Before a hotel goes up in a property trading game, ask seven questions. Do you hold the whole country? Can you afford a building on every city? How many rival turns will the next level take to pay back? Is this the third building? How often will rivals land there? What does a bad roll do to your purse? Will the bank have the houses?

The answers below use Property Rush, an independent Monopoly alternative that two to six people play online with friends. The numbers cover one country, France, and come from a simulation, so read them as a guide and not a promise.

Questions 1 and 2: is the country really yours?

Question 1: do you hold every city in the country, with none mortgaged? Both conditions apply. The game refuses a build until the whole group is yours, and it asks you to lift any mortgage in the group first.

Question 2: can you afford one building on each city? With the even-build rule on (it is on by default), no city may get more than one building ahead of the others in its country. France has three cities and a house costs $100 on each, so the first level costs $300 before it earns a cent.

Questions 3 and 4: what does each level earn back?

The table comes from a simulated run of 1,000,000 dice rolls on 29 Sep 2026. Two seats declined every purchase and had a huge purse, so the run measured movement only. For each level I divided the total spent on the three French cities by the rent a rival is expected to pay per turn.

  • One house each; spent on the three cities: $300; expected rent per rival turn: $7.02; rival turns to pay back: 42.7

  • Two houses each; spent on the three cities: $600; expected rent per rival turn: $19.75; rival turns to pay back: 30.4

  • Three houses each; spent on the three cities: $900; expected rent per rival turn: $54.14; rival turns to pay back: 16.6

  • Four houses each; spent on the three cities: $1,200; expected rent per rival turn: $73.19; rival turns to pay back: 16.4

  • Hotels; spent on the three cities: $1,500; expected rent per rival turn: $92.24; rival turns to pay back: 16.3

Question 3: how many rival turns until this level pays back? Read the last column. To turn rival turns into rounds, divide by the number of rivals you have. With three rivals, the same level should pay back in roughly a third of the rounds, because three rivals take three turns a round.

Question 4: is this the third building? The averages hide it, so look at each step alone. Going from two houses to three costs another $300 and lifts expected rent from $19.75 to $54.14, a gain of $34.39 per rival turn. So that step pays back in about 8.7 rival turns ($300 ÷ $34.39).

The first step takes about 71 turns, the second about 24, and the fourth and fifth about 16 each. One house per city is the weakest buy on the table. The third is the strongest.

Payback also assumes the game lasts long enough. Nobody counts rounds here, so a game ends only when a single player remains. A table that breaks up early never collects the last turns of rent.

Question 5: how often will rivals land there?

An even board of 40 squares would give each square 2.5% of landings. In the million rolls, Prison took 5.73%, Osaka 3.06%, Paris 3.03%, Start 2.85% and one airport 2.80%. Paris, the dearest French city, was landed on 21% more often than an even board would give (3.03 ÷ 2.5 = 1.21). Marseille took 2.63% and Nice 2.49%, so Nice sits right on an even share and Paris well above it. The run's full landing table lists every square.

Questions 6 and 7: can you survive being wrong?

Question 6: what does a bad roll do to your purse right after you build? Rent you cannot cover pushes your balance below zero. Your turn then stalls until you raise cash by mortgaging, selling or trading. Buildings go back to the bank for half of their build cost, so $900 spent on nine houses returns $450 if you are forced to sell them. Look at the biggest set a rival holds, find its rent at its current level, and check you could pay it from what is left.

Question 7: will the bank have the houses? With the even-build rule on, the shared stock is 32 houses and 12 hotels. Three houses on each of France's three cities take 9 of the 32. A hotel costs the same as a fifth house and returns the four houses to the bank, so a rival who is also building can leave you waiting.

Next time you are one house away, write the three payback figures on a scrap of paper before you decide.

Boardit is not affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro.

Written for Boardit's maker, Ahmed Moaz, with AI help. The game facts were checked against the game's code.