Monopoly and Mortgage: Playing the Game

Remember monopoly? Remember mortgages? You know, the text that's written when you flip your title deed. Flipping the title deed means your property is on mortgage and you'll get money from the bank.

Sounds simple right? Wrong. There's much more to it than that.

Here are the things you need to know about the game and how to get most out of your mortgages.

The idea of the game is to buy and rent and sell properties so profitably that one becomes the wealthiest player and eventual "monopolist". Starting from "go" move tokens around the board according to the throw of dice.

When a player's token lands on a space not yet owned, he may buy it from the bank: otherwise it is auctioned off to the highest bidder.

The purpose of owning property is to collect rents from opponents landing there. Rentals are greatly increased if you put houses (those little green ones) and hotels (those dreaded red infrastructures).

So your best bet in winning the game is to put the most houses or hotels in your lots. (That's assuming you don't land in your opponents' lots with houses or hotels).

To raise more money, lots may be mortgaged to the bank. Here comes the tricky part. That includes deciding which lots to mortgage and how you can get the most out of your mortgaged property.

Mortgages in monopoly can be done only through the bank. The mortgage value is printed on each title deed. The rate of interest is 10 percent, payable when the mortgage is lifted. If any property is transferred which is mortgaged, the new owner may lift the mortgage at once if he wishes, but must pay 10 percent interest.

If he fails to lift the mortgage he still pays 10 percent interest and if he lifts the mortgage later on he pays an additional 10 per cent interest as well as the main value.

Houses or hotels cannot be mortgaged. All buildings on the lot must be sold back to the bank before any property can be mortgaged. The bank will pay one-half of what was paid for them.

In order to rebuild a house on mortgaged property the owner must pay the bank the amount of the mortgage, plus the 10 percent interest charge and buy the house back from the bank at its full price.

When you mortgage a property, you can use the money for anything you want to, so long as it's legal under the rules of monopoly. The only restriction in this regard is that a player cannot pre-mortgage a property to finance its own purchase.

For example, say a player wants to purchase Boardwalk but can't do it with his or her current assets. That player cannot say, "I'm going to buy Boardwalk by mortgaging it, and then using the money I get for the mortgage to complete the purchase." You must own a property before you can mortgage it.

Playing the game is fun and it will give you an idea of how it is in the real buy and sell world. There are also the Community Chest and Chance spaces which players land on. Instructions ranging from winning $25 dollars to $500 dollars are given. Sometimes players even land in jail! This game is definitely a clever and amusing entertainment.