Guide

Housing

Where a player lives costs money every month, and a country's housing market says how much. A market is one record of the content type housing, in data/housing.json or any file in data/housing/. Each file is a JSON array.

A market serves the nations its nations lists. One record of the loaded content is marked "default": true: it is the market of every nation that no record names. The core pack has one record, core.housing.uk, which lists England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and is also the default, so until a pack adds a market for the Netherlands a player who moves there pays British prices and the game says "typical costs".

To give a country its own homes and prices, add a record that lists it. To change the core's figures, patch housing:core.housing.uk (see Getting started) for patches).

A market#

{
  "id": "acme.housing.ned",
  "nations": ["NED"],
  "starter": "kamer",
  "terms": [
    { "months": 6, "rentFactor": 1.05 },
    { "months": 12, "rentFactor": 1 }
  ],
  "depositMonths": 2,
  "noticeDays": 30,
  "breakFeeMonths": 2,
  "rollingFactor": 1.1,
  "evictAfterMissed": 2,
  "rentTiming": "arrears",
  "livingCostsBase": 120,
  "buyCosts": 0.04,
  "sellCosts": 0.02,
  "letFactor": 0.85,
  "emptyBillsFactor": 0.6,
  "priceGrowth": 0.03,
  "priceSwing": 0.04,
  "mortgage": { "minDeposit": 0.1, "rate": 4.6, "terms": [20, 30], "incomeMultiple": 4.5 },
  "arrivalCosts": { "country": 400, "region": 1800, "abroad": 6500 },
  "homes": [
    { "id": "kamer", "name": "A room in a shared house", "size": 1, "rent": 610 },
    { "id": "flat", "name": "A one-bedroom flat", "size": 2, "rent": 980, "price": 260000, "bills": 210 },
    {
      "id": "house", "name": "A terraced house", "size": 3, "rent": 1400, "price": 390000, "bills": 290,
      "ownerEffects": [{ "hook": "practice", "value": 0.03 }]
    }
  ]
}

Amounts are in pounds, the game's own money; a save shown in another currency converts them on screen.

Field	What it does
`id`	The record's id, starting with your mod's id.
`nations`	The nations (three-letter codes) this market serves. A nation two records list is served by the first of them in load order, and the loader says so: to change a market another pack already has for a country, patch that record.
`default`	`true` on the one record that serves every nation no record names. The first such record in load order is the default (the core's); a second is reported and is not.
`starter`	The id of one of this record's `homes`: where a new adult career, a player turning eighteen and anyone who arrives by moving country is put. It should be a home with a `rent`; if it is not, or no home has that id, the cheapest home to rent is used and the loader says so.
`terms`	The agreement lengths on offer, each with `months` and a `rentFactor` (the home's rent times this; a shorter agreement is usually dearer).
`depositMonths`	The deposit on a rented home, in months of rent. It comes back when you leave, less any rent owed.
`noticeDays`	How long before an agreement ends the player is asked what next.
`breakFeeMonths`	Leaving early costs this many months' rent, or the months left if that is fewer.
`rollingFactor`	The rent times this once an agreement has run out and carries on month by month.
`evictAfterMissed`	Months of rent missed in a row before the agreement is ended.
`rentTiming`	`arrears`: a month is paid for after it is lived, so the first payment falls the month after you move in and leaving pays for the month you are in. `advance`: the month you move in is paid at once. The core uses `arrears`.
`livingCostsBase`	The weekly living cost (career rules, `economy.livingCosts`) these rents and bills were written for. A pack that changes `livingCosts` moves them in step.
`buyCosts`, `sellCosts`	Fees on a purchase and on a sale, as a share of the price.
`letFactor`	A home you own and rent out brings its rent times this a month.
`emptyBillsFactor`	A home you own that stands empty costs its bills times this.
`priceGrowth`, `priceSwing`	House prices change by `priceGrowth` a year on average (0.03 is three per cent up), and a year can differ from that by up to `priceSwing` either way.
`mortgage`	What the banks lend to buy a home here: `minDeposit` (the least you put down, as a share of the price), `rate` (per cent a year), `terms` (in years) and `incomeMultiple` (the most they lend, as a multiple of a year's earnings). Left out: a home for sale can only be bought outright.
`arrivalCosts`	What setting up costs someone who moves here, by how far they came: `country` (a move inside the country), `region` (from a neighbouring country of the same region) and `abroad`. It is charged on top of the deposit and the fare. Left out: nothing.
`homes`	The homes, one to forty.

A home#

Field	What it does
`id`	A short name inside the record: lowercase letters, digits and dashes (`flat-share`). Not a full content id.
`name`, `description`	What the player reads.
`size`	1 is a room; bigger numbers are bigger places. Lists show homes in this order.
`rent`	A month. Left out: the home is not for rent.
`price`	Left out: the home is not for sale.
`bills`	An owner's running costs a month.
`ownerEffects`	What owning the home and living in it brings, written like a facility's effects: a `hook` (`practice`, `recovery` and the other staff hooks), a `value` and for `training` an `area`. A rented home gives none.

What a career does with it#

Rent, bills and mortgage payments are taken once a month, at the end of the month's first week, as one line the Finances screen forecasts. Nothing is said about a routine month.
A junior lives with the family and pays board, a share of the starter home's rent (half at seventeen in the core's family rules), until eighteen; the starter agreement begins on the first monthly payment after the birthday.
A career keeps a copy of the market it started with. Changing a pack does not change the homes and prices of a career already under way.
Moving country puts the player in the destination market's starter on its longest agreement, unless they own a home there. The Move country page compares a month's living in each country against the one lived in.
The move's bill also carries what else the move costs: the notice of each staff member whose role does not move (moves on a staff role), and a facility's moveCost for each facility owned that has one. A sponsor marked local ends its deal on the move, with no money either way. Each is a line of the confirm.

What the loader checks#

A record that breaks the schema (a field missing, a number out of range, a field the schema does not know) is an error and switches the pack off. Beyond that the loader warns, on the Mods screen, and the pack still loads:

a starter that is not one of the record's homes, or has no rent (the cheapest home to rent is used);
no home that can be rented (nobody can start living there);
homes for sale and no mortgage (they can only be bought outright);
two homes with the same id (the first is used);
a nation another record serves already (the earlier record is used), or a code no nation has;
a record with no nations that is not the default (nobody uses it);
a second default, or none at all.

In the Mod Studio#

Housing markets are under Countries in the Mod Studio's list of types, beside nations, country scenes, banks and loans and exhibition places. nations is a search box over the installed nations.

See also Loans for what a country's banks lend, and Scenes for a country's darts.

Written for Darts Player Simulator 0.50.32. Built from the game's own schemas and its base pack.