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aboyd
2009-04-19, 12:23 AM
There is a haunted mansion -- perhaps 80 rooms -- on a large lot of land. The mansion I guesstimate would be worth 400,000+ gp. The land, which could accommodate probably 30 to 40 normal homes along a nice wide street, should also count for something. Maybe it's worth 100,000 gold in ideal conditions?

There are rules in the PHB or DMG for homes & strongholds, but they don't go quite this far, which is why I'm sorta guessing and extrapolating. Can anyone guess better?

OK, now, having some base value, consider that the mansion & surrounding land has been haunted for 50 years. This is why there are no homes around it. No one goes near. The street is abandoned. An actual ghost of a child sometimes appears on the street, beckoning naive people in. The question is: if the players clear the mansion of haunts, and revitalize the area by removing unhallow effects and such, what does the surrounding community think? Do they suddenly value the land & mansion at full price, or would people naturally remain skeptical? How long would people need before the house would be valued at top dollar?

How much do you think the land & mansion could go for if it were left in a still-haunted state? Would anyone buy it? Any real estate agents on this forum wish to share how steep a cut in selling price you might have to do in order to sell a well-known drug lord's house, or sell a well-known house of a suicide or murder victim? You know? What happens to houses like that? How difficult are they to move?

monty
2009-04-19, 12:35 AM
You probably want the Stronghold Builder's Guide. I don't own the book myself, so I can't say for sure, but I'm reasonably confident that's the place to look.

Narmoth
2009-04-19, 03:44 AM
Nope, Stronghold builders guide doesn't mention the price of land anywhere.

Fizban
2009-04-19, 04:10 AM
Give me a map and contents of the mansion and I can price it with the SBG, though the only info it has about land is if the land could be considered a source of income; In which case it's just valued as a percentage mark up on the mansion and gives a percentage back in income every so often. Probably reduce the worth a bit since the furnishings would be degraded. Depending on how fancy it is, they're either a very small or very large part of the cost compared to the walls themselves. The price of the land the building stands on itself is applied after you pick out walls and rooms as a percentage modifier based on how big the nearest settlement is, and how close.

As for it's worth in a haunted state, it depends on the townsfolk, which depends on the DM. I'd say if the adventurers publicized it well enough and the people believed them, you could have resettlers showing up within a year. They'd probably bring a bunch of clerics along with them to make sure, though I imagine if they were any more skittish than just double checking, they wouldn't take the journey to find out, so anyone who does show is going to be pretty adamant.

aboyd
2009-04-19, 04:37 AM
I found an article which states that the Jon Benet Ramsey home is worth 2 million, but is being offered for 1.7 million. That's a 15% drop in price simply due to a widely-known stigma. So I'm thinking that 15% drop in price for a very real ghost-haunted house is reasonable.

Also, while the stronghold guide doesn't offer any information about land prices, it does say that building near a monster lair should incur a drop in the value of the property, roughly equivalent to the CR of the BBEG. So in my case, that would be a 10% drop (or so). I don't think that would stack with the Jon Benet Ramsey penalty, as they appear to be for roughly the same thing.

Still not sure what the raw land itself would go for.

In modern day cities, what is the cost of land compared to cost of houses?

EDIT: Fizban, can you price a 1100 x 1100 piece of land that is on one side running up against a city street and on the opposite side drops off to a cliff with ocean waves crashing below? Assume that the land has nothing on it -- no stronghold. Can you price that from the SBG? I couldn't see a way to do it. But I'd love it if you knew of a way. Thanks.

Thurbane
2009-04-19, 09:24 PM
I'm sure I've seen price of land and buildings in a 3.5 book somewhere...Cityscape? DMG II?

Fizban
2009-04-21, 06:54 AM
I think the basic courtyard was among the cheapest and most empty areas, so you could try pricing the raw land as just a bunch of basic courtyards. I believe there was a section that said how much a percentage furnishing were, so you could strip those out as well. It still doesn't really make sense though, because you can wall off empty areas in your stronghold for free. Following that you could try adding up the cost of a simple wooden perimeter fence around the whole property instead, that might work. I'd do the calculations for you, but I can't get to my book right now, and it sounds like you have your own copy to work with.

Your multipliers probably include one side of natural defense (from the cliff), placement inside city, and nearby monster hazard.

Greg
2009-04-21, 07:42 AM
I'm sure I've seen price of land and buildings in a 3.5 book somewhere...Cityscape? DMG II?
List of buildings here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#buyingBuildings).

DragoonWraith
2009-04-24, 03:13 AM
Certain events like that (further past) could easily increase the value of the house.

However, I'd say that if the fact that a murder had taken place in the home is worth -15%, the fact that it is currently haunted and dangerous would most likely be worth quite a bit more in penalty.

Along the same lines - if being near a dungeon is worth -1% / CR, the fact that the house itself is a dungeon seems worth at least twice that.

Between the two, though, while 20% would be a minimum, I'd think that the difference would be considerably more than that.

If it could be sold at all. I'm not just talking about finding interested buyers - you can always find people interested in buying damaged or otherwise "undesirable" property for cheap, fixing it up, and selling it off again, pocketing the difference. At the very least, the difference in cost has to cover the cost of fixing it. The only way someone will buy it is if they can fix it up themselves and make a profit out of it. I worked for four years for a company that did this - they'd identify buildings with lower rent than the norm for the neighborhood, due to poor maintenance usually (occasionally due to owner stupidity), buy it, fix the problems so the rent went up, and sell it for a profit. It's a very effective business (but obviously does not endear you to the tenants, who typically would rather live in an ugly building with a broken elevator than pay higher rents...)

But the bigger problem may be local laws. Obviously D&D has fewer of those, but in the modern day there would be legal problems with attempting to sell unsafe property. Probably can be done, but I'm guessing there are fees and inspections and that kind of thing. At least, there would be today. In D&D, less sure.


Depends where. A lot. For example, I'm from New York City, and the value of an open lot there is much higher than that of a building - because you can build a tall building on an open lot, where with an old building you're either stuck with it or have to tear it down (at your own expense) before building, and where there are very few open lots (maybe two dozen on Manhattan island at this point?). This is not true in most of the US, but it may be in large parts of Europe (where space is similarly limited).

Even in places that are not like this, though, the land itself may be the greater part of the value. It depends, a lot, on what the other options are. If there's plenty of space to build around the city - then "just another lot" isn't going to be worth much. If you've got the last open lot in the heart of downtown - then that is going to be worth a lot. Etc.

aboyd
2009-04-24, 11:00 PM
Thank you! That was very helpful!

The "open lot" is based in Rel Astra (Greyhawk). It is in "Old Rel Astra" which is actually "Old Korvosa" (I use the Korvosa map from Pathfinder as the southern half of Rel Astra). Basically, it's good land in an already-built-out city. The biggest city. So I think the land is worth something even without a house/mansion/keep/whatever. Now I just need to figure out what amount to charge. Your post will help. Thanks.

aboyd
2009-07-12, 07:24 AM
So, I'm coming back into this thread just to close it out and share my findings. In particular, I started looking at land values in Biblical times & medieval times, trying to see if I could convert that into a D&D gold price. That way, my players would know how much their land could sell for. So here is what I found.

After a little research, I know that back in Biblical times, 1 shekel was equal to 2 denarius (or denarii) and was also equal to 2 drachma. From there, I learned that 1 or 2 drachma was a laborer's daily wage (Matthew 20 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+20:1-16)). And 12 shekels would buy 1 sheep. According to 1 Chronicles 1:17 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Chronicles+1-3), a horse would be 150 shekels.

In Genesis 23:16, Abraham buys a field and cave for 400 shekels. The land is described as "all the trees in it" and is used to bury dead. I guesstimate that to be the equivalent size of a reasonable orchard.

If we look to see what the sheep, horse, or day's wage would be worth in D&D, we start to see equivalents:


150 shekels for a horse = 150 gp for a light warhorse (PHB 129)
12 shekels for a sheep = 8 gp for a donkey (closest I could find)
1 or 2 drachma for a laborer = 1sp for a laborer (DMG 105)
OK! So knowing those equivalents and knowing that an orchard-size piece of land (plus cave) went for 400 shekels, what can we say land is worth in terms of D&D gold? If the donkey/sheep comparison holds, an orchard-sized plot of land is worth 266 gold. If the laborer comparison holds, the land is worth 40 or 80 gold. If the warhorse comparison holds, then it's worth 400 gold. In any of these comparisons, the land is extremely cheap.

Getting away from Biblical measurements, this:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/medievalprices.html#BUILDINGS

...shows that in medieval times, a cheap house sold for L5, while a nice house with courtyard sold for L90. That same page shows "knight's armor" going for L16. Let's match it up:


L5 for cheap house = 1000 gp for simple house (DMG 101)
L90 for nice house = 5000 gp for grand house (DMG 101)
L16 for knight's armor = 1500 gp for plate armor (PHB 123)

It also lists a castle as L450 for 13 years. That's about L5500. Based upon what we've already seen, we can extrapolate that a castle would cost 275000 to 1,100,000 gold in D&D terms -- and holy cow that's pretty much what the DMG lists! The DMG might actually have been well-researched!!! So now the question is, how much land can you buy for L1? Or L100? It turns out, I can't find any listing of what land went for then, so I cannot extrapolate what the D&D gold equivalent might be. And it turns out, this may be why:

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/rasmussen_land-spec-1.pdf

The point is, the land is relatively worthless. In medieval times, the land was actually worthless, and in Biblical times, the land was worth very little. The end result is that either way, D&D "land values" should not exist, and don't, if you follow core rules. Buildings are everything, land is nothing. Thus, my entire pursuit of land values for D&D was wrong-headed. The bottom line? It doesn't matter if you try to follow an "olden days" simulationist style, or if you try to be gamist about it and just follow the core rules -- either way, land values do not match what you see in modern day cities. Instead, land is mostly irrelevant.

Thanks again for all the help, everyone.

Coidzor
2009-07-12, 08:00 AM
The one thing that would probably happen would be that the "rightful heirs" or owners would come out of the woodwork now that it's both usable and alienable. Depending upon the government and the relation of the bloodline to the circumstances of the haunting(say, all those who could have any claim on it are dead and it was part of the domain granted to the nobs by their liege), it might have defaulted back up the feudal hierarchy to the liege of whatever house held sway over it, or even the crown.

With a more modern government, if no one owns/inherits the property, then I believe the government puts it up for auction or it defaults back into public land.

Yahzi
2009-07-12, 01:19 PM
Um. No. A "widely-known stigma" is not the same as "this house will eat your soul."

While haunted, the estate is worth nothing. The local ruler will transfer title, for free, to any person who can de-haunt it.

The ratio of land/house costs varies dramatically with urban density. In a medieval world, land inside the city walls is going to be 10x more valuable than land outside it. More if there are known to be orcs or other monsters living nearby.

An open country estate, however, is valued mostly for the income it produces. And your haunted house produces zero income - so again, it's worth zero. It would be easier and safer to go find some unused land and build a new house.

Remember, this is a medieval economy. Unused land on the borders is plentiful and free for the taking - if you can defend it against the monsters.

Edit: Just saw your second post - excellent! Thanks for analysis.