know the Property values and how they change
You must know the true property values to negotiate successfully.
Primary to any successful Monopoly™ negotiation is knowing the values of the properties at the time of the negotiation. This may have little or no relationship to the price paid for the property. Monopoly™ property values change with every play, sometimes minimally, sometimes completely. Before entering any negotiation, view the circumstances of the entire board and each party’s cash holdings, as best you can tell. (You may want to keep your own cash concealed, without being too obvious about it.)
There are many factors that can affect the value of any particular property. They include:
- Is the property part of a color group in which you already own a property? If you do not already own a property in the color group that includes the property you want, any premium you might pay over the printed price of the property may be limited to only the value that accrues to you by avoiding the need to actually land on the property. If the color group is a favorite of yours, that premium may be more than insubstantial; however, if your plan is to acquire an entire color group through purchase and trading, the cost to you may be significant. A better strategy may be to limit yourself to color groups that include properties on which you actually land, or, at least, acquire in an early trade, when circumstances have not yet added significant value to the various properties.
- The premium you might pay to acquire a second property in a color group will be affected by whether there is a third property in the group and whether that property is owned, with the premium arguably being higher if the third property is unowned. If the third property is owned (presumably by a player other than the one with whom you are negotiating for the second property), the premium on the second property may be affected by both who owns the third property, particularly the likelihood they will negotiate with you regarding the third property.
- If you are negotiating for the third property in a color group where you own the other two, the premium that you will need to pay above the property's title deed price will likely be substantial. For this reason, you may not want to consider negotiating for the second property within a color group, unless you have promising strategy for acquiring the third. Such a strategy might include, for example, owning a property in another color group that you know is highly desirable to the player who owns the property you are seeking.
- Note that the principles that apply to acquiring multiple properties within a color group also apply to the railroads, and even the utilities; indeed, the primary purpose for buying a utility may be to trade it for another property owned by whoever owns the other utility. While the value of the utility being offered may not be substantial, it is clear there is only one other player in the game to whom the second utility might be more valuable than the purchase price, and that value may be sufficient to either acquire a lesser-priced property in a color group, or may be the kicker that makes an otherwise unsuccessful negotiation successful.
- What have the fortunes been of the player who owns the property? Note the circumstances of the player with whom you are negotiating. Their openness to a deal will likely be affected by whatever success or lack thereof they have already sustained during the game. Success at Monopoly™ will be enhanced by a player's cognizance of not only each player's economic status, but also the strategies each player appears to be pursuing. In any negotiation, knowledge is power.
- Do you have the resources to build on the property? A property on which one can build is much more valuable than a property that must lay dormant for lack of building funds. Monopoly™ does not reward owning property for its own sake; if a property isn't generating significant income, it may be more useful to mortgage it and use the proceeds to build houses wherever possible.
