Do you feel Monopoly is slow and sad? Here are a new set of fun Monopoly house rules that our family plays with – they’ll make your game fast-paced and awesome!
If there is one board game which has made the kids and adults fiercely compete against each other, it’s the original Monopoly board game. This highly engaging property trading game keeps kids and adults hooked, and finds its special place in family & friends gatherings, office parties or even during free time at home.
Most Monopoly players don’t even care about the rule book and play by their own. Over the years, I have seen many Monopoly board game variants & editions like Gamer, Anti-Monopoly, Deal, Lord of the Rings, etc.. Each of these versions have somewhat different quick monopoly rules, but I find most of them unbalanced and uninteresting.
I have been it playing since I was four and now after 34 years of playing, I would like to share our fun Monopoly house rules which make playing extremely competitive, fast paced, highly-involving, and fun.
Why We Need New Monopoly Rules?
The actual rule book makes Monopoly a somewhat slow and sad game. You begin the game with a tight budget, which ensures you have to pick and choose what properties you buy and how much build on them. Sure, the point is to make players go bankrupt, but these rules also ensure there’s always one player that can’t enjoy the game almost right from the beginning. Moreover, there are many ways to loose money like property taxes, repairs, rents etc., which can be very depressing.
Also, in the first twenty minutes, the game is very slow paced as no one has the full set or the money to build houses. This keeps transactions too small to make a huge difference. It can be frustrating to deal in tens and twenty dollar bills as the bank hordes all the monies!
While the rule book is a great way to learn and practice the game, it can be boring and exhausting after a while. So over the years, we’ve modified the rules in a way that is fun and exciting and everyone loves our new rules.
New & Fun Monopoly House Rules
1. Start the game with extra money
The original rule states that we begin with $1500 (2×500, 4X100, 1×50, 1×20, 2×10, 1×5, 5×1 currency bills). However, according to our new rule each players begins with $2000, that’s an extra $500.
2. You don’t need a full-set to build houses
The monopoly instructions say that you can build houses and hotel only when you own all the properties of a color. According to our Monopoly Rule: You can build houses and hotels on your properties depending on number of properties you own.
If you own 1 of 3 properties: you can build upto 3 houses, and charge only 1/4th of the original rent as stated in your property cards.
If you own 2 of 3 properties of 1 of 2 properties: you can build upto 3 house, and charge half (1/2) of the original rent as stated in your property card.
You can charge full rent only when you own all the properties of color.
This is an important rule change as it makes for fair play. Buying a full-set is dependent on luck, as the first player to land on a property is entitled to buy it. So with our fun new Monopoly house rule, each player gets a fair chance of at winning even if they didn’t get to buy a full set.
In fact, even the game Anti-Monopoly has a variation of this rule. This rule also reduces property trading at times, but gives more opportunity for players to charge rent from each other, thus increasing cash-flow positive assets.
3. No taxes
The two tax spaces that is income tax for $200 and super tax of $100 are a big letdown when you are about to start or pass “Go”. So instead of paying these heavy taxes, we have reversed this and you collect these taxed amounts from the bank instead. Yay! Let the bank suffer instead of you!
4. You get money for general repairs
Here’s one of the more extreme monopoly rules. When you are doing very well and build a lot of houses and hotels, the Community Chest and Chance cards on making general repairs can ruin you in the beginning or later on. So according to our new rule, instead of paying for each property, you collect the same amount from the bank. So instead you dreading this card, you long for it.
5. Going to jail earns you money
Going to jail can be a very big letdown especially if you don’t own the properties that lie in front of it. So we have altered this by creating new monopoly jail rules, where you get $50 when you come to jail and you can leave in the very next turn.
6. You can selling back houses & hotels at full-price
You can sell your houses & hotels at the same price to the bank which you spent on building them. However, you cannot move & rotate your properties if your opponent is about to pass them (in the immediate space line of your opponent). You can only sell and build your properties during your turn.
7. You can owe money to the bank and opponent
According to our fun Monopoly house rules, you can owe people money, and you don’t have to pay off all dues immediately. However, since we have laid down lot of benefits, we have also laid down some restriction on lending. A player cannot owe more than $50 to the bank and $1000 to an opponent (or per opponent).
You can only owe people money if you’re required to pay a tax or rent, and when you don’t have cash. And you have to pay people back as soon as you get some cash (like salary or rent). If you owe money to both the bank and the opponent, and you receive your salary or other cash, you have to pay dues back the bank before you can pay back dues to the opponent.
Moreover, players cannot buy or build properties unless they have paid the bank and opponent fully. A player needs to be completely debt free in order to build a house or hotel on their property.
Tip: While playing with these Monopoly house rules, it’s better to be low on cash, and be invested in houses & hotels, as they can be easily sold for cash to the bank. It’s advisable to have as many revenue sources active, rather being debt free to any opponent.
8. You lose if you owe more than $1000 to any opponent
So by now I’m sure you’re thinking that our new Monopoly house rules inject a lot of cash into the game. Well, the fun part is that while you do have a lot of cash to play and build, you can’t owe your opponent more than $1000. These set of new rules make Monopoly fast-paced and fun, as you can play with a lot of money, and who doesn’t enjo
So the next time you want to play Monopoly plus house rules, try these, and let us know how it went!
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Abhishek Sareen is a management professional who has diverse experience comprising of management consulting, sports, product design, retail, manufacturing and heavy engineering. Abhishek has keen eye for good design and enjoys healthy discussion on art, design and psychology. Based in Chennai, he is also an alumna of IIM-A and enjoys long-distance cycling and playing chess in his free time.