Payback Time! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mediterranean Avenue, 3 houses

Both of these properties charge a rent of $90. Mediterranean Ave is the poor dog property and the only property in the game where not even the rent for a hotel will completely cover the cost of buying and improving the property to this point. Add to this that it is the least visited square on the board and you'd rather have anything else.

Answer: Atlantic Avenue, 1 house

Utilities cost 10 times the rolled number in rent if both are owned, so the rent here is $110. All the way up to North Carolina Avenue, the one-house rents are easy to remember because they just increase in steps of 10 from 10 to 130. With the single exception of Pennsylvania Avenue, one-house rent is also always exactly five times the base rent for an unimproved property.

Answer: St. James Place, 2 houses

The rent is $200 in this case, with the railroads maxing out before reaching even the 3-house range for most properties. On St. James Place and its sister property Tennessee Avenue, you may want to upgrade the two lower-priced ones before the higher value, because they are landed upon very frequently after emerging from jail (double 3 and double 4 respectively, plus the high chance of a regular 6 or 8) and an early high rent or two from these can let you decisively bankrupt a player and gain their properties for a dominant board position.

Answer: Baltic Avenue, Hotel

St. Charles Place and States Avenue represent a major income jump over the first side properties, reaching Baltic's hotel rent of $450 with just three houses. Owning the pink set along with either light blue or orange can very quickly end the game if you can improve all six properties to three or four houses each and thus create a massive building shortage before anyone with more expensive properties can even think of a major investment.

Answer: Tennessee Avenue, 3 houses

Oriental Avenue is the first property in the game to have a positive return on three houses, yielding $270 for a cost of $250. While its hotel rent of $550 looks impressive and is a strong improvement over the 4-house $400, it's often better to leave the light blue set on 4 houses each to deny other players the opportunity to build.

Answer: Boardwalk, 2 houses

The big discrepancy in building density between these two properties, both yielding $600 in rent, reflects their respective positions. While from pink to green, rent increases relatively steadily and in small steps, the first two and the last set have far higher jumps. Of course for Boardwalk, this just where the fun begins, but then it takes a pretty whopping $800 to even get to this point while the same income on Connecticut Avenue can be had for a mere $370.

Answer: New York Avenue, 4 houses

Halfway around the board, New York Avenue is also almost exactly a half Broadway, with its initial cost, building cost and hotel rent all being perfectly half of the top property's numbers. Its 4-house rent of $800 matches that of 3 houses on Ventnor Avenue, but is slightly less than half of Broadway's ($1700). Like all the yellows, Ventnor does not increase that much after the third house, so it is often kept at this level.

Answer: Pacific Avenue, 3 houses

Both of these have a $900 rent, but the difference in developing them is striking. While the pink Virginia Avenue is often quickly built to 4 houses or a hotel, the green set is the most difficult to develop, imposing the $200 building cost three times for just one upgrade level (compared to two for dark blue). Add to that the low return from fewer than three houses and it being shielded from too many visits by the Go To Jail square and the Community Chest and Chance on the third side, and you'd rather leave green to your opponents if given the choice.

Answer: Park Place, 3 houses

Both of these properties command a $1100 rent and have a similar cost to get there (Illinois costs $890, Park Place $850), but they have a striking difference: Illinois is the most landed on property in the game, being 14 (twice seven) squares away from jail as well as having a Chance card directly generating unplanned visits while Park Place is the poor cousin to the shiny Boardwalk, giving only roughly 75% of its profits and having a low chance of seeing any business.

Answer: Pennsylvania Avenue, 4 houses

Both of these rents are $1200 and if you collect either of them, you are probably either in the endgame just attempting to bankrupt your last opponents quickly or on a last-ditch effort to stay in, because in both cases, the better choice would have been to stay one building level lower.

The rents are still crippling ($1025 and $1000 respectively) at the lower level and keeping some cash reserves for an unlucky roll or an opportunity upgrade (always fun when an almost bankrupted opponent is just one common roll away from a threatening set of yours) can make all the difference.