Price list for buildings...

[Celebrim]

I never agreed with a cost of 1,000gp for a simple house with a "thatch roof".

The biggest unrealism in that is the 'gold peice'. The medieval peasant rarely saw a coin, but when they did it was copper and silver. Since ancient times, a silver coin had been considered a days wages. By the high middle ages, inflation had raised wages to the equivalent of 2-3 silver coins per day but brought for the peasant at least only a marginal increase in real wealth from the increased prosperity. (The real money in the high middle ages was earned by the craft guilds with their legally enforced monopolies that let them fix high prices.)

So, for simplicity of calculation, let's fix the days wage at 1 s.p. If this is a fantasy economy where gold is as common as cobblestone, then the days wage could be a g.p.

Does it seem reasonable that a house for a peasant would cost three years of his wages? Maybe or maybe not. I don't find it too unreasonable, as three years wages is at least something that a family working together might save up over a few years, especially if we are thinking of houses as housing extended families of 12-16 people as they often did. But, perhaps there are factors I don't know about that would allow for more accurate calculations. The point is that 1000 s.p. is a reasonable cost for a house in an economy where the minimum wage is set at about 1 s.p. per day. The problem you sometimes run into, as in 1e, is that Gygax sets the minimum wage at 1 s.p. per day and then sets the cost of a house at more than 10,000 s.p. It makes sense in the adventuring economy, but not so much in the larger economy.

As for purchasing land from the nobility, in medieval times, you often couldn't buy land at all. Commonly speaking, you were a serf and it didn't matter, you rented if you were free

The cottages and improvements on the land were often in theory owned even by the serfs. In the Doomsday Book, for example, there are some fairly wealthy 'slaves' and there is documentation of nobles borrowing money from the serfs on their land because one of the serfs had become wealthy enough that they had more coin than their lord. There are also examples in the Doomsday Book of women property owners and renters who had higher legal standing than their lower born husband. The medieval system was nothing if not complicated, individualized, and baroque. It was essentially little more than government through contractual obligation, and everyone's contractual obligation varied according to what they could negotiate.

In any event, the other villagers would get together and help their neighbors raise the new house.

This doesn't change the cost of the house though. If 50 of your friends (and their wives) come over for a house raising, the cost of the house still must include the value of the labor that was donated to its construction. That right there would mean that the cost might be at least equivalent to 100 day wages (because any skilled carpenters would have labor worth several times the minimum wage), plus the cost of the labor put into the materials. Wealth is created by labor, but there is no free lunch. Donated labor is still a cost born by someone.

Payment was usually in the expectation of return assistance later. If anything material was given, it might have been meals during the labor.

All perhaps true, but just because you dont' have a coin based economy (and in most of the middle ages you had feudalism precisely because you didn't), doesnt' mean that prices are reduced. It just means you find alternative means of paying them than coin.

 

[Greenfield]

Throughout most of the feudal period, building anything was problematic. You needed the permission of the local nobility, who controlled the land.

Note that, technically, they didn't own it, they merely controlled it. The Crown owned it. The Crown owned essentially all the land under its authority, with the notable exception of church properties.

We tend to forget this in our modern view of the period, and in the way we game. The "cost of the land" was never a factor, since you couldn't buy it. To be an actual landowner was a special thing. Over time the nobility all accessed this privilege, at least for their family estates, but for a commoner it was all but unheard of for them to be a landowner.

It wasn't until the Renaissance that a middle class developed that could gather enough wealth and influence that a new term found its way into the language: Landlord.

These were commoners who were able to own land, and act as the nobles had in previous times, letting others live on their land, and collecting rents for that use. Being a landowner got a lot easier when the "New World" opened up, and that was a lot of the attraction for colonists. Even then, it was and remained such a special thing that it was mentioned in the US Constitution as a prerequisite for being able to vote. The Founders had no plan to let the common man vote, only the wealthy.

Also remember that, during the Dark Ages and well afterward, the common people themselves were considered the property of their lords. Look up the word "Serf", and you'll see what I mean. Russia didn't free their serfs until the mid 1800s, right around the time of the American Civil War. To be a freeman was something special. It meant that you owned yourself, and were free to travel as you chose.

So, while we play at games in a pseudo-medieval worlds, there's an entire spectrum of that world that we almost never even think about, and building homes or strongholds touches on a lot of it.

 

[lordxaviar]

the original DMG has times and costs that tie in with the new prices quite well, I havent compiled it yet but will eventually..