Real estate in medieval fantasy (Greyhawk)

[Menexenus]

Hello all. My group is getting to the point where it is thinking about purchasing a mansion-like dwelling in an upscale neighborhood of Greyhawk (the Garden District). This building would function kind of like a headquarters for the group. This has led me to start thinking about real estate in medieval fantasy societies. But not knowing where to start and not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I figured I'd ask you folks to help get me started.

A) About how many gold pieces would such a building go for? Surely, some publication (either WotC or third party) includes a chart listing the prices for buying (or building) houses and other buildings. I'm also interested in setting prices for buying land both inside and outside a city. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

B) What about property tax? Was there such a thing in medieval societies? If so, what is an appropriate percentage? Would such a tax be collected annually? Who would collect it? What would happen to those who became delinquent in paying property taxes?

C) Was/is there any equivalent of zoning in medieval/fantasy settings? If you wanted to build on a plot of land, did you have to get architectural plans approved by anyone first? I assume that this sort of thing would be more of a guild-based issue than a government-based issue.

If anyone can answer these questions specifically in relation to the city of Greyhawk, even better.

Thanks!

 

[Peni Griffin]

Magical Medieval Society can get you started.

I know nothing about Greyhawk.

In real life, taxes have historically been levied by the king, city, church, or major landowner extending services to the tax base, and the basis of the valuation varied. The European church traditionally took one-tenth of the crop or other income of each parish family. Mayan cities taxed farmers in their sphere of influence at the rate of one-third of the crop. A European landholder with a keep would charge cash or crop rents to the farmers on his land, but his tax to the king might be limited to military service except in times of crisis, when a king might call a special one-time tax based on anything he pleased - a penny per person in the district, a 5% tax on the value of every pig, a sale tax for a set period, a road toll, anything. Rather than go through the complex process of assessing individual properties, the city of London used to tax buildings per window, which is why so many of its buildings were lightless, airless hovels. In the 17th century, the city of Paris would charge per floor counting between the ground and the eaves, so now we have the mansard roof, which sets the eaves one floor below the usable top story.

If you want your city to function it will have to have some public services and there will have to be some way to generate funds for these services. Which services a city regards as essential and which methods of garnering those funds the population regards as reasonable vary a lot. As in the examples of London and Paris above, tax evasion shapes the style of the city. If you have a modern-style property tax, with property owners paying based on the market value of their houses, you'll need full-time tax assessors who are also real estate appraisers, tracking the market as it goes up and down, and land developers and speculators will be in a constant arms race to convince the assessors that their property is worth little and their customers that it's worth quite a lot. You may or may not be able to find a hook in that, especially if you have con-minded players.

Modern real estate appraisal (excuse me, the day job is in an appraiser's office so I know some basics) relies primarily on three approaches to value: Cost, Sales Comparison, and Income.

The Cost Approach is based on how much it would cost to construct the building, which sounds simpler than it is but can be assumed to be simple in your game. Land, materials, and labor would be the primary costs.

The Sales Comparison Approach involves comparing similar recent sales to the subject property; it's the only way to appraise vacant land in a city and is the most common way to value residences. It's very important, in the Sales Comparison Approach, to find properties as similar as possible, as for every significant variation (size, location, physical features like flood plain, conditions of sale, property rights conveyed, amenities) an adjustment must be made and these are subjective.

The Income approach is based on the amount of income that a property could generate and is most suitable for rental properties, as it's trying to estimate the income generated by the property rather than by any business operated out of the property. For simplicity, if your PCs ever go into agriculture or mining you might want to use the Income Approach for that, too. The worth of the property under this approach is determined by selecting a capitalizaton rate (the higher the better) for the area/type of property and capitalizing the Annual Net Operating Income at that rate. A property that generates a net income of $10,000 capitalized at 10% would be worth $100,000 under this system, which is very old. The Romans used this method, calling it "so-many-years purchase." The above example would be "ten-years-purchase" as it would "pay for itself" in 10 years.

Remember, don't drive yourself crazy with this. D&D economics doesn't make sense and will not make sense, and it's up to you to know where to draw the line worrying about it. Suit the market to the kind of experience you want your PCs to have in their venture as property owners and give them fun things to do related to it. If the sort of building they want is realistically out of their reach, place a "haunted house" on the market and make taming it into an adventure. If you have someone who wants to design and decorate the building, build it in Sims or an architectural program, work out how many servants they need and where they all sleep, and is having fun with it, let 'em play. If they want an HQ like the Baxter Building but don't want to think about maintenance, let them hire a competent steward and tell them they'll have to sink X GP per month into the place to keep it presentable, then let it run itself.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'll second A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe.

I think one of the Ptolus preview PDFs on MonteCook.com also talks about the costs of renting and buying real estate in Ptolus, and what one gets for the price. It's a pretty portable section of the book, assuming it's freely available.

 

[Mortellan]

Just from memory, I think in the City of Greyhawk Boxed Set (2E) it gave a host of Greyhawk city taxes (the metal tax being a crucial one if you play GH castle). There is also an issue of citizenship and landowning rights. IIRC, there is a law keeping foreigners in the Foreign Quarter whereas the Upper part of the city is the province of the wealthy GH citizenry (and foreign diplomats-but thats politics). The reason for this would be so a large wealthy country can't come in and start buying up real estate because they can (think of it like how Asian nations buy up American properties or vice versa). It would be essential to GH's neutral 'Free City' status to only allow citizens ownership of land (once again excluding embassies). Now how you go about attaining citizenship is another matter altogether but when you start getting into which area of the city to buy land then class becomes an issue. Money might not be enough. Also a place like GH is highly crowded so any estates on the market will surely be sought by other wealthy NPCs which can lead to some intrigue.

 

[Minicol]

Based on medieval France, there were no direct taxes on the surface occupied, but rather taxes on the number of windows and chimneys you had (you needed a chimney to cook and heat the place).

I would not worry too much about precise figures, as the economics of the game are rather ridiculous as they are. Look at the pricing of magic weapons for instance...

 

[S'mon]

A. The DMG has suggested prices, but it should really depend on your game. For an unfortified urban mansion in a cash rich economy 50,000 gp might be reasonable; that'd be about $5 million at today's prices.

B. Property taxes were vital to a medieval city. Annual 1% of the build cost would be fair; eg 50,000 gp mansion > 500 gp/year.

C. Cities quite often had zoning ordinances of the "no tanneries within the city walls" sort, but not detailed planning codes.

 

[Alisair Longreach]

Dungeon Master's Guide has a couple of sections about making a city and running a business.

Cityscape is all about running an urban campaign.

The Stronghold Builder's Guidebook is rules for creating all sorts of buildings with prices and inventory and staff. It's very useful if your players want to create their own mansion from the ground up.

 

[Peni Griffin]

Cityscape is all about running an urban campaign, but it's not very good for someone looking to fiddle with infrastructure, as it has a poor grasp of the reasons cities are built, the ways in which the grow, the needs they fill and create, and the interaction between the individual and the society - in short, of everything that makes a city interesting.

MMMS, the Greyhawk boxed set, and a 101 Urban Studies text are probably the most fruitful combination of resources the OP could use.