Buying properties seems like a bad investment

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like buying property and businesses isn't a good use of money. I've completed the campaign and have all of this money to spend, but I don't want to drop millions on a business only to have it take 30 or 40 weeks of in-game time to recoup my initial investment. I know there are some missions to be had for certain properties, but other than that I don't see any compelling reasons to buy these things. I've got enough money to buy any vehicle, outfit, or gun I want...what's the point? I was thinking about playing BAWSAQ to earn enough money to buy the country club, but even that seems like a waste.

Did you bother with buying up all of the properties?

What else are you doing with your money?

Yeah, got every property. Now what? I don't have to wear a golf uniform when golfing. YAY !

Almost all the side stuff seems like meaningless, innocuous bullshit.

Yeah, I've bought most of the remotely affordable ones. They give you extra missions which is sort of cool. Also, I'm gunning for 100% completion. The Golf Course at $150 million seems daunting though. I ended the game with about 20 million on each person so not sure how I'm going to gather the funds needed to buy the rest of the more expensive stuff but I'll cross that bridge when i get there!

Some of the extra missions you get (taxi comes to mind) are interesting because of the dialogue, but that's about it. Unless something changes, I don't see myself buying the $150,000,000 properties.

You don't actually need to buy any property to get 100%. Unless of course you're talking about achievements or actually getting a true 100%, though the game will give you 100% completion before you've actually done every single thing in the game.

Well, I just invested 25 million into Pisswasser because it was at 4 bucks on the BAWSAQ. Seems like a better investment than any of the available properties. Oh well.

I own every buisness aside from the golf course. Trevor and Franklin each have like 130-140 million, and Michael has 90-something million. (those movie theaters are expensive).

Really easy if you hold off on those lester assassination missions till post-game.

Edit- But yes. Businesses are bad investments, their rate of income is so damn slow since its weekly instead of daily.

I didn't do that...I did them early because they were available, in fact I had them completed before the game was even released so it wasn't common knowledge to hold off on doing them for massive profit later on.

Yeah, I regret that now as well. Putting the final payout from the last heist into the stocks that lester gives you tips about would have paid off in spades. Oh well, not worth re-doing 50 hours of shit over.

It's a bummer that you don't really have enough money to invest in them until the end of the game. I also wish they each had unique missions like the airfield that Trevor can use to smuggle weapons.

Don't buy a single property or do a single stock market related mission (that'd be Lester's assassinations and one random event somewhere on the western highway). The only worthwhile way to make any real money is to put the bank job payout into every guaranteed profit stock.

Unfortunately, this means that for 90% of the story, you'll likely have less than a mil on each character, but if you do everything right after the bank job you'll have over $500,000,000. That's when you buy properties, because lol $150,000,000

When I played through it, I knew about Lester's missions, but not about what kind of payouts I'd get from heists. Did two Lester missions before the bank job, and still managed to get ~$250,000,000 afterwards. Those two missions would have bumped it up at least another 130%.

The in-game weeks take too long to roll over for the buildings to return a decnet amount of money - particularly those multimillion dollar buildings. That said, owning the nuclear waste sub place is a great way to earn some easy cash early on. Here's hoping Rockstar adds some single-player content that will help bolster those bank accounts outside of stock markets.

Honestly, most of that stuff is dumb and is only in there as a distraction.

Damn wish I'd thought about investing in the Lester missions at the end rather than doing them all early.. :/ oops..

How did you guys afford all the property? Until the last few big payout missions I was scraping by and in the end barely have enough to purchase anything. Did you play the stock market like crazy or something?

The way this game handles money is completely fucked. Properties that aren't worth buying, assassinations missions that you will "waste" if you're just playing the game normally, no ability to transfer money between characters, BAWSAQ is working maybe 50% of the time, the other stock market is just random horseshit. It's actually quite fucking retarded.

What the hell is the point of having all these super expensive properties you can buy if you can't even afford them until after you've finished the game? I have little desire to do all of that stuff then when its purpose is to be a distraction from the main story in the first place.

I would like to see Rockstar address this in the future with a patch and make money more evenly distributed throughout the game. As it stands right now, the whole in-game economy and money-making in general seems kind of busted.

I agree that the game handle the money-missions poorly, but you don't actually need the money unless you want to buy the properties. I think having the way you get money work better would only make THAT work better. The BIG problem is that business are NOT fun to own. There are some piddly little missions with them, you get some useless perks like for the golf course...but there is not fun in owning anything. Owning a business should open up side stories, allow you to meet new people, give you more intricate/interesting perks, and add some more simple interactivity. I would niot even mind proprieties not being profitable if they were at least FUN.

Yeah, the properties don't seem like meaningful purchases beyond offering some extra side questions (mostly fetch and chase missions). The dialogue options are nice but marginally entertaining.

What I hope happens is the purchase of properties incorporates into the online component or future heist DLCs. For instance if you own the golf course your online character can borrow it from "his friend Michael" and use the backroom as a staging location. This could also work for planning heist. Maybe it can be easier to source specific items if you own the property, or you can stash certain items at one of your properties.

I've been meaning to play the stocks by saving up a few of the Lester missions just so I can multiply whomever's funds to grab the last few properties I, well, don't need but just want to have. I typically ignore the property requests as I go for my remaining collectibles anyway, so I can't imagine me getting much out of a golf club or theaters when I've only done either activity once or twice for the sake of 100% completion.

But yeah, properties, whatevs.

So, I did forget to mention that if the property provides a service that the owner gets to use that service for free. That means my Franklin can use Los Santos Custom to customize cars for absolutely nothing. Basically giving him access to upgraded cars at whim.

I agree that you don't need the money to purchase the useless properties, but the simple fact that they exist will drive many of us to want them anyway.

What else are you going to do with your money?

Anyway, the missions they sometimes provide are a good distraction, especially the Taxi ones. They also have some fun benefits. Oh and technically, you do need one in particular to get 100%. That is the one with the submarine, for the nuclear waste.

For me they're worth it just to give me a little more side stuff to do, as I think the game would otherwise be severely lacking. It's weird, but I even appreciate the tow truck missions, just for the fact that they're there. Knowing that I could go in a tow truck and get paid to tow vehicles helps strengthen the atmosphere of the world. It's the one aspect that I especially loved about San Andreas, for how there's so much to the world and what you can do in it. It's all about the little things that go a long way in creating a big picture.

Speaking of the property missions the Hen House bar keeps tasking me with bringing them a shipment and you only get like 4 minutes to navigate the windy ass hillsides in the country and get to the bar. I've tried like three times and two times ended in time out and the third ended with me wrecking the truck trying to get it there. I can't for the life of me figure out how to do that mission.

Better than getting to the marker right after it disappears. I haven't finished any of those because that keeps happening to me. Pull onto the marker right as the timer ends and, nope, doesn't count.

@sgtsphynx: Uck. That sucks haha.

The first time it showed up i ignored it thinking i could do it a little later, but it just disappeared and they texted me they would find someone else to do it and i still got the $950 for owning it. And when it showed up the second time i managed to finish it with only seconds to spare and half the cargo damaged, and i still only got $950 for all the hassle of doing that mission. So im going to ignore that one unless something really negative happens if you don't do the mission.

And anyplace you can cut corners without flipping the truck is the only way to get there in time, i had to drive downhill through the woods on the last stretch because the zigzag road the GPS gave takes to much time.