlebas]

The 3e building prices are ridiculously high compared to the costs for weapons, armour and magic items - why spend 50,000gp on a mundane tower when you can get a Drawmij's Instant Fortress for the same price?! 1,000gp for a 1-3 room hovel is also pretty ridiculous; I suggest if you use the PHB equipment & DMG magic item costs as listed, dividing the listed building prices by 10 gives something reasonable. Or look at the 1e DMG construction costs, which are roughly 1/10 of 3e.

The 3e building costs seem taken from Basic/Expert/RC D&D, but in that line magic items cost far more than in 1e AD&D, from which 3e magic costs seem derived.

Funny enough we had a long discussion on this in the group - we decided that the prices made sense IF you assume most property is owned by a small group of upper class nobles / merchant houses and rented out. Since property is regarded as a source of income, you dont sell it off unless you're in need of cash so the scarcity of property on the market drives prices up.

there would be a small group of middle class artisans who owned their own property / workshop but the majority of the population would be in rented accomodation and never be able to buy their own property.

That applies to the lower end of the scale - once you get up to towers and castles then the build vs magic argument becomes a bit more interesting

 

[JRR_Talking]

money like hitpoints are a fairly abstract thing in D&D

after a few levels both stop being real...so after sya 3rd level a typical ,adveturer can eat where he likes, get drunk on 3 bottles of the citys most expensive wine and not care, where very expensive clothes...and do it all again 2 weeks later when he finishes his next adventure.
The main aim of money in D&D is to be balance the adventuring equipment, (mundane, masterwok and magic) a character can afford relative to his level and other PC's and NPC's It falls down horrible when you get into real world issue like buying up houses, setting up a business, etc.

Aside from all that, like others have said land is owned by a select few. Again they may be getting 10gp a month for a house rent* in that city. Meanwhile 20 miles away you are raiding an ogre lair and walking away with 500gp fire opals etc. the party can but such vast resources behind buying land and business it would through the whole city of kilter.

You almost have to bend things and say ok u can have a 5000gp nice big house, but nothing else and tie such efforts up in red tape.

John

 

[Phlebas]

Fair point, but I run a low magic & low cash campaign so setting up their headquarters is a
one of the main objectives of these players - in fact the priest has been putting every single bit of cash he has into the 'build a new temple' fund.

in a more standard D&D campaign, with more cash and more freely available equipment i'd agree that fussing about house prices isn't that worthwhile unless they're building stately homes or castles

 

[jmucchiello]

Its not that i can't do it, its just that I'd rather do something else with my time than play estate agent. "Splendid view of the crater of despair from the upper rooms, and the slime damage is only cosmetic....."

But unfortunately no supplement is going to give you that kind of detail as only you the DM know what the artisan's quarter of the city looks like, what architecture is common there, and how popular the area is. If the artisan quarter is a popular place to live, the 1,000 gp simple 1-3 room house will tend toward the 1 room side. If it's in a downward trend the 1,000 gp house will tend toward the 3 room side. It all depends on the specifics of where they are looking.

Just remember you don't have to be specific about this. Price of a house will never be 1,000 gp. Haggling will occur. Have them make up a general floor plan and then pick a price make them make an appraise check. Haggle with them over the price. Write down 3-5 issues the house has (sagging roof, termites in the bedroom, noisy neighbor) and when they look at the house give them a few spot checks to notice these things. The more they notice the better they can haggle the price down. If you really care about keeping the game low money, then you probably need to go into more detail than it sounds like you really want to.

Likewise, I would expect the temple would need to be built to order. Temples tend to have lots of closets in odd places, abundant but small living quarters and of course a big amphitheater-like area. A warehouse really doesn't work like that. Also, you need to pay extra for good acoustics (or sound baffling to keep the sacrifical noise down ).

 

[Cavebear]

All numbers are approximate:

If buying a house takes 25% of earnings for 20 years, the house costs five years worth of annual earnings. If the players wish to live with the artisans, the going price should be five years of artisan wages. According to the DMG, an artisan would earn about 1000 sp/year, so the house would be approximately 500gp.

A workshop/studio with living quarters would probably be between 450 and 800 square feet , so a 10'x10' area might be worth between 60gp and 115gp. Each additional floor might add 50% to the cost. A basement would add 100% to the cost.

Example: The player characters want a 40'x40' 3-story complex with basement. The cheapest they should be able to acquire one might be 500x2x300%=3,000gp. If they want it built to their own specifications it should be at least double that, plus the cost of any special features like traps and fortifications. Luxury architectural features (a temple inside for example) could easily double the cost as well. So it might be 12,000gp for a beautiful, luxurious, but unfortified complex in the artisans' quarter.

Setting up shop with the artisans would probably require that the guilds be paid off, to the tune of 10%--1,200gp in the above example. Maintenance might require 1% per year in building supplies and another 1% in wages for the tradesmen, and the adventurers would be expected to pay both guild dues and city taxes, since they are making this place their official residence. These dues and taxes might be fixed or they might be income-related, but the neighbours are possibly paying 10% to guild, 10% to city, and 10% to monarch, for a total of about 300sp per craftsman per year. If the adventurers and their henchmen are considered to be about 20 artisans, that would be a collective tax of 600gp/year.

Hope these figures are helpful. You may have to rework them a bit but the example might save you a bit of work.

 

[Vegepygmy]

No one has mentioned the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook yet?

 

[Rhun]

No one has mentioned the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook yet?

I've thought about mentioning it, but after looking through it, the pricing in it is pretty high. I mean, if you are looking through the components, a basic bedroom costs 700gp. The costs should definitely be revised down.

 

[Rhun]

If buying a house takes 25% of earnings for 20 years, the house costs five years worth of annual earnings. If the players wish to live with the artisans, the going price should be five years of artisan wages. According to the DMG, an artisan would earn about 1000 sp/year, so the house would be approximately 500gp.

I like this method. By the same token, a fairly unskilled laborer makes approximately 300-400 sp/year. So a simple home in a lower class neighborhood might run 150-200gp.

Consider this idea yoinked for future use. (Although if you were to base your figures off more modern day housing, it would probably be about 33% of earnings of 30 years...I suppose you would have to play with the numbers for what fits the campaign best.)