I would love to see real estate as a type of investment in the later state of the game. Being able to transform certain parts of the city, would give so many unique opportunities to the player. It could range from having a couple of apartments, or shops to rent out, all the way to buying empty lots, or occupied lots and building a whole new building on the property. The game could also implement dealing with certain rules and regulations the city has, and having to deal with the legal side of developing real estate, such as waiting for permits, hiring workers, and professionals, and building your own company around it.
Hope others agree as well. Also, I don’t want to turn the game into sims or anything, but designing buildings could be a nice addition.
being planned for beta 3. I like your thoughts on it too. not to limit it to just buying an existing building but also maybe allowing the player to customize the look of their building. I like that.
Ability to Access Multiple Floors of Large Buildings (Skyscrapers, etc.)
Potential for Other Types of Real Estate Properties:
Potentially Add Factory Buildings or allow warehouses to become “Industrial Properties” that can be used for multiple purposes as Warehouses, Factories, Data Centers, etc.
Specialized Industrial Property (Refinery, Waste Management Service, etc.) background, visitable landmark, or a purchasable investment in late career.
Self-Storage Unit Complex (An Investment and smaller/cheaper place to rent a unit to store Extra Business Furniture/Equipment & Inventory).
Shopping Center Complex in addition to the individual retail building already in beta (Manhattan Mall Inspired).
Retail Real Estate Space rent could be based on percentage of retail sales (~5%-7%) with a fixed based rent component that would pay additional rent if store retail sales exceeded the minimum sales target. This is very common in the real world especially in desirable locations like New York.
Investments in the form of buying buildings and earning rent will come with beta 4.
I’ll leave this topic open though, as it takes a broader approach including buying land and construction.
One of the most important aspects for the rich when investing in anything real estated-related is the ability to use financial leverage.
So let’s say I buy a building for $10,000,000… why not have the ability to provide 20% of the investment capital upfront, then loan the rest, as long as cashflow can support it?
This links into doing things like renovations, but buying real estate should be dynamic so that depending on the spot of the building and current needs of that neighborhood it appreciates a few percents so theres more incentive for the player to purchase it as a form of profit.
**I would propose a game mechanic be added to the residential buildings.since we can purchase the real estate and there is furniture available to decorate them. you could rent out the different apartments in your owned building. go to customize, improve them so they rent for more. deal with maintenance to keep tenants happy.
I like this idea. I know a few ideas have been discussed about potentially being able to upgrade/improve purchased buildings to earn more money, so this would fit into that idea nicely.
but the way I would envision it is each residential building would have a number of apartments assigned to it like 10-12 respectively…
With the game having furniture with different values.
the value placed in an apartment and the upgrades to carpet wallpaper ect… you could ask more rent for nicer units. The units could function in a similar manner to the automobile and existing stores where over time they would get dirty and they would decay the more the tenants moved around in them.
This would allow for a new career path for a maintenance man that works similar to a janitor.
As well as tenants who could have traits like slob or neat freak that through there time at the property offer perks that affect the property.
Construction companies could be added to the businesses list to handle upgrades to units
Remodels could be performed through a series of modular apartment floor plans
Interior designer companies could function in the same fashion. Where you would choose from different decorated floor plans. All modular
So apartment 1A made up of construction module 22 and interior design module 3
Has a rent of $110 a day
These could be managed in the biz manager and interacted with via the preview windows.
Even beyond just rent, I think it would be nice to be able to improve your retail businesses this way too - a nicer building is more attractive to a customer. Perhaps if you own several buildings on a block and improve them, you can increase the overall traffic as well.
Topic. Would be cool to renovate and rent out houses to people. Would also be cool to take it up a notch and own a real estate agency and employ the job roles accordingly.
The option to buy resident buildings and rent them out to tenants. To manage these buildings, you could add the option of a something of a “Landlord” in your HQ. Price of rent depends on location, size and furniture.
Hey I think it would be cool to have all of the above in the title as a further progression past the retail businesses - I am a real estate developer/promoter as well as investor in value add properties and can consult on all of these mechanics to make for an even more awesome game
I was testing out the purchase of real estate and noticed the following.
Many of the buildings I was able to purchase have:
Very Low Occupancy Rates at the average market price: ~30%-50% when I believe most real estate is ~80%+ occupied in the real world. The buildings with highest occupancy were only 60%-70% occupied. Not very realistic.
Low ROI/Cap Rates on real Estate: Seems to range between ~0.65%-1.5% Annual ROI before property tax. When it should be more like ~5%-10% per year (after tax for triple net leases). Not very realistic.
Low Property Tax Rates: ~0.1-0.2% of property value. When it should be more like ~1.0% of property value. Most Commercial Real Estate owners don’t pay property tax as it is passed through to tenants in triple net lease. Not very realistic.
It does not make sense to buy a building for ~$36 million to only make ~$285,000/year in rental income minus ~$50,000 Taxes ~$235,000/year for a ~0.65% Annual ROI. Should be more like ~$1.8 million/year a ~5% Annual ROI.
Things need to be balanced for sure - the issue is that with 10X more in rent, it’s easy flip the other way and quickly own the entire map with very little effort.
One thing that will really help with this future “Real-estate/building conditions and renovation”. This could help since you’ll need to improve a location before it makes money, which will prevent it from being such an instant sky-rocking of money.
