Looking through my not too extensive collection of material, the best price I could find for a home (just residential, no labs or workshops added) was 12k for a 30 person house. That was in the Stronghold builders guide. I have players wanting just a place to live, nothing fancy. They want bedrooms, kitchen & dining and maybe a place to hang out, but not a freaking stronghold. (that will come later after a few more levels and will cost them :D) The main character's issue is that he has dependents (wife and two kids) and that he needs an actual home.
Not finding anything like that in any of my books. Anyone got a recommendation?
I'm of the opinion that with being a "hero" of Sandpoint that a dwelling would be at a discount and was considering 100 gold for a year. That doesn't seem to onerous to keep his family in the line of fire for a few more adventures.. heh.
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Your 100 gp/year estimate was not too far off.
Here is the cost of living from the Gamemastering section of the PRD
Average (10 gp/month): The PC lives in his own apartment, small house, or similar location—this is the lifestyle of most trained or skilled experts or warriors. He can secure any nonmagical item worth 1 gp or less from his home in 1d10 minutes, and need not track purchases of common meals or taxes that cost 1 gp or less.
That comes out to 120 gold pieces per year.
I think, Tordek, is the main problem that Grokken and other players like him are finding is that other than the hideously overpriced structures in the Stronghold Builder's Guide, there is no decent "Core" manual that tells us how much it costs to build a structure.
Personally find it easier to take the costs out of the old 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide and cut them in half, same as you would do with any other item the PCs make, and let them go from there. Haggling for furnishings, strength checks to shift the furniture, bashing heads with one-eyed councillors who are getting back at the PCs for something they did a few levels ago by using arcane, pointless little by-laws to mess with the PC's building attempts, etc etc.
Alternatively just buy a new house for the same/similar costs in the DMG 3.5, which still works out g%#~&~n cheaper the Stronghold Guide to Bastardry, and then if they want more than stone walls and tile roof with wooden internals walls and floor, they pay the cost for an NPC Crafter or they do it themselves.
Mind you, this also opens up the inventiveness of the players. Dwarf Party once made themselves a tavern that boasted the unique property of having taps installed in their five best rooms. Pay the premium, and they'd open up the valves in the pipes and you and your friends could spend all night long in a sound-proofed lead-lined 20-by-30 foot room with a selection of eight different ales, five spirits, 6 wines and a completely automated food service (via a lift-system that went directly from the third floor all the way down to the kitchen in the basement) without any annoying drunks, guards or other gatecrashers ruining the party.
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many good points
I agree that the rules are sketchy for determining the costs of structures. A player in my RotRL campaign wanted to purchase an Inn to make it their base, and begin an order dedicated to Cayden Cailen to defend Sandpoint after the heroes have moved on.
I used a suggestion I found on another thread to use the cost of ships in the equipment section as a guide to the cost of the inn. Now Gaithan and his compatriots are refurbishing an Inn between Sandpoint and Magnimar.
wow...
Love the idea for the Inn, that is something these guys would love to do. These are guys who came up with the idea of using a permanent freezing sphere as a walk-in freezer...
10 gold a month as a lease isn't bad, and the character being a Hero of Sandpoint plus a regular visitor with good standing in the community will get him a bit of a discount.
His plan is to take over Thistletop and start a community there, that's a few levels away and they still haven't dealt with Malfesh down below.
Going from memory here, don't have my books handy, but I thought that the Guide to Korvosa had both rental and purchase prices for different types of houses in different priced neighborhoods. You could use that to extrapolate to other cities.
You are correct. The Guide to Korvosa, the Guide to Absolom, and the Guide to Darkmoon Vale all have prices for purchasing or renting mutiple "grades" of housing.
The prices are skewed, though, because in most cases, you're buying a house in an established area.
For other information, A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe from Expeditious Retreat Press has a section on constructing buildings with reasonable (in my opinion) pricing.
12K GP for a 30-person house is "hideously overpriced"?!
12K GP for a 30-person house is "hideously overpriced"?!
I figure a gold piece is worth about $100 (Canadian) in purchasing power (with a fairly large margin of variation), considering that Joe Commoner with one rank in Profession can earn 7 gp per week. That would make 12,000 gp = $1.2 million, which sounds a bit high although it depends on the location and how luxurious the accomodations are, obviously.
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Your 100 gp/year estimate was not too far off.
Here is the cost of living from the Gamemastering section of the PRD
Average (10 gp/month): The PC lives in his own apartment, small house, or similar location—this is the lifestyle of most trained or skilled experts or warriors. He can secure any nonmagical item worth 1 gp or less from his home in 1d10 minutes, and need not track purchases of common meals or taxes that cost 1 gp or less.That comes out to 120 gold pieces per year.
This seems about right, then a player could spend 5x this to buy a small house (this is my own estimate) or 10x this for something more substantial.
I sold the players the island for $1500gp and let them build something modest there for an additional 500gp.
There would also be a modest property tax which the Sandpoint locals would likely waive every year in exchange for services rendered.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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12K GP for a 30-person house is "hideously overpriced"?!I figure a gold piece is worth about $100 (Canadian) in purchasing power (with a fairly large margin of variation), considering that Joe Commoner with one rank in Profession can earn 7 gp per week. That would make 12,000 gp = $1.2 million, which sounds a bit high although it depends on the location and how luxurious the accomodations are, obviously.
So $1.2M for a 30 person house is about $120K for a 3-person house. That sounds inexpensive to me.
I agree with the sentiment that 12,000 gp for a 30 person stronghold is pretty dang reasonable for what it is. It's the same price as a pair of boots of speed and only a little more expensive than a +2 weapon.
But should you disagree, DO bear in mind that the items in the Stronghold Builder's Guide, much like anywhere else, are guidelines. I'm frankly too lazy to grab the book and look but I'm pretty sure there is a caveat in there that says what's in the book is a place to start and doesn't need to be adhered to strictly all the time.
Given the character is a hero, etc., were I the PC's GM, I would allow the character to do any reasonable combination of roleplaying and Diplomacy checks to talk to the townsfolk for assistance in building the stronghold, perhaps reducing the cost to 10,000 gp (the cost of a single glove of storing or type IV bag of holding) or even less depending on how well everything was played and performed and the weight of the hero's deeds. I might also take into consideration what any ally spellcasters would be willing to contribute--fabricate, stone shape, and any other number of spells could effectively either reduce the cost or reduce the building time.
I thought this thread was about housing prices in real life.
1.2M$ for 30 person house (e.g. apartment complex), and 130k$ for 3 person house seem GREAT prices to me.
That said, D&D isn´t about playing house, and it´s assumptions are that your available wealth is largely for gear purchases, not building structures to live in. If you ARE building structures with it, that gold shouldn´t count fully towards Wealth By Level. Even very reasonable prices for real estate are going to be a huge bite into aventurer´s budgets if they are paying up front... If they want something like this, and are in a setting like Sandpoint where they are ´local heroes´ / friendly with the locals, it seems reasonable to set them up with a mortgage.
A city block of housing costs 3 BP each BP is worth 4,000 gp. Each city block is about 750 feet squared. So that's 12,000 gp for a 750 feet square number of houses. The population of a city block is 9,000 gp. This doesn't take into account that "A fair number of additional residential structures are common amid most one and two block structures".
So I would suggest that you probably could do about 500 gp per house. Just so you know a tenement sort of deal (aka ghetto) runs for 1 BP for a block.
All this information is from the "Rivers run red" book of the Kingmaker AP (part 2 of 6).
The game mastery guide also has information on city building that could be of help breaking down the cost of housing.
Finally a Mansion (of one city block) is 10 BP (40,000gp) for one family and its servants while a Noble Villa is 24 bp (96,000gp) and takes two city blocks.
A city block of housing costs 3 BP each BP is worth 4,000 gp. Each city block is about 750 feet squared. So that's 12,000 gp for a 750 feet square number of houses. The population of a city block is 9,000 gp. This doesn't take into account that "A fair number of additional residential structures are common amid most one and two block structures".
So I would suggest that you probably could do about 500 gp per house. Just so you know a tenement sort of deal (aka ghetto) runs for 1 BP for a block.
All this information is from the "Rivers run red" book of the Kingmaker AP (part 2 of 6).
The game mastery guide also has information on city building that could be of help breaking down the cost of housing.
Finally a Mansion (of one city block) is 10 BP (40,000gp) for one family and its servants while a Noble Villa is 24 bp (96,000gp) and takes two city blocks.
Let me note here the following:
1. For a 5th level character, paying 12,000 for a house for 30 people of which he has 4.2. This is the smallest dwelling listed.
3. Comparing this to modern housing is at best a warped perspective. The amount of real world inflation on housing is pretty steep. There is a comparision (and I'd be hard pressed to find it, though I have it) of how inflation has risen since the 1300's using the price of grain and bread. One of the few stable items of our various economys.
4. The 30 person dwelling wasn't a manor house. Probably more like a boarding house... but even then.
For high powered moneyed characters its not a problem, but for low level who just want to get a start they are kinda stuck with out GM help... LOL.
Odd how this does relate to RW at times.
For those who might not have it, the 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide states in Chapter 3:Adventures, on page 101, Table 3-27: Buildings, the rough/approximate prices for a building, going up in cost the more exotic you go.
Simple House: 1,000 gold, One-to-Three room house made of wood with a thatched roof.
Grand House: 5,000 gold, Four-to-Ten room house made of wood with a thatched roof.
Mansion: 100,000 gold, Ten-to-Twenty room residence has two or three stories and is made of wood and brick, with a slate house.
I'm not linking the full thing because we're asking about houses here, not g#~%&@n fortresses armed to the teeth. Also, remember these costs include labor, taxes and more often than not buying the land your house sits upon.
Now, let's take a look at making a eight-room grand house with brick and wood walls and a slate roof. The walls are made of stronger substances than normal, with the wood falling primarily under support structures built into the walls and ceiling, so that's probably another 1.5 to 2k added to the cost. Slate is heavier than thatch, but is less likely to burn and won't rot after winter rolls past, so you're probably going to tack another 1k onto that cost. So turning the Grand House into a long-term structure made of brick, wood and slate has upped the price from 5,000 gold to 7,500/8,000 gold.
Not a bad bit of extra gold you've spent, the house will be better insulated, last longer and be less prone to being set on fire and the like. Also, the walls are technically classed as 'Masonry' type walls, being 1 foot thick, relatively sound-proofed and having hit-points out the whazoo. Also, remember the above costs also include windows, paint, white-wash, plaster, doors external and internal and basic furniture (although these are all basic models, nothing that an adventurer can't do better!)
And remember it's fair to halves these prices if the PCs can build the houses themselves (Although it's within reason for them to hire low-level Experts or Commoners with the appropriate skills to give them some bonuses, but that's heading into the 'fiddle' territory right there.)
Now, here comes the fun part! Furniture and 'Secret rooms'!
As an adventurer, you're likely to come across stuff you'll find of little use individually, but might be handy later on down the track. Sometimes the items might be too dangerous to leave in the hands of a merchant, other-times you might wait for the market to be at the right level before you offload the good.
In such a case, setting aside a room that will not look 'out of place' from both in and out of the house and having a secret door installed, does wonders for keeping all but the most determined and bloodthirsty thieves and tax-men out of your coin-pouch.
And all those items that might not be so expensive? Take that bundle of spears you took from the Orc raiders a few months back and offer to trade it to the militia if one of their members can make you some wooden bed-frames for the spare rooms. A collection of old Dwarven love-poetry might not sell for much to all but the most obsessed collectors, but to the writer's Clan, they might be willing to trade the poetry to be given a proper place within that ancestor's tomb for a pittance such as sturdy iron grates to go into the chimney. And the inevitable pile of monster parts could be easily sold to an Alchemist or Gourmet Chef for trade items that could in turn be used to purchase wall-hangings, a stove, carpets, tables, etc etc etc.
I had a player once who hoarded a lot of items and kept them in a barn at a friendly NPCs farm. Three levels later, he built himself Grand House using something similar to the above, with seven rooms (four bedrooms, one study, one larder, one kitchen) and the remaining three rooms converted into a large 10-foot by 30-foot entertainment area for the pittance of 10 or 12 thousand gold, to which he retired at the grand old age of level 7, and furnished it with things he'd taken from his share of the treasures the party had accumulated or traded for other items.
Something similar happened in another game, but while the PC did lag behind the others in terms of gold, the fact he OWNED the base gave him a fair bit of clout in the decision-making processes the Party was involved in, especially since he wasn't charging the other PCs for anything other than their food.
Fun times, as the party gazed out into the sun setting over a valley where they had a five-dozen low-level NPCs tending sheep and groves of fruit-trees. And these guys were only at 6th level, and again had built their own 'Grand House and a Half'.
A city block of housing costs 3 BP each BP is worth 4,000 gp. Each city block is about 750 feet squared. So that's 12,000 gp for a 750 feet square number of houses. The population of a city block is 9,000 gp. This doesn't take into account that "A fair number of additional residential structures are common amid most one and two block structures".
So I would suggest that you probably could do about 500 gp per house. Just so you know a tenement sort of deal (aka ghetto) runs for 1 BP for a block.
All this information is from the "Rivers run red" book of the Kingmaker AP (part 2 of 6).
The game mastery guide also has information on city building that could be of help breaking down the cost of housing.
Finally a Mansion (of one city block) is 10 BP (40,000gp) for one family and its servants while a Noble Villa is 24 bp (96,000gp) and takes two city blocks.
Let me note here the following:
1. For a 5th level character, paying 12,000 for a house for 30 people of which he has 4.
2. This is the smallest dwelling listed.
3. Comparing this to modern housing is at best a warped perspective. The amount of real world inflation on housing is pretty steep. There is a comparision (and I'd be hard pressed to find it, though I have it) of how inflation has risen since the 1300's using the price of grain and bread. One of the few stable items of our various economys.
4. The 30 person dwelling wasn't a manor house. Probably more like a boarding house... but even then.For high powered moneyed characters its not a problem, but for low level who just want to get a start they are kinda stuck with out GM help... LOL.
Odd how this does relate to RW at times.
I would point out that those prices are for building a kingdom -- so not a low level thing of course -- but a single house would be one in that 750 square foot lot that cost 12,000gp and holds 9,000 people.
Simple reduction tells us that about 4 gp per 3 people.
A really good price in the RW at times.
1. For a 5th level character, paying 12,000 for a house for 30 people of which he has 4.
Questions:
1. The way you word this, this suggests this is something the PC is trying to go into by himself. Has the PC asked his fellow party members for help?
In a 30 person dwelling, I would assume this is making room for party members as well as followers and cohorts, etc.
Sure 12,000 gp for 1 single 5th level character to pay is a lot, but split between 4 party members, that's only 3,000 gp each. Even if the PC in question has the most need because he has a family, every party member could benefit from taking part in living in the stronghold---especially since you could save up the funds as the party continues to adventure to put in laboratories, libraries, and training rooms, etc. Why not make this a group effort?
2. Are you the player in question or the GM?
If you are the player, have you discussed this with your GM? Does he have his own ideas for how this would work or how much it would cost? Have you discussed it with your fellow players to discuss the possibility of building this as a joint project?
If you are the GM, and you dislike the idea of charging the character 12,000 gp straight up (or whatever cost you deem appropriate) for the stronghold, have you considered giving the party a sidequest to either gather the funds needed? There are many ways to do it, but I always like the very classic trope of "clearing out the stronghold"--the party finds an old keep haunted by monsters, clears out all the beasties and what's drawing them there, and then as a reward, the party gets to keep the place and upgrade it. (I did this in a campaign--a manor was haunted and people had failed to get to the bottom of what was causing it for decades; it was at an ideal trading point, and the government offered the party ownership of the estate if they could clear it out, because it was at benefit to the government to get the area made safe and contributing to the economy again.)
3. Can this be a long term goal, with construction begun now with a smaller down payment, and additional payments made as the PC continues to adventure?
2. This is the smallest dwelling listed.
Oh.... if you mean the "Basic Residential" cluster on pages 34-5---those are suggested "clusters" (and in fact don't calculate in the costs of building materials for walls, which is explained later on the very same page. Now that I realize what you're talking about with the 12,000 figure--it actually will cost more than that).
If you've been reading the book, you should be aware that by no means that is what you are limited to. The book is pretty dang clear how to cluster together stronghold components together to design any size building yourself, and if you didn't get that impression, I suggest re-reading through the first couple chapters again more carefully. :)
If all you ACTUALLY want is a house for 4 people, according to the stronghold builders guide (CAVEAT: I CAN'T DO ARITHMETIC TO SAVE MY LIFE. THIS MAY NOT BE RIGHT SO FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES IN THE BOOK TO BE SURE):
1 suite of basic bedrooms (enough for 4 people) is 700 gp
1 basic common room is 500 gp
1 "basic" kitchen (which is actually well equipped enough to make meals for up to 15 people) is 2,000 gp
1 basic bath (if you want to get fancy) is 400 gp
This generous family home for 4 people consists of 3.5 Stronghold Spaces and its base cost, not including location and building materials and other modifiers, is 3,500 gp.
You then need to add in the cost of your walls (see page 35 and on from there). If the house is entirely made of wood, then the exterior walls cost 2,800 gp and the interior walls cost 700 gp, using the formulas the book provides. This brings the total to 7,000 (remember that if you're looking at the "12,000 gp" residence to compare, that doesn't include material costs).
This doesn't include the various percentile modifiers--such as proximity to the city, spellcaster help, abundant materials available (wooden buildings are cheaper if they are built in a forest, etc.), as all explained in the first several pages of the guidebook. Even the above house could be cheaper---or more expensive--than what's calculated above based on various factors determined between player and GM.
And the above is just an example. If I wanted a simpler 4 person home, I would probably just go with 1 basic bedroom suite and 1 common room, and then purchase cooking equipment, a water pump, and a bathtub as separate furniture, since you're not cooking for more than the family and don't need fancy baths until you're richer (we'll assume the outhouse is thrown in as part of the total cost, since that's just a very simple shed with the back dug out, and a bench with a hole in it). That would be a 2 Stronghold Space dwelling worth a base 1,200 gp + 2,000 for wooden walls total= base cost 3,200 gp. Let's call all additional kitchen/bath equipment needed 200 gp (a liberal estimation, assuming good water source etc.) for a total of 3,400 gp. I would negate the costs of living in a city (+10% property value) for being a hero of the city, and since this is a 5th level PC who can probably get cheap or free assistance from fellow party members, with some work and buttering up the right people, he could probably have himself a nice little cottage for his family for under 3,000 if he worked for it (and the player has a GM willing to work with this scenario).
Now, if you really do want that 12,000 gp residence for 30 people (which will probably actually cost something more like 33,850 once you add in material costs, give or take for various locational and situational modifiers), that's something to work toward with the suggestions made above.
For high powered moneyed characters its not a problem, but for low level who just want to get a start they are kinda stuck with out GM help... LOL.
Yes. Personally, I think that's about where it should be. Building a stronghold (where "stronghold" is a mechanical term for "large dwelling PCs live in") should not be easy. Acquiring property, let alone safe and solid property, is exceptionally difficult in any world, real or imaginary.
Odd how this does relate to RW at times.
Indeed, as a 4th level Secretary, even though I have a solid income for my character class, I have difficulty gathering enough money for a down payment for a 2 bedroom dwelling, especially since I have no fellow party members to pool in their loot to help make the purchase.
12K GP for a 30-person house is "hideously overpriced"?!I figure a gold piece is worth about $100 (Canadian) in purchasing power (with a fairly large margin of variation), considering that Joe Commoner with one rank in Profession can earn 7 gp per week. That would make 12,000 gp = $1.2 million, which sounds a bit high although it depends on the location and how luxurious the accomodations are, obviously.
Barely skilled labor gets $2,800 a month in Canada? 33,600 per year? I'm moving to Canada!
Barely skilled labor gets $2,800 a month in Canada? 33,600 per year?12K GP for a 30-person house is "hideously overpriced"?!I figure a gold piece is worth about $100 (Canadian) in purchasing power (with a fairly large margin of variation), considering that Joe Commoner with one rank in Profession can earn 7 gp per week. That would make 12,000 gp = $1.2 million, which sounds a bit high although it depends on the location and how luxurious the accomodations are, obviously.
With a fairly large margin of variation, as noted above. :-)
It would be nice to see some sort of basic building guide to Golarion. As PF often runs into more role-playing and character development than a lot of the WOTC games, I've encountered this situation in all of my PF campaigns so far...at low levels.
We had players trying to buy housing in Sandpoint and another group wanted to renovate and live in the (now cleared) tower in Master of the Fallen Fortress...coming up wiht costs and pricing and building times was a nightmare.
It's nice to see some better answers here (thanks everyone) but it would be nice to see Paizo/ PF's take on the rules...
It would be nice to see some sort of basic building guide to Golarion. As PF often runs into more role-playing and character development than a lot of the WOTC games, I've encountered this situation in all of my PF campaigns so far...at low levels.
We had players trying to buy housing in Sandpoint and another group wanted to renovate and live in the (now cleared) tower in Master of the Fallen Fortress...coming up wiht costs and pricing and building times was a nightmare.
It's nice to see some better answers here (thanks everyone) but it would be nice to see Paizo/ PF's take on the rules...
The Game Mastery guide had some stuff for this -- maybe not a lot -- but it definitely had some.
I just had to add that comparing housing prices in Golarion to housing prices in the modern world today is doomed to failure. There are so many differences in the economy and the way resources are allocated, preferences and priorities have changed, etc. Also, the idea of owning your own home is actually fairly modern. In a medieval world, most people have a (land)lord. While this may not always be someone with actual title, even in Sandpoint chances are most folks owe rent to one of the four noble families who own a goodly amount of the real estate. Of course, adventurers are an exception to most rules, so there is no reason to expect this one would be different.
So what price? I think Tordek had the right idea from the start: go to the cost of living rules. A small home 10gp/month, a large home (or probably small in) is 100gp/month, and a large inn or mansion is 1000gp/month. If they want to buy it outright, figure they'd be paying interest for the price/month option, so it wouldn't cost as much up front. They didn't have the mathematics or computational abilities for compound interest - use simple. So the only questions you really need to ask are: how long would they be paying a mortgage if they went for the monthly option, and what kind of interest rate would they get from the Sandpoint Mercantile League?
Have to go, but I'll work on this more later...
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People in the historically equivalent era either lived in what are essentially mud/sod huts, or had large families living in tiny houses, and these were passed down from generation to generation. I don't see a problem with true houses being expensive, because they were meant to house your entire extended family for generations to come.
A building that was meant to house 30 people would be considered a mansion, and would be priced accordingly, IMO.
12K GP for a 30-person house is "hideously overpriced"?!I figure a gold piece is worth about $100 (Canadian) in purchasing power (with a fairly large margin of variation), considering that Joe Commoner with one rank in Profession can earn 7 gp per week. That would make 12,000 gp = $1.2 million, which sounds a bit high although it depends on the location and how luxurious the accomodations are, obviously.
1.2 million Canadian Dollars (or about 900k Euros) actually sounds okay for a building housing 30 people, unless you insist on packing them in like sardines or something.
A city block of housing costs 3 BP each BP is worth 4,000 gp. Each city block is about 750 feet squared. So that's 12,000 gp for a 750 feet square number of houses. The population of a city block is 9,000 gp
Not quite right: A whole grid (36 blocks) has a population of 9000. A single block equals 250 people according to the Kingmaker guidelines.
Of course, this is meant to be an average, and since larger, commercial structures don't usually have a population (or at least not a big one), a lot of these extra people will actually live in the housing parts.
But let's assume that it is 250 people per block.
Building housing for these people will cost you 3 building points or 12000 gp. That's 48gp per person. That would mean something like 150 - 200 gp for a small family. If you assume an income of 1 sp per day, it means this family would have to put in several year's pay into a house, which isn't unusual.
And the numbers above aren't really right:
We were assuming houses and unskilled labour. That's not how it usually works. Usually, you either have unskilled labourers in tenements or skilled labour in houses.
Those poor peasants that can only earn about 1 sp per day (not even 1gp per week) will probably live in tenements (or maybe together with their parents or something in houses). Tenements only cost a third of houses (1 BP or 4000gp). That means this family of 4 would pay about 60 gp for their house (two years worth of pay for one worker). And even that's not quite right, since tenements offer a lot less space then houses. The population is probably denser there, reducing the cost even further.
Houses (those that go for 3BP per city block) are more for skilled labour. I'd say that means someone with at least 1 rank in a Craft or Profession, which together with the class bonus gives you a check bonus of +4(or more if the character has an above-average key ability modifier, which is probably not that unusual). Assuming they take 10 each week for their check, they make 7gp a week or 1 gp per day.
That means the house from above will cost less than a year's pay. I would say that's quite reasonable.
Those poor peasants that can only earn about 1 sp per day (not even 1gp per week) will probably live in tenements (or maybe together with their parents or something in houses).
Quick side issue -- can anyone show me where it says that peasants only earn 1 sp per day? I'm not quite sure this part carried over.
I thought they were 1 copper a day :) Heck back in the 30's a penny was a lot of money :) A silver Shilling was somthing!
Ya Canada has a very Low unemployment rate, and we arnt hit by the recession as bad as the news makes it out to be :) If you go into cooking, construction, plumbing and heating, electrical you always have work. I live in an agricultural city, and the farmers are buisy, and the truckers are buisy and all the construction, etc and I am a cook and I am always buisy :) I never hear anybody complaining for lack of money or work :)
Quick side issue -- can anyone show me where it says that peasants only earn 1 sp per day? I'm not quite sure this part carried over.
Those poor peasants that can only earn about 1 sp per day (not even 1gp per week) will probably live in tenements (or maybe together with their parents or something in houses).
"Untrained laborers and assistants (that is, characters without any ranks in Profession) earn an average of 1 silver piece per day." - from the Profession skill, RAW, unless you are trained in a source of income you don't earn much.
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EDIT: Forget all that. The cost of living guidelines make no assumption on a time period - rather, it is expected you pay that as long as you live. Presumably, your inheritors would as well. Therefore it makes more sense to treat it as a perpetuity rather than an annuity. So, the value of a building would be the monthly payment divided by the monthly interest rate. The monthly payment is given in the cost of living guidelines (and above), and the interest rate depends on the expected return of the current owner.
As an example, a small inn or large house would be 100gp/month. Let's say the present owner wants 3%/month on it. So, 100/.03 = 333pp, 3gp, 3sp, and 3cp to buy it outright. Of course, that's one already built, so you'd probably pay less if you were building it yourself (less than half, since the bare land wouldn't be worth as much as developed land and you'd be paying half price of developed land if you use standard crafting rules).
A few notes on interest rates: it would be lower under a precious metal standard that D&D uses, because given a constant money supply and a growing population, you will get steady deflation. A character's alignment, if known, might affect it - a character known for breaking contracts (by accident or deliberately) would get a risk premium added, while a character known to keep them wouldn't. And then there's personal preference. If you are buying land from the Scarnetti family, and you aren't their lackey, they'll probably jack up the rates. Lastly, 3% is VERY high for monthly interest, so the example above is off. That's closer to a yearly interest (APR), so you'd divide it by 12 to get the monthly rate.
Isn't finance fun? :D
Conversations like this is one of the reasons why the Wealth System in D20 Modern is so fantastic.
Mostly I liked it, though it had potential for abuse. One person focused on earning, they bought all the equipment, and nobody else needed to work. One person a little less effective in exchange for three/four people a little more effective is a good exchange.