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13. How can I upgrade my current house to a larger house?</center>
A Short Guide to Buying Houses to Upgrade
By FFBooks
Upgrading houses can be as profitable as IDOC camping, and avoids the frustration of camping a building for hours only to have someone place a split second before you, or having your machine seize up only minutes before the final decay. IDOC camping is also not possible for some people due to hardware difficulties. Working on house upgrading may therefore be a viable alternative as anyone can do it- regardless of system spec. However, it is not an "easy option" since it requires both the patience of a camper, as well as the persuasion skills of a bard.
This guide does not cover in detail the process of working out whether a building will fit or not- Flippy has already done a much better post than I could on that subject. Instead, it covers ways of getting in touch with owners, and how to come to a fair price for that property.
Sections in this guide
1: Finding suitable sites
2: Contacting owners
3: The Negotiation
4: The Large Tower
5: Upgrading
Section One: Finding suitable sites
The two essential tools you will need are:
UO Auto-map,
UO Assist
if you do not have these two tools yet, get them immediately. For a serious realtor they are absolutely essential. UOAssist will cost $15, but after the short trial period you will wonder how you played without it...
Together, these tools will enable you to map out the houses on your shard, saving a copy of their positions on your HDD. Mapping can be achieved by simply running around the facets, coming with a screen or two of every house. The two facets are saved separately, and can be compared easily by simply flipping from one to the other.
You will be amazed at how many small buildings there are on small tower spots, small towers on sandstone/log spots, and log cabins on villa spots
.
There are many house owners- particularly in Fel- who do not realize that their house is sitting on a site in which a larger house will fit. When you come across such a site, mark its position on Automap with a flag, and mark a rune. Just because a building is there on Fel, it does not guarantee that it will also fit in Tram. However, the chances are much better if it is "properly placed" already. Tram buildings should normally fit on Fel, but this is also not guaranteed. Read Flippy's article on what items block, and try to work out if there is anything in the terrain, which will stop it.
Soon, you should have maps of your entire shard, covered with flags for upgrade potential and many runebooks filled with runes to these prime real estate sites. It's a good idea at this stage to arrange the runebooks in terms of preferred sites.
Section Two: Contacting Owners
Contacting the current owners of the site is the most difficult part of the process. Many only log in for short period of time per week, and so "catching" them when they're online can be very difficult. Below I make a number of suggestions on how to achieve this, but success is not guaranteed.
The best time to try this is at weekends, when most people play UO.
i) Some house owners leave their ICQ number on their house sign, or on a book locked down inside their house. These are the easy ones.
ii) Leave a book with your ICQ on their doorstep. The book will decay after about an hour. You may need to refresh the book a number of times each day by picking it up and putting it down again.
iii) Tame some animals and rename them: "IWantToBuyHouse" and "SeeBookOnStep", "SeeSignNextDoor" or "ICQ NinThreEigt..." etc and leave them inside the house. These will last longer than a book, but is less precise. You also can't put numbers in pet names, and don't have much room (grrrr).
iv) If you own a house next door, change your sign to give a message to the owner, and your ICQ.
v) Direct contact
This last section is where your runes come in most important. People will often wait inside their house, or (if Fel) sparring just outside it- particularly at the weekend. Since you now have books of runes to visit these properties, every now and then recall around the facets to visit each of these sites. This way, you can visit about 125 sites in thirty minutes. Four sweeps through (two hours) and you are bound to come across at least one, if not more than one owner.
If you are lucky enough to own a neighboring house, then use your training time at that house, keeping your ears open for your neighbor’s footsteps or door openings. In your excitement you will often be banned from a house, in Fel, since the owner will think you're rushing in to attack. Have macros ("Can we talk?” "I'm interested in your house") ready. Often you will have only seconds between them arriving and logging out so you need to be quick!
vi) Owner-induced
Sometimes you will be lucky enough to find that the house is already on the market, either as indicated on the sign, on uo-auction or from a seller at Brit Bank (or similar). Since you already have the upgrade spots marked on Automap, you can tell instantly whether or not the site is one you're after. If someone is at Brit, offering to sell a building, always go and see- you never know, it might be one of the one's you're looking for!
Section Three: Negotiation
So you've found a potential site, you've contacted the owner and now you have to agree on a fair price for the site.
The owner will always want you to make the offer first.
Since you need to persuade someone to move out, unless the house was already for sale you will normally need to offer him or her above market value to persuade him or her to move. Although this hurts, be prepared to pay up to three times the normal value for a property, depending on the greed of the owner! Before you make the offer, always look at how well the house is furnished. If it is full of costly items, then you may find that no cash offer is good enough. If everything is cheap, or there is very little inside the house, your task will be much easier. They may demand a million for a small, but if that small blocks a Tower it is worth paying it.
At first, do not let the owner know your intentions. If they know that you want to upgrade to a larger house, they will either refuse to sell, or will raise their price accordingly. He will normally ask you why you want to buy the building, so be prepared with some vague answer. If you own a neighboring house this is much easier ("I own the house next door").
To determine your maximum offer, you will need to:
Know the value of the new house (say 1.25 million)
Know the cost of the deed which you need to buy (say 100K)
Know the value of the deed you will get for the existing building (say 50K)
The maximum that you could pay for the house is then:
1.25 million - 100 K + 50 K
Or 1.2 million. If you pay any sum of money up to this, you will still be making a profit. However, you have spent time and effort trying to get the building, so should always keep at least some extra profit back. I recommend a 20% margin. For this building, then, I would suggest a maximum purchase price of 960K.
Your initial offer to the owner should be about 40% higher than the market value of his building. If you have a LOT of room to play with, offer more than 40%. Hopefully this will be below the 960K figure calculated above.
I always make my offer by saying:
"Well, a xxx in this area would normally get about xxx K."
"I could give you yyy K"
Hopefully yyy is larger than xxx! The figure you quote first (xxx) should always be to the higher end of the the range of possible values, since most people tend to think their houses are worth more than they actually are.
The owner WILL bargain upwards, but you should have left yourself room to breathe. Small Towers to Logs are good upgrades, since a log is normally worth between 3 and 5 times the Small Tower price. As long as you keep the above figure (960K, or whatever you calculated) in mind, you'll be fine.
Do not seem too eager to buy. If the seller does not wish to sell straight away, do not hurry him- it may take him time to move out. Take his ICQ and message him a few days later, but do not bombard him with ICQs.
The seller will often tell you that "Well, ok, but I need to find another place to move to first". If you have other similar buildings, this is your opportunity to sell as well!
If all else fails, and you cannot buy the property from the owner (some simply refuse to sell at a sensible price), then before you leave let the owner know what you had been hoping to do. At best, this will induce them to sell, at worst they will benefit from your work, but the housing pool on your shard will increase (which is a good thing).
Section 4: The Large Tower (and other multi-house upgrades)
Sometimes, the upgrade path will involve redeeding more than one house to build a larger one. This is often the most profitable route, since the resulting house is normally MUCH larger than the ones that made it up. However, this introduces new complications because you are taking a risk when you buy the first house, in that you may not be able to buy the others. It is always best to try to buy the first few houses as cheaply as possible, preferably at market rate. This way, you can at least get most of your gold back if it all goes wrong.
Personally, I prefer to negotiate for the largest building on the site first. The largest building is the most important in terms of cost- if the owner is willing to sell at only 10% above market value, then the upgrade is probably viable. However, if they want 80% more then the whole plan probably has to be put on hold. For the small buildings, since these are normally only a fraction of the cost of the larger one, it does not really matter if the owner wants 200% more than the market value. I therefore prefer to find out if the largest can be bought at a viable price first.
Once you have one building on the site, obtaining the others becomes easier. You have a sign to let your neighbors that you want their property (be careful about alerting them to your intentions). You have a safe place to sit and camp while training a skill. You can give a good reason to the seller as to why you want their house as well. You may also find that the person who sold you the first house knows the ICQ of his neighbors- always ask!
If your neighbor refuses to sell, then fear not- all is not lost! As a last resort, tell him what your intentions were, and offer to sell him your own building. He will often agree, at a price higher than you initially paid.
For Large Towers you will often need to buy three or more buildings to make the upgrade, and so will need multiple accounts, or friends to hold the buildings, while you collect them all together. Be prepared for a long drawn-out process and many, many hours training those useless crafting skills while you wait. It can often take longer to "camp" a neighbor than to camp an IDOC, but is at least as profitable. I'll probably end up with a 7xGM crafter, even though the money you get crafting is pitiful compared with trading in real estate!
Section Five: Upgrading
The precautions needed before redeeding should by now be known, as they've been covered many times by others on this forum. However for completeness I restate them here again:
1) Check that the existing building is properly placed
2) Take a screenshot of the existing building, so you have the exact spot if you need to replace for some reason. Look on the spot on other shards to see if the building you want to place is there-if so, take a screenshot again.
3) Carry with you a deed for the building you want, a deed for the existing building type, and a smaller deed. If the new house does not fit as expected, you can replace the existing one. If someone else comes along while you are placing, you can easily slam down a small "blocking" house to try again (much) later.
4) The day before you want to upgrade, hide near to the house sign and logout. When you login the next day you will be hidden, and won't be staring at the sign for five minutes prior to redeeding. It's better to give other people as few clues as possible.
5) If other people (the sellers?) know of your plans, wait a long time between acquiring and redeeding the property.
6) Before you make the upgrade, relax. Redeeding can be a nerve-wracking time. Unlike IDOC’s, you can choose the moment that you collapse the building, so there's no hurry.
7) Destroy all add-ons, and remove all decorations/chests/barrels before you re-deed. The less chance there is of having something block replacement through a bugged item the better.
8) Use "Tracking", "Detect Hidden", "Reveal" and Fire Walls beforehand to check to see if anyone else is there.
9) Test the upgrade first when the servers aren't saving.
10) Have footsteps turned on, and have the speakers LOUD. This will alert you if anyone else is coming.
11) Make the upgrade late at night, or early in the morning, when other people aren't around.
12) Have a "last object" macro set up. If your first place fails, this wil save you valuable time getting the ghost image up again.
13) Bring along a TRUSTED friend to keep watch for you and alert you of any people coming. They may need to place for you, if you panic and can't get the spot. Make sure your friend isn't moving around constantly within earshot, as his footsteps will make you more nervous/interfere with warning if someone else is coming.
14) For multiple-house re-deeds, pass one to the friend first, so that both can be re-deeded without you having to logout/login with your other account. For three, four or five house re-deeds (that elusive Large Tower) you may need to enlist help from the boardies.
Upgrading is profitable, exciting, and can give great satisfaction (well, for me at least!). So... good luck!
FFBooks
16 Aug 2001