Home / The best properties in Monopoly, and why
The best properties in Monopoly, and why
Why the orange set is the favourite, how railroads and cheap sets earn, and why the most expensive set is not the best one.
Play KirayaOrange, because of jail
Probability analyses of the classic board commonly rank the orange set as the strongest. The reason is jail: it is the most visited square on the board, and the most common rolls out of it, six to eight, land on the orange set. It is also affordable to build on, so it reaches hotels while other sets are still at houses.
Red and the other mid-board sets
The red set, a little further on, catches the same traffic coming out of jail on longer rolls and gets extra landings from cards that send players to one of its squares. The sets on the second and third sides are generally reckoned the best value overall: busy squares, rents that climb fast, and building costs a player can actually afford.
The expensive set is not the best set
The dark blue set, the most expensive on the board, has the highest rents, but it has only two squares, costs the most to build on, and is landed on less than the sets on the middle of the board. It can win a game on its own once it has hotels, but it often ruins its owner before it gets there.
Railroads and cheap sets
Four railroads pay steadily, need no building money and cannot be cut off by a rival building elsewhere, which makes them a good holding while you save. The cheapest set is cheap to complete and to build on, so three houses there arrive very early in a game, and early rent is worth more than its size suggests.
The real answer: the set you can finish
The best property is the one that completes a set you can afford to build on. A full orange set with no money left for houses earns less than a cheap set with three houses on each square. Value every purchase and every trade by what it lets you build, not by its printed price.
In Kiraya
Kiraya's boards are original, so the same reasoning applies with different names. Look for the groups a roll or two past the dock, the ones you can build on soonest, and the four transit spaces. Every price and rent ladder is in the board reference.