Cost of a small House

[iwatt]

We are starting a campaign with ECl 3 characters. We would like to know what the cost of the following house is:

It includes: 2 10x10 bedrooms
1 10x10 working room
1 10x10 common room (dining cooking)

all of the above are for regular humanoids, so the rooms are 10' tall. We also need a room for a half-ogre. I think it would be 15' tall, and be 15x15.

So can someone help me with this. Even a ballpark figure would be helpful.

1) What would it cost?
2) What would the rent be for something like this?

 

[Nareau]

Off the top of my head, I'd have it cost between 1,000-5,000gp. The variation would depend on the quality of the house, the location, etc. 1,000gp would buy you a little shack in the slum, or a place out in the country. It wouldn't be great, but there wouldn't be anything noticably wrong with it. 5,000gp would get you a nice place near the center of town. Anything fancy (reinforced structure, located in the wealthiest/best guarded part of town, etc) would cost more.

I'd rent it for 10-25% of the total value/year.

But this really depends on the general economy of the area. I think it should represent enough of an investment to put a dent in the PC's pocketbooks, but not enough to dissuade them from doing it entirely.

I'd also deal somewhat with the problems and responsibilities of homeownership. Taxes, vandalism, burglaries, upkeep, etc. may become an issue, especially if the adventurers aren't at home for long stretches of time.

Spider

 

[Philip]

According to the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, a basic bedroom suite costs 800 gp. and a basic common area 500 gp. Supposing a basic house consists of these two areas, it would cost about 1300 gp.

Still, I think this is A LOT of money, as a commoner is supposed to make about 1 sp. a day. A basic house would then be 13,000 days of wages or about 35 years. Commoners would be stupid no to sell their shanties for some extra bread.

 

[Nareau]

Not that modern economics should ever be referenced when talking about D&D economics....but a 35 year mortgage doesn't sound all that far off for a low-wage earner of today.

Spider

 

[Philip]

Not that modern economics should ever be referenced when talking about D&D economics....but a 35 year mortgage doesn't sound all that far off for a low-wage earner of today.

I agree completely. In fact, the cost of housing in relation to things like food or basic tools should be much LESS in medieval type settings than in modern settings, so this makes the effect even more pronounced. A major part of the costs of a modern house is primarily in wages and special materials. If you had craftsmen and laborers willing to work for just 1 sp. a day, and your materials (wood, plaster etc.) would probably cost no more than 100 gp., then a basic house should probably cost around 250 gp., not 1,000 gp.

 

[Rebecca Borgstrom]

I theorize that 1sp for labor is before the fine print. By the time you're done paying the zoning fee, fingernail fee, location fee, freedom fee, union fee, virtue fee, import fee, taxes, forest usage fee, quarry tariff, bugbear insurance, and so forth, you've given the worker 2gp, the town 2gp, and the government 3gp for a single day's work. Note that you can generally halve this cost with the Craft Peasant Feat.

Rebecca

 

[Al]

Not that modern economics should ever be referenced when talking about D&D economics....but a 35 year mortgage doesn't sound all that far off for a low-wage earner of today.

Spider

A 35 year mortgage doesn't involve the earner's *entire* wage packet being devoted into the payment- and is further hampered by the notion of interest.

I've always found the DMG prices for housing slightly too high, but haven't studied medieval sociology and housing enough to make a ballpark figure, so I just go with the prices suggested. A 'Simple House' is one to three rooms, at 1,000gp, so I guess that the house described is pitching in at 2,000gp (10'x10' rooms are not big). Rent-wise, I believe that modern market rates are much lower than 10%: about 5% or perhaps slightly less of total value is about the norm, so the PCs would be paying out 100gp/year.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

The affordability of a house for a low-wage commoner doesn't seem like much of an issue for me. In a pseudo-medieval society, such people typically *wouldn't* actually own their homes. And certainly those that did would not have a "bedroom suite" separate from the common room, of the sort described in the Stronghold Builder's Guide. That sort of thing would be for a successful tradesman. A commoner's family would be more likely to share a single one-room shack considerably smaller than the (20'x20') "common room" in the book.

The comparison seems much more apt when it comes to the labor cost involved in building the home, but that fails to factor in the cost of the plot itself, which is significant.

 

[Ferret]

Wouldn't most peasents live in a Rag/Stove/Chair 10X10? that'd be about 300gp yeah, and you could build it for about 100gp. And it would hold about 6-8 a la Charlie bucket.

 

[iwatt]

I think we'l have to rent

I just want to see whom they send to collect the money from our half-ogre barbarian.