Property Maintenance

Maintenance of a home is an involved process that has two considerations -- financial maintenance and physical maintenance.

Financial maintenance of residences is paid once per IC month to the Magistrate and is taken directly from the owner's bank accounts. The amount of taxes paid on a residence is determined by how many rooms the residence contains. The amount of taxes paid per additional room is not linear -- adding a tenth room to your home is much more expensive than adding a third room. If the bank account of the owner does not have the funds to pay the rent, a message is sent to the owner when next they log in. The owner has 48 OOC hours to place enough money into account to cover taxes, before the second attempt to pull taxes occurs. If this second pull fails, the inheritor of the property is sent a notice (see odds and ends). Another 48 hours goes by, and a third pull is attempted from the original owner's (or the inheritor if the property has been taken over). If this also fails, the property becomes condemned and is destroyed by the state. Anyone logged off within the property is moved to the street outside and the property goes up for sale once more at the magistrate.

Financial maintenance of commercial ventures is not taken out as regular taxes. Instead, the Merchant Barons take a flat percentage cut of all goods sold through shopfronts within civilized zones. As such, commercial structures can only lapse by physical mis-maintenance, though ownership can change hands due to absences (see odds and ends).

There is no financial maintenance required from homesteads.

Physical maintenance is similar for all properties. Hyphae is a wild continent and this wears and tears on structures. All objects, including rooms, decay over time and must be repaired in order to remain upright. Like all crafted objects, rooms of structures have a quality. The quality of a room can be considered as its durability, as decay will reduce its quality piece by piece from its maximum. Repairing can restore an object to its original quality (but not exceed it; an average room cannot be 'repaired' into an excellent room). Once a room's quality reaches 0, the room collapses, along with any doors/exits connected to it. If a property physically decays to the point that no rooms remain, an alert is sent to the inheritor (see: odds and ends). If 48 hours goes by with no activity from the inheritor to rectify the situation, the property is reclaimed by either the Merchant Barons (for commercial) or the magistrate (for residential). The enterable rooms of homesteads, after 48 hours of having no construction, disappear entirely.

Note that homesteads decay at a much faster rate on account of being in the untamed wilds. Also, malignant forces bent on doing your property harm will be able to attack without the interference of the militia or other policing forces. Whatever defense you can muster for your homestead is all you can rely on.