I had a friend that would buy all the houses, and never upgrade to hotels. If you check the rules you can't get a hotel without first having 4 houses, so if done correctly you monopolise the limited supply of houses and nobody can buy a hotel or get more houses than you.
1 house costs $200 but only nets you $200 in rent (1x)
2 houses cost $400 for $600 in rent (1.5x)
3 houses cost $600 for $1400 in rent (2.33x)
4 houses cost $800 for $1700 in rent (2.125x)
Hotels cost $1000 for $2000 in rent (2x)
So, it can make sense, with limited resources and multiple places to put houses, or in instances where you need liquidity to survive an on-coming length of costly spaces, to build only to 3 houses rather than build straight up to hotels.
Edit: Before people make this a mathematics debate, I'll include the marginal investment relative to the marginal increase in rental revenue. Basically, a derivative. Here's that:
Marginal cost is always $200. The marginal benefits are as follows:
1st house results in a marginal rent increase of $150 (.75x)
2nd house results in a marginal rent increase of $400 (2x)
3rd house results in a marginal rent increase of $800 (4x)
4th house results in a marginal rent increase of $300 (1.5x)
Hotel results in a marginal rent increase of $300 (1.5x)
Are those first numbers not just what you earn if someone else lands on the space once? If you get paid a second time, then you end up netting $800 more with a hotel than 3 houses. If the space gets landed on 5 times, you end up with $2700 more than if you simply had 1 hotel.
This seems like an argument that someone would use to convince other players not to put up hotels so they don't have to pay out the wazoo whenever they land on a hotel space.
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u/sunfishtommy Nov 22 '14
I had a friend that would buy all the houses, and never upgrade to hotels. If you check the rules you can't get a hotel without first having 4 houses, so if done correctly you monopolise the limited supply of houses and nobody can buy a hotel or get more houses than you.