Monopoly Question

Landa2

Simple Question, have half a grasp on it myself but its been a while since i last played..

One player owes another a quite substantial debt.. more than any money he has.. It has come down to property to pay it off. Who gets the choice on what is used to pay the debt, is it the person owed or the person in debt..

ChunkyLover_53

Landa2 wrote: »

Simple Question, have half a grasp on it myself but its been a while since i last played..

One player owes another a quite substantial debt.. more than any money he has.. It has come down to property to pay it off. Who gets the choice on what is used to pay the debt, is it the person owed or the person in debt..

Is that you Minister Lenihan?

Dozen Wicked Words

Landa2 wrote: »

Simple Question, have half a grasp on it myself but its been a while since i last played..

One player owes another a quite substantial debt.. more than any money he has.. It has come down to property to pay it off. Who gets the choice on what is used to pay the debt, is it the person owed or the person in debt..

If you are in debt, you can mortgage whatever property you want, as long as it pays enough to pay off your debt.

Landa2

One response i got on this elsewhere is, if, and in this case it is the case, you want to leave the bank out of it and clear the debt by transferring property and funds directly to the player owed, you get to choose what property is transferred as long as its combined value equals the debt total, not the creditor who might be after a strategically located property..

It does make sense to me, if the creditor is trying to get his hands on a property but the debtor does not want him to have that property and can still cover the debt with his other properties he should have the choice on what is used.. Where the other properties may be seen as worthless to the creditor in the grand scheme of the game they do have a market value..

Im not sure if i was clear on that one

ShooterSF

My understanding is that you can sell houses and hotels back to the bank at a certain percentage or mortgage properties to raise funds. After that we always played a free market style game where it was up to the creditor and the debtor to strike a deal but you could always sell to other players to try and raise the cash straight up.
You couldn't force the creditor to take any deal (other than the cash obviously)

superrdave

If the debtor is in a position where even if he mortgages everything he owns (remembering you only get back half what you paid for houses) he couldn't come up with the cash, the creditor can have him declared bankrupt, in which case everything goes back to the bank and the creditor gets only the cash the debtor could raise by mortgaging everything.

Example:

Say, debtor owns light blues, yellows, one red (The Strand) and the four train stations... yellows have hotels, everything else bar the stations is mortgaged, and he has 50 cash.

Say, he lands on Mayfair with a hotel. He owes 2000. He has only 50 cash. By mortgaging his hotels (which he bought for 5*150*3) he could raise 2250/2=1125. He could then mortgage the yellow properties (280+260+260)/2=400 and the train stations (4*200/2=400) and he would have 1975 cash, which would be all the creditor would get. The bank, thus owning all the mortgaged property and as a preferential creditor, would receive the properties and would be free to sell them again and the creditor would be out of the game.

If the creditor and debtor reached a deal, however, say to transfer all the light blues, the red, the stations and the cash (effectively worth (80+80+100+220)/2 + 800 (stations) + 50 = 1090), the bank would have nothing to do with it. However, that is all down to agreement. The creditor can stand on his rights and demand cash (and in that situation would be right to do it) even if it will bankrupt his opponent and he will not receive the full value.

However, if in this fictional scenario we assume another player has the other two reds (Trafalgar Square and Fleet Street), they may be willing to buy the other red, say for 500... in that situation, obviously the creditor could raise cash by selling those or other properties off, assuming another player in the game was cash rich. They could also sell the yellows, but only as a complete set, to another player, if there was a willing buyer, and use the cash received to pay off the debt.

The creditor can refuse to accept properties in lieu of cash. In the above example, if the creditor mortgaged the yellow hotels and gained 1125 in cash, plus his own 50, making 1175, the creditor could refuse to accept that plus the stations plus the red property, even though the combined value is well over the 2000 owed (being 1175+800+220/2=2085).

In short, the creditor can demand cash but cannot demand properties. He has no control over what properties are mortgaged, or if the creditor wants to sell off properties to another player. Things may get sticky if, for example, the creditor in the above example tried to sell off the yellow properties for 1,000 total, because in that case, instead of the creditor receiving 1975 in bankruptcy, he would only receive 1000 + 400(stations) + 50(cash) = 1450. I think anything which effectively led to the creditor being defrauded would not be allowed. However, say the debtor in the situation above, having mortgaged everything and come up with the 1925 cash as outlined, opted to sell the stations to another player for 100, even though this is well under their mortgaged face value of 400, would lead to the creditor receiving the 2000 they were owed and there would be no fraud and it would appear acceptable.

The alternative, and regularly used in our household, option is for the creditor not to bankrupt the debtor but to accept everything they own in exchange for the debt. In the above situation, the debtor could do what the wanted in terms of mortgaging stuff in an effort to raise the cash, but if they fell short, they could opt to give the creditor all the property (mortgaged) and the cash they have in satisfaction of the debt, thus sending themselves out of the game.

I hope I haven't confused you unnecessarily.

K.O.Kiki

Another reason why I dislike Monopoly.

Puteq

superrdave wrote: »

If the debtor is in a position where even if he mortgages everything he owns (remembering you only get back half what you paid for houses) he couldn't come up with the cash, the creditor can have him declared bankrupt, in which case everything goes back to the bank and the creditor gets only the cash the debtor could raise by mortgaging everything.

What? Its been years since i played monopoly, but i knew the rulebook well at the time, and there was no talk of properties going back to the bank? Although i'm sure probably later editions of the rules probably added this in. The way we used to play was if you were in debt, you had to do whatever you could to clear your debt, sellings houses back to the bank at half price, mortgaging, etc. If after all that you were still in debt, you could sell your properties to any player for whatever cash you could raise (including the creditor). If after that you were still in debt, you were bankrupt and so out of the game, so you just transferred whatever properties and cash you had to the creditor. Of course what usually happened in this case out of spite was the debtor sold all their properties to some random other player for 1 dollar so as to screw the creditor over but thats another thing...

I think i like the idea of properties going back to the bank better, but i just thought i'd mention it since i am certain my rulebook didnt have anything about that in it.