Houseflip Tutorial & Strategy Guide:
Houseflip is a quick playing real estated themed strategy game.
The objective of the game is to earn as much equity as you can before you run out of actions or houses to buy.
If you like board games like Catan™ or Splendor™ then chances are you will like Houseflip as well!
The main game screen, pictured to the right, is broken up into three main regions. The top area is called the header bar and contains game stats.
The vertical box below and to the left is your portfolio and contains buttons for manipulating the properties you own (renovate & sell), to end the month and to gain more actions.
The large box in the bottom right portion of the screen contains four neighborhoods of properties you can buy, three of which are locked to begin the game.
The objective of the game is to earn as much equity as you can before you run out of actions or houses to buy.
If you like board games like Catan™ or Splendor™ then chances are you will like Houseflip as well!The main game screen, pictured to the right, is broken up into three main regions. The top area is called the header bar and contains game stats.
The vertical box below and to the left is your portfolio and contains buttons for manipulating the properties you own (renovate & sell), to end the month and to gain more actions.
The large box in the bottom right portion of the screen contains four neighborhoods of properties you can buy, three of which are locked to begin the game.
Header Bar
In the left corner of the header bar, is your available cash. You need cash to buy and renovate properties.
Beside cash in the header bar is your current rent/total rents collected. The first number, your current rent, you will receive at the end
of each month. The other number is total rents collected - collect enough rents to unlock more neighborhoods!
Next is your equity measured as your current cash + equity, in a normal market (more on markets in a bit), of
properties owned.Hit scoring goals (more on this below) and gain additional actions!
Following equity is your actions count. Different tasks require actions as follows: end month and sell house = one action, renovations = one action per condition of improvement and
buying a property = five actions. Run out of actions and the game ends!
Next is your current economy & the next three economies to follow. Economies are Cold, Fair and Hot. Cold economies
decrease and hot economies increase what you can sell your properties for. Use the ability
to see three upcoming economies to predict when you might want to buy and sell properties. The economy will move
forward to the next economy at the end of each month.
The last thing on the header bar is the date. Tasks take half a month so you can buy/sell or renovate
up to two properties per month. At the end of the month you are automatically paid rents for properties
you own. You can end the month at any point by pressing the End Month button (see below). Ending the
month costs one action.
Portfolio
The top line, score 2 million for 20 actions, is telling you that attaining a score of 2 million will gain you an additional 20 actions.
Need cash quick?
You can trade actions to get cash. The amount of cash available goes up as neighborhoods are unlocked and time goes by in the game.
End Month costs you one action,
pays out rent and forwards the economy to the next months economy. One neighborhood is chosen, at random,
at the end of each month and that neighborhood has all houses rotated to the right. If there
is a house in the right hand column it will be removed from the game. The game ends when there are no more houses on
the market or you are out of actions.Below these elements will be up to three properties that you own. You cannot own more than three properties at any point in time. You can renovate a property if it isn't already in 5-star condition. Renovating will increase property value and the rent that property earns. You can also sell any property you own.
Market
There are four neighborhoods in the housing market. At the start of the game the bottom three neighborhoods will be covered by locks showing that only the top neighborhood is currently available.
Neighborhoods will unlock if collected rent goals are met of 150K, 750K, and 3 million respectively.
At the end of every month one neighborhood out of those that have been unlocked and which still have unsold houses will be chosen and that neighborhood will lose a house from the right most column. All the other properties in that neighborhood will slide to the right and, if any new houses are to be introduced into that neighborhood then a house will be added in the left most column.
All available properties will have a buy button beneath them followed by two numbers.The first number is the sale price - if you've got that much cash it can be yours!
The second number is how much the property is above or below market value (market being determined by the economy) - a + sign denotes the property is below market, the bigger the number that follows, the better of a deal that property is.
Strategy Guide
• If possible sell properties in Fair or Hot economies to maximize your profit!
• In general, try to own three houses as soon as possible to maximize monthly rental income.
• One house is removed from the right hand side of one neighborhood row every month. You can anticipate how long you have before you will lose good deals. This becomes more random as more neighborhoods open up and you will need to make calculated risks about when to renovate and sell properties you own to acquire desirable properties in the market.
Keep in mind that the longer a house is on the market the more chance there is that the property will be reduced in price.
• You can perform two tasks per month and since rents are collected at the end of the month try to sell in the beginning of the month and buy or reno mid-month to maximize your end of month rental income.
• Buying and renovating are action expensive tasks so watch available actions if you are doing a lot of flipping.
• All things being equal between buying a property and renovating one you own then reno because the action cost will be less and houses on market might reduce in cost.
•Trade up! With only 3 house slots available it is better to have at least some more expensive properties in your portfolio so you can generate more cash on hand quickly if good deals appear on the market.
• Renovated hotels earn more than double the rent of any other property in the game but are also the only property in the game that you will usually lose money on when renovating! Due to this the end game strategy is to not flip renovated hotels! You will find that often it is better to have one renovated hotel for awhile while you flip apartments. Also, you might sell un-renovated hotels to get funds to acquire other hotels that are good deals.