Housing

[Tungsten Whitmarsh Cadow]

I have some housing in Visby but no one lives there. They complain of a shortage of living space but they don't move in and I pay tax on the house. Rent is set at normal. I think they can't find the housing or maybe it takes more time.

In Leubeck people are satsified with the housing but I noticed that the most expensive housing was almost maxed so I'm guessing they'd like more of the most expensive housing if anything. The middle housing has a lot of vacancies. The cheap housing has a lot of people but there is room for more.

I imagine if I jack up the rent, they'll be less satisfied and I'll loose a few but it might bring in some money.

In my tax statment it tells me about the expenses for the managers at the trading office and that expense is huge. For me it was about 33000, which was more than my sailors or anything else. Are the more skilled trade office administrators worth their cost or should I cut them loose and hire new people?

Why is it so hard for them to say that this or that expense is per week or per year or month? They do the same thing in real life and make things very confusing.

[pdoan8]

Poor people live in half-timbered houses (these are the main working class). Well to do people live in gabled houses. Rich people live in merchants' houses. Click on a house that is owned by the town will tell you the over all housing level. 98% or more is considered as full. You need more house of that type. You should build new house when the type is 80-85% full. Remember: more houses -> more people -> more goods demand.

I have never changed the rent price. It's always normal rate for me. Higher rent does more harm the good. If you manage your housing right, rent should be more than property tax and you should be making some money (but only a few thousand at most).

Tax statement is weekly. Trading office report is weekly (it refreshes daily). Profits and expenditures are all list as weekly total (x4 weeks in the company report).

Trading office, in the "total" tab:

+ rent income *(income)
- land taxes *(expenditure)
+/- trade income (if you use manager) *(profit or loss)
- Manager cost (shown as weekly wage) *(expenditure)
+/- Other (I forgot what this means)

If the above add up to be positive, then you are making money. 33k is less than what I'm currently paying my sailors (37k), and less than 10% of total wages (413k). Last 4 weeks, my total trade income was 3.5 mil, and my expenditure was 2.9 mil.

Manager does not actually do any thing. He is the "enabler" switch. Enable you to trade with town directly from you office. Enable you to receive discount when purchasing goods. Manager will usually start at stage 0 and improve over time just like captain (this was explained in other thread already). His wage is negligible considering that he is cost just as much as a captain and you have only one per town. Don't use manager if you are still doing all the trade manually.

[heervandering]

About the housing, if you click on the house icon above your screen, it fades out some houses, click one of them and you will see the percentage of houses occupied, if one percentage reaches 90%, build one of those, if no one comes in it means that there is not enough food for instance, you can also give food to the priest for the beggars, I give 10 of each stuff, about the administrators, hire them not to quickly, only when toy aven something to sell in your warehouse, after that they will always be financially beneficial

[Tungsten Whitmarsh Cadow]

I have several workshops in Leubeck. In the beginning they produced a lot of iron goods but now they produce very little even though they have pig iron and timber and the workshops are full of workers. How do I get them to produce more iron goods?

[AlP]

When you have a housing shortage, almost nobody will move into the city, even the classes for which you do have living space. The merchant houses are usually the problem, you need to build some in advance.

In the beginning, leave rent at normal. As soon as your city starts to grow, raise it to the highest. You should plan ahead and be the only one building houses (the AI only builds at a shortage, if bricks are available), so they have no choice but to pay up.

The tax notice doesn't tell you about the manager expenses. The 33k figure is probably the total of your rent or something. Maybe post some screenshots.

The skilled administrators are only worth it if you use them to buy something from the town. It's not worth it to dismiss them in my opinion. They don't cost much, 10 administrators at stage 5 cost you only 8k per week. If you have more that early in the game, maybe reevaluate which ones you actually need.