An Imperfect Soultion for an Imperfect System (inflation)

[Sky_Phantom1]

Hello everyone I'm here to throw some ideas on the table. Anyone who's played on the server for a minute and tried to buy a house would know that the server has a major problem, inflation. And im also sure that you know the root cause of it housing plots, people refusing to lose money and hiking up the prices to make a profit. A vicious cycle. I propose a solution. This might be a bit complex, but try to follow along. Let's come up with a theoretical McCities in the alternate dimension or something. In this McCities every plot is assigned a "base value" which is determined by its size and the area it is in. The only way to change its "base value" would be to improve it in someone such as transfering a house or building on to it. Let's say a 30x30 plot in the suburbs had a "base value" of 1mil. I buy this plot for 1mil and transfer a house to it changing its "base value" to 1.3mil. Now this base value is only the first ingredient. The next part is to have a fluctuating housing market. What this means is that every day the housing market would either rise or fall. So in my example let's say one day the housing market suddenly spikes up 10%. I would add 10% to my baseline making the actual value 1,430,000. Over time this housing market could rise and fall making buying and selling more strategic. As in should you buy a house, wait for the market to rise a bit and sell or play the long game and hope the market doesn't suddenly crash. This makes it a more risk reward system rather than just a reward system. Coming back to the base value there is only so much you can add before you max it out, but its intended to encourage people to make livable and beautiful plots and make it so you can still make some profit even if the market is poor. I'm just throwing some ideas on the table and trying to get some discussion going on the problem.

 

[Laurel]

nice idea!

 

[Orange]

Nice idea, you may of said this and I may of missed it, but what if a skyscraper is built over a old small house. Then what?

 

[Sky_Phantom1]

Doing that would raise the base value, because that would be adding more to the plot and improving it, but there is only so much you can add and it's got to fit in with the area.

 

[Neilio_Xtreme]

It is an interesting idea. More fresh than some, offering a new mechanic on an existing system. Just make sure to think about how the mechanic would work in it's entirety, who/what determines the rise and fall (for instance quanitity-based like house sales over a 1 month period or just random.)

However this would change the realtor job, as then it's a matter of guessing the trends as opposed to personal marketing. Not saying one of those methods a better experience than the other, just pointing it out.

Ultimately while I enjoy new looks on the mechanics, I don't personally think this would affect inflation. If anything it could actually increase as some people learn the formula behind selling at the right time. Like someone who could potentially buy 10-20 houses when low and then sell them all as soon as they increase. That gives those who have tons of money even more firepower. Again, not necessarily a bad thing but it doesn't help inflation imo.

Now a neat spin on the objective value-based system that you came up with would be a property tax system based on similar values. Something that, like you mentions, factors in 3 components: Size of plot, area (certain neighborhoods/areas would be higher and some lower like irl), and what's actually built on the plot. The last is a bit subjective though, so maybe a housing appraisal committee could run that with plenty of oversight from the citizens.
Based on this value properties would be taxed. I have no idea what a good number would be but it would be a small small sliver of a % based on the plot's objective value. But why, you ask? How does that help inflation? Glad you asked.
This would introduce an incentive to sell as opposed to hoard or hold on to plots. While this in a way could serve as a tiny "tax the rich" deal, it's main purpose would serve a different function.
The main purpose of a mechanic like this would be to force the realtor to make the decision: How long should I hold on to this plot before it starts costing too much money? Because then when a house doesn't sell for long enough, the realtor *should* theoretically drop the price in order to speed up the selling process and either cut their losses or take whatever profit they can before they end up holding onto the plot for too long and taxes eat away their profit.
Plot prices keep rising because there's literally no incentive to sell for a cheaper price. Nothing is forcing a plot owner to sacrifice losses for a quicker sell. It's always been buy and wait until someone is desperate enough to buy or all other similar/lesser houses have risen in price to make it seem normal.

Just some food for thought. Maybe this post should be a separate suggestion but oh well, I wanted to give praise to @Sky_Phantom1 as well as use a thoughtful part of their idea towards a system that I've been in favor of for a long time.

 

[ItzJazzMade]

@Neilio_Xtreme brooooo <3

 

[Sky_Phantom1]

It is an interesting idea. More fresh than some, offering a new mechanic on an existing system. Just make sure to think about how the mechanic would work in it's entirety, who/what determines the rise and fall (for instance quanitity-based like house sales over a 1 month period or just random.)

However this would change the realtor job, as then it's a matter of guessing the trends as opposed to personal marketing. Not saying one of those methods a better experience than the other, just pointing it out.

Ultimately while I enjoy new looks on the mechanics, I don't personally think this would affect inflation. If anything it could actually increase as some people learn the formula behind selling at the right time. Like someone who could potentially buy 10-20 houses when low and then sell them all as soon as they increase. That gives those who have tons of money even more firepower. Again, not necessarily a bad thing but it doesn't help inflation imo.

Now a neat spin on the objective value-based system that you came up with would be a property tax system based on similar values. Something that, like you mentions, factors in 3 components: Size of plot, area (certain neighborhoods/areas would be higher and some lower like irl), and what's actually built on the plot. The last is a bit subjective though, so maybe a housing appraisal committee could run that with plenty of oversight from the citizens.
Based on this value properties would be taxed. I have no idea what a good number would be but it would be a small small sliver of a % based on the plot's objective value. But why, you ask? How does that help inflation? Glad you asked.
This would introduce an incentive to sell as opposed to hoard or hold on to plots. While this in a way could serve as a tiny "tax the rich" deal, it's main purpose would serve a different function.
The main purpose of a mechanic like this would be to force the realtor to make the decision: How long should I hold on to this plot before it starts costing too much money? Because then when a house doesn't sell for long enough, the realtor *should* theoretically drop the price in order to speed up the selling process and either cut their losses or take whatever profit they can before they end up holding onto the plot for too long and taxes eat away their profit.
Plot prices keep rising because there's literally no incentive to sell for a cheaper price. Nothing is forcing a plot owner to sacrifice losses for a quicker sell. It's always been buy and wait until someone is desperate enough to buy or all other similar/lesser houses have risen in price to make it seem normal.

Just some food for thought. Maybe this post should be a separate suggestion but oh well, I wanted to give praise to @Sky_Phantom1 as well as use a thoughtful part of their idea towards a system that I've been in favor of for a long time.

This is an amazing suggestion. The whole point of this thread was to put something out as an example to get people thinking. I think to have a good system we need a way to set a constant value based on the size, surrounding area, and what is actually built on the plot, then there has to be some twist outside of the player's control that makes it so that the player won't always be making a profit and to be more strategic in what they do with their properties.

 

[Sunddew]

This is a great idea! its super hard to get a house i have to rely on luck to carry me across (Even tho thats not helping 120k in debt ) With this system u can predict when u can get what u want!

 

[Death]

Hello everyone I'm here to throw some ideas on the table. Anyone who's played on the server for a minute and tried to buy a house would know that the server has a major problem, inflation. And im also sure that you know the root cause of it housing plots, people refusing to lose money and hiking up the prices to make a profit. A vicious cycle. I propose a solution. This might be a bit complex, but try to follow along. Let's come up with a theoretical McCities in the alternate dimension or something. In this McCities every plot is assigned a "base value" which is determined by its size and the area it is in. The only way to change its "base value" would be to improve it in someone such as transfering a house or building on to it. Let's say a 30x30 plot in the suburbs had a "base value" of 1mil. I buy this plot for 1mil and transfer a house to it changing its "base value" to 1.3mil. Now this base value is only the first ingredient. The next part is to have a fluctuating housing market. What this means is that every day the housing market would either rise or fall. So in my example let's say one day the housing market suddenly spikes up 10%. I would add 10% to my baseline making the actual value 1,430,000. Over time this housing market could rise and fall making buying and selling more strategic. As in should you buy a house, wait for the market to rise a bit and sell or play the long game and hope the market doesn't suddenly crash. This makes it a more risk reward system rather than just a reward system. Coming back to the base value there is only so much you can add before you max it out, but its intended to encourage people to make livable and beautiful plots and make it so you can still make some profit even if the market is poor. I'm just throwing some ideas on the table and trying to get some discussion going on the problem.

Its nice that you are suggesting an idea however I don’t see the realism in this as nothing influences the change in prices.

Inflation takes place because of change and when you take out change and make this change in price as something that is not controllable, then a value of something will not change. Meaning that a house 1 year from now will still be within the price range and secondly no one person can dictate the price because that is opinionated and is a biased way of pricing things. The price a property would sell for should be dictated by how much the consumer is willing to pay for the product and how much the producer is willing to sell the product.

Aside from this there are more variables that affect a property’s price, such as trend, location etc...

Similar to how the demand for mansions & islands increased because it became a trend. And back then the trend for houses were more concentrated on houses that were village like. Such as the “goh” “go” “gorow” (the one near the farm) and the village like houses near the old mall which i forgot the name of.

Anyways its what creates an economy is that change is influenced in multiple factors rather than it being controlled by a system.