Welcome to the Wonderful World of Real Estate

When her partner decides to enter his name into the mayoral race for their city, Jane is left in charge of managing his growing real estate business. No, we're not looking for customers who want to sell their homes and matching up these listings with people who want to buy the homes. Nope. The scope is much bigger and more hands-on than that.

In this wonderfully designed and highly intricate game, you will be put in charge of a small community at a time, buying the land, developing it, and getting the houses ready to be rented by people who want to live in the area. You've got to keep a keen eye on every part of the equation, but you've already had experience with other simulation games that get you to manage a diner, bake cakes, or dress people in the latest fashions, you just may be able to handle the larger scope of real estate.

Planning Your Gated Community

For each stage along the way, you will only have to deal with single community. It may not necessarily be gated, so to speak, but you are managing every aspect of the neighborhood. Before you can start building houses, it is absolutely imperative that you set up the community with the necessary utilities.

As such, when you arrive in the new neighborhood, the first two buildings that you will need to erect are the power plant and the water tower. No one can live with electricity and water (preferably not at the same time), right? To do so, you'll need to purchase a couple plots of land and set the workers out to build your power plant and water tower.

With these two requirements fulfilled, you can start buying more plots of land and placing new houses on them. Again, the same workers will put the home together for you. After the house has been built, it is up to you to furnish it with a bed, table, chair, and all the other things that people need. You can't expect these folks to live with just four walls!

With this step completed, the house goes on the market. A customer will come by and sign a lease, after which point you can start collecting rent. That's the goal of this whole exercise anyhow. Make that money!

Do You Have Management Skills?

While the fundamental procedure for this title is relatively straightforward, your management skills will be put to the test when things go a little awry or become a little more complex. For example, your neighborhood may be hit with a lightning storm, downing one of the trees in the area. You'll need to send a cleanup crew to fix that situation.

Other issues that you may need to address are the relative happiness of your tenants, their desires to upgrade their homes, managing the utilities so that they can provide for your growing community, and ensuring that you achieve your assigned goals before time runs out. There is a meter at the bottom of the screen that represents the amount of time you have left.

Bigger and Greener Pastures

You may start out with humble real estate management ambitions in South Village and Smiletown, but you will quickly graduate to the larger and more complex communities of Funcity, Magic Valley, and Sunny Hills. These customers have greater demands, but you know what? They've got bigger wallets too.