Monopoly Mortgage Rules Explained: What It Is & How It Works

What is a mortgage in Monopoly and what are the Monopoly mortgage rules? This post will answer both of those questions, along with everything else you need to know about mortgaging properties in the game.

That’s the basic idea – but there’s a lot more to it than that, which is why it’s important to thoroughly understand the Monopoly mortgage rules.

What Does Mortgaged Mean in Monopoly?

When you mortgage a property in Monopoly, you’re turning over temporary control of that property to the bank. In return, the bank pays you half of the property’s purchase price in cold hard cash right away.

This lets you quickly generate cash when you’re in a bind.

It’s important to note that you’re still the owner of the property – you just don’t have full use over it while it’s mortgaged.

For example, you won’t be able to collect rent on a mortgaged property, build houses or hotels, and so on.

Once you’re in a better spot financially, you can pay the Bank to unmortgage the property, which gives you full control again. However, you’ll need to pay the Bank an extra 10% interest for its troubles, so mortgaging isn’t completely free.

What Is the Mortgage Value in Monopoly?

In the classic game of Monopoly, each property’s mortgage value is half of its original purchase price.

Here are some examples for various properties:

Property Name	Purchase Price	Mortgage Value
Boardwalk	$400	$200
Atlantic Avenue	$260	$130
Tennessee Avenue	$180	$90

As you can see, the mortgage value of a property is always half of the purchase price, regardless of the color or property set.

How to Mortgage in Monopoly

To mortgage property in Monopoly, you’ll first need to make sure that the property doesn’t have any houses or hotels on it.

You cannot mortgage a property that has houses/hotels.

If your property does have them, you can sell them back to the bank at half of their original purchase price.

Keep in mind, however, that all properties in a set must be evenly developed. So if you sell all of the houses from one property, you’ll also need to sell houses from other properties.

Once you’ve verified that the property doesn’t have any houses or hotels, the next step is to turn over the property deed card. This indicates to you (and other players) that the property has been mortgaged.

Once you do that, the bank will pay you the property’s mortgage value, which is half of the original purchase price.

How to Unmortgage in Monopoly

To unmortgage a property, you’ll need to pay the property’s mortgage value plus an extra 10% in interest to the bank.

There’s no free deal here! But 10% interest isn’t too bad if you were in a pinch and needed the cash quickly.

You can unmortgage a property at any point in your turn.

For example, let’s say you mortgaged Boardwalk, which generated you $200 in cash. To unmortgage Boardwalk, you would need to pay the bank $220 – $200 to match the original mortgage price plus $20 for the 10% interest.

Rules for Buying and Selling Mortgaged Properties

At some point in the game, you’ll probably encounter a situation where you want to make a deal with another player to either buy or sell a mortgaged property.

You are allowed to buy mortgaged properties in Monopoly. However, there are some rules that you’ll need to pay attention to that can treat this a little differently.

If a player buys a mortgaged property, they also need to pay the bank to unmortgage the property. However, the amount of interest that they pay will depend on when they opt to unmortgage the property.

See, you can actually buy the property and still leave it mortgaged.

If you buy the property and unmortgage it right away, you’ll just pay the mortgage value plus 10% interest to the Bank (the same as if the player had unmortgaged it themselves).

However, if you wait to unmortgage the property, you would need to pay 10% interest to the bank when you buy it. Then, if you unmortgage the property in the future, you would still need to pay the same “mortgage value plus 10% interest”.

Basically, you pay 20% interest if you wait to unmortgage the property versus 10% interest if you unmortgage it right away.

What Happens to Mortgaged Property in Monopoly When You Lose?

Because you typically mortgage properties when you’re low on money, it’s very common to have mortgaged properties when you lose the game (go bankrupt).

What happens to these mortgaged properties will depend on whether you go bankrupt to the Bank or to another player.

Let’s go over both scenarios…

🏦 Owing Money to the Bank

If you go bankrupt because you owe money to the bank, all of your money and properties are turned over to the bank and the mortgages are canceled.

That is, all of your properties are automatically unmortgaged when you lose the game.

Once the properties are turned over to the bank, each property will be sold individually via an auction. To learn how to properly run Bank auctions, check out my guide to the Monopoly auction rules.

🧑 Owing Money to Another Player

If you go bankrupt because you owe money to another player, you must give all of your cash and properties to that player, including your mortgaged properties.

However, unlike going bankrupt to the Bank, the properties are not automatically unmortgaged in this scenario.

Instead, the player who receives them can decide whether or not to unmortgage them. The amount that they’ll pay follows the same rules for buying mortgaged properties in Monopoly:

• If the player unmortgages the property right away, they pay the regular mortgage cost plus 10% interest.
• If they wait to unmortgage the property, they must pay 10% of the mortgage value when receiving the property. Then, if/when they unmortgage the property in the future, they must still pay the normal mortgage value plus 10% interest.

❔ Monopoly Mortgage FAQs ❔

To finish things out, let’s quickly go over some of the most common questions about the mortgage rules in Monopoly.

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What is the mortgage value of a property in Monopoly?

In the classic Monopoly game, the mortgage value of a property is half of its initial purchase price. For example, if you bought one of the brown properties for $60, you would be able to mortgage it for $30.

You can confirm a property’s mortgage value by looking at the back of the property card.

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Can you mortgage property to buy another property?

Yes, you are allowed to mortgage one of your existing properties to generate the cash needed to buy another property.

Just be careful that you don’t overextend yourself financially, as doing this can leave you with very little cash cushion.

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Can you collect rent on mortgaged property in Monopoly?

No, you cannot collect rent on a property while it’s mortgaged. However, if you pay to unmortgage the property, you would be able to start collecting rent again.

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What is the cost to unmortgage a property in Monopoly?

To unmortgage property in Monopoly, you’ll need to pay the Bank the original mortgage value of the property plus an extra 10% interest.

For example, if you mortgaged Boardwalk, you would receive $200 from the Bank. To unmortgage Boardwalk, you would need to pay the Bank $220.

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Can you build houses/hotels if a property is mortgaged?

No, you cannot build houses or hotels on a property if it’s mortgaged. More importantly, you also can’t build hotels on other properties in that set, even if you own all of them.

For example, let’s say you own all three properties in the yellow set. Even if you only mortgage one of the properties, you still wouldn’t be able to build houses or hotels on the other properties until you unmortgage that property.

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Can you charge double rent if one property in a set is mortgaged?

Yes – you can still charge double rent on other properties in a set if you control all of that set, even if you’ve mortgaged one of the properties.

This is a bit of a contrast to how the rules for building houses and hotels work, but it is a nice benefit.

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Can you mortgage houses in Monopoly?

No, you cannot mortgage houses in Monopoly. However, you can sell them back to the bank for half of their original purchase price.

This is not mortgaging, though, because you would need to purchase them again at full price if you want to build again. It’s not like mortgaging the property where you only need to pay the mortgage value plus interest.

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Can you mortgage hotels in Monopoly?

No, you cannot mortgage hotels in Monopoly. However, you can sell them back to the bank for half of their original purchase price.

This is not mortgaging, though, because you would need to purchase them again at full price if you want to build again. It’s not like mortgaging the property where you only need to pay the mortgage value plus interest.

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Can I buy mortgaged property in Monopoly?

Yes, you are allowed to buy and sell mortgaged property. If the player who buys the mortgaged property unmortgages it right away, they only need to pay the normal 10% interest. However, if they wait to unmortgage the property, they’ll need to pay 20% interest instead (the original 10% interest + another 10% interest on the original value).

Master the Monopoly Mortgage Rules

At some point in your game of Monopoly, you might find yourself short on cash.

When that happens, mortgaging one or more of your properties provides a way to quickly generate some cash flow, but at the expense of temporarily losing control over that property.

In general, you’ll get around half of the value of the property’s initial purchase price. However, you’ll need to pay back that money plus an extra 10% if you ever want to unmortgage that property.

Still, it’s always a good idea to unmortgage a property as soon as possible so you can fully benefit from owning it – just make sure you have a good cash buffer so that you don’t end up in a vicious cycle.

Do you still have any questions about mortgages in Monopoly? Let me know in the comments and I’ll try to help you out!