
UnReal Estate – Game where you become a real estate mogul - xavils
http://xavils.github.io/UEG/
======
alister
To all those players who became billionaires, and also to those financial
advisors that show how anyone with modest income can become a multimillionaire
in a 50-year working lifespan through the miracle of compound interest:

People have been investing in property, stocks, and in interest-earning bank
accounts for centuries. Someone starting with $38,000 in 17th or 18th century
would be worth trillions or quadrillions today[1], or at least their
descendants would be.

So where are those trillionaires and quadrillionaires?

The problem is that over long spans of time (50+ years), there are wars,
revolutions, devaluations, confiscations, hyperinflationary periods, and other
economic disasters that have wiped out all savings.

There's no reason to assume that these things won't happen again when
projecting over long periods.

[1]
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2438000+at+6%25+for+40...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2438000+at+6%25+for+400+years)

~~~
xavils
You need a 10.8% return over 100 years to become a billionaire with $38000.

10.8% would not be unheard of, over a shorter span at least, right?

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mmastrac
I'd recommend renaming this to "Show HN" since it appears to be your own.
FWIW, it's kind of fun considering how simple it is -- it feels like there's a
kernel of a great game here. I found AdVenture Capitalist to be pretty
addictive TBH.

~~~
xavils
Sorry, quite new to HN. I just add "Show HN" to the tittle?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Welcome to HN!

An ultra-TL;DR set of hints:

\- read the FAQ at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

\- read the formatting help at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)
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[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10411471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10411471)
was supposed to be a bullet-point list)

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\- if you like to participate in HN discussions, you may find
[http://hnnotify.com/](http://hnnotify.com/) handy

Enjoy your stay! :).

~~~
ckozlowski
Never knew about hnnotify, thanks for that!

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's pretty cool, especially for holding discussions over the course of days,
long after the article has fallen from the front page.

------
lambdapie
In the game you start with 38,000 dollars. For reference at a rate of return
of 5.575% [0], this would yield on average 8.6 million after 100 years. I only
mention this to give some idea of what the returns on investment are in the
long term.

[0] The average return of S&P500 from 1915 to 2015 according to
[http://dqydj.net/sp-500-return-calculator/](http://dqydj.net/sp-500-return-
calculator/)

EDIT: these figures are wrong because they don't include dividends. See thread
below.

~~~
reddytowns
Why didn't you include dividends? In that case, the parameters you entered
would give a RoR of 9.9970%?

~~~
lambdapie
Oops, you're right, I overlooked that. So it would be 520 million after 100
years (22 million after accounting for inflation).

------
devin_liu
got 3.91B on the first try. Buy as many as you can whenever you think the
recession is about to end, and sell at the top of the boom.

What's interesting is that I liked getting into as much debt as possible at
all times. At a certain point I got confused and thought my net worth was
decreasing because my debt was going from -200 to -25 or so. I then went and
got myself into half a billion in debt straight after, and came out a
billionaire a few minutes later. I like this game.

~~~
blazespin
That's pretty good. I never sold once and just clicked max buy as fast as
possible. Got 3b or so. I stopped buying in 2073 or so.

~~~
blazespin
5B that time. Stopped buying in 2080. I would sell and be able to immediately
buy in higher tier cities for some reason. Seemed like a bug? Not sure what
was going on.

~~~
xavils
You guys are way better than me, my max is 1.3B

------
rebel
Definitely a fun start to a game. Reminds me of Adventure Capitalist and
predating that Dope Wars and some similar games. It definitely needs to have
independent boom/bust cycles for each city as right now there is no reason to
touch most of the mid-priced areas.

Also I think the boom/bust cycles need to be a little bit more volatile. Right
now it's far too easy to buy low and sell high as fast as you can click.

~~~
xavils
Yep, Adventure Capitalist was my inspiration, I was addicted to the game a few
months ago and thought it would be nice to do it with real estate. And to
challenge my coding skills as well.

I will improve boom/bust soon.

------
rl3
Nice game, I really like the presentation.

My only suggestion would be to somehow mitigate the amount of clicking
required at later stages of the game. Perhaps some sort of press and hold
functionality.

~~~
mangeletti
+1

The hilarious part about this is the fact that the clicking represents the
time it would take to manage / buy / sell property when you're _that_ rich.

~~~
blazespin
It's not quite this easy :)

~~~
xavils
Nice idea. Added to the list of upcoming features.

------
andy_ppp
Have a look at [http://propertypartner.co/](http://propertypartner.co/) which
looks to be the same thing but for real :-)

~~~
xavils
Yes, I've seen a few companies do this in recent years. It's a nice concept.

------
altvali
Hi! I really like your game. However, selling apartments will remove too much
playerDebt. If I buy the first apartment in Athens and I sell it one year
later, I get from 38k to 47.2k after just one year! There's a similar bug with
cancelling mortgage, I think you made a mistake in computing the constant 2.22
in your code.

~~~
xavils
Thanks for the concern. The logic behind the scenes goes like this:

\- You pay 20K for a house.

\- You owe 80K + 80K * 2.5% * 40 years. That's your total debt.

\- If you want to cancel the mortgage, you must pay 80K, and your net worth
will go up because you do not have the 40 year mortgage anymore (even if you
just paid 80K).

\- If you buy and sell one year after, the same happens with mortgage towards
your net worth. In terms of savings, during 1 year you will get approx 600 *
12 rent, -350 * 12 mortgage. That's 3K more. Then your remaining savings will
go up 1% (as savings account return) which is around 200. Last, Since it's a
boom in the economic cycle, while your debt will have diminished, the value of
your house will have increased. So basically you sell the house for more, owe
less and that is the result.

This situation is what makes the world go crazy over real estate, become
overbought and then, BOOM. Economic crisis.

------
marianos
Managed to get 1.11b on second try. Anyone know what the optimal strategy is
here? Should I pay off the debts or keep them?

~~~
consideranon
I got to 8b second try. Get to the most valuable property as soon as possible
and then ignore everything else not worth you time/clicks. Then buy as much as
you can early in the Boom when prices are lowest. When a Recession starts,
start selling everything while the prices are still high. Rinse and repeat. I
kept all the debts until the end.

This only really works because the boom/bust cycle is too predictable and
consistent, so it really just becomes a 'how fast can you click' game. It
would be better if a) more random boom/bust points, duration, and rate of
rise/decline, and b) buy and sell in bulk.

------
Cogito
To increase difficulty, I would try two things:

1\. have the boom/recession cycle independent for each city

2\. make the cycle more complex, potentially by adding multiple cycles of
different periodicity together (wave addition)

These could be combined to, for example, have long period boom/recession
cycles globally, and shorter term local cycles.

Was really fun overall :)

~~~
kristianp
Liquidity crises, not being able to refinance debt.

~~~
xavils
Love both ideas! Will definitely implement it and have global recessions with
mini city-cycles. This way it will make more sense to buy one or the other.

------
sireat
Awesome game!

Just like the similary addictive classic Drug Wars
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drugwars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drugwars))
game you just have to buy low and sell high which is not so easy in RL.

------
empy
Buy as many as you can, do nothing else, sell at 2090. Ended with 30 billion
net worth. I have to sell at 2090, because I need to click thousands of times
to sell all the estate.

~~~
blazespin
Ah, I played on touch with the 350 ms delay. Desktop browser you could
probably buy more.

~~~
empy
Increase keyboard repeat speed, and hold enter key to buy and sell. But I
still can not spend as quickly as I earn.

------
emsy
I don't like it if a new tab starts playing music without my agreement. On top
of that the music is really annoying.

~~~
xavils
Well, it's a game and games have music. I see what you mean though. Probably
should start music after game starts, not before.

I'm probably biased cause my wife created the music.

------
gcb0
i'm pretending those are street names in suburb. otherwise the tax forms alone
would be enough to drive anyone mad.

------
abvishek
Fun Game! really liked the idea

