Real Estate & Assets
Property is how a street operation becomes an empire. Buildings are your cover, your capacity, your production, and your laundromat. This page lists every asset type, what it does, what it costs, and how to use it.
The property panel. Acquire a building, then convert it to a stash, lab, safe house, or legitimate front, each with its own costs, income, heat, and evidence.
Owning a property is two steps:
- Acquire a building (buy it, or take it). This gets you the shell.
- Assign a purpose (convert it to a stash, a lab, a front). This is what makes it useful.
Building shells
The physical buildings on the map come in types, each with tags that decide which purposes it can take. Some civilian buildings also generate legitimate NPC income before you ever touch them.
| Building | Tags | Where it is | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small House | residential, small | Residential areas | - |
| Apartment Complex | residential, large | Residential areas | - |
| Corner Store | commercial, small | Commercial districts | NPC income ~$500/wk |
| Shopping Center | commercial, large | Commercial districts | NPC income ~$2,000/wk |
| Warehouse | industrial, large | Industrial / warehouse zones | - |
| Gang Hideout | gang | Gang turf | - |
| Cartel Facility | cartel | Cartel territory | - |
| Abandoned Building | abandoned, high risk | High-risk areas | Cheap, flexible for criminal use |
TIP
Tags are what gate conversion. A drug lab needs an industrial or abandoned shell; a front business needs a commercial one; a crack lab squeezes into a residential building. Buy the right shell for the job.
Purposes: what you convert a building into
There are two families of purpose: criminal infrastructure (capacity and production, high heat) and legitimate fronts (clean income and laundering, low heat).
Criminal infrastructure
| Purpose | What it does | Shells | Setup | Upkeep/wk | Heat | Evidence/wk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stash House | Stores cash off-books. Adds ~$50,000 cash storage. No income. | residential, abandoned | $5,000 | $200 | 0.3 | 3 |
| Drug Stash | Secure product storage. Adds ~200 product capacity, cuts carry risk on dealers. | industrial, abandoned, gang | $8,000 | $300 | 0.6 | 7 |
| Safe House | Crew hideout. Raises max gang headcount by 3. | residential, abandoned | $10,000 | $500 | 0.4 | 4 |
| Drug Lab | Production. Makes a ~100 batch of product each cycle. | industrial, abandoned | $25,000 | $800 | 0.9 | 15 |
| Crack Lab (Small) | Makeshift residential production, ~20 per cycle. Neighbors notice. | residential | $10,000 | $600 | 1.4 | 20 |
| Kingpin House | Your home base. Stores cash, drugs, and weapons. Cannot be sold. | residential, abandoned, gang | $0 | $0 | 0.1 | 1 |
NOTE
Lab types are data, not hard-wired systems. The game already ships two (a cocaine Drug Lab and a small Crack Lab); another one, say a meth lab, is just a new purpose entry with its own batch size, setup cost, and heat. See the worked example in adding content.
Legitimate fronts
Fronts earn clean income, launder dirty cash, appreciate in value, and run cold. Their catch is the federal paper trail: every clean business you run while dealing widens the income gap the feds can see.
| Purpose | Clean income/wk | Launders/wk | Setup | Upkeep/wk | Heat | Evidence/wk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rental Property | $1,200 | $1,000 | $3,000 | $150 | 0.02 | 0 |
| Airbnb Rental | $1,800 | $2,000 | $8,000 | $300 | 0.08 | 1 |
| Car Wash | $2,000 | $8,000 | $12,000 | $400 | 0.15 | 1 |
| Restaurant | $3,000 | $6,000 | $18,000 | $500 | 0.10 | 1 |
| Hotel | $4,500 | $3,000 | $35,000 | $600 | 0.05 | 0 |
Reading the fronts:
- Car Wash launders the most ($8,000/wk) for the least outlay: the workhorse front.
- Hotel earns the most clean income and runs coldest, but costs the most to set up.
- Rental Property is the cheapest, safest, slowest money, with the lowest heat of anything.
- Each front has a plausible weekly ceiling. Pushing clean income above what the business could believably earn hurts its value and draws attention, so a small front can only wash so much before it looks wrong.
How you pay: acquisition methods
How you acquire a property is a strategic choice between upfront cash and ongoing debt.
| Method | Price | Upfront | Weekly | Term | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash Purchase | full | 100% | none | - | Highest cash barrier, but no debt drag and full ownership now |
| Distressed Deed | 45% of market | 100% | none | - | Below-market steal, but only derelict/fair buildings in gang or cartel turf |
| Front Man Mortgage | full | 20% | 3% / wk | 52 wks | Low entry, but needs clean cash and a $40k+ property in neutral or police areas; must pay off to sell |
| Hard Money Loan | 108% of market | 8% | 8% / wk | 26 wks | Cheapest entry, brutal weekly street tax, capped at $250k properties |
Heat, evidence, and property value
Every purpose carries a heat exposure and an evidence rate, which feed the two pressure systems:
| Feeds | How |
|---|---|
| Heat | A property's heat exposure adds to its section's heat over time. Labs run hot; rentals barely register. |
| Investigations | Evidence per week accrues toward a case on that building. A crack lab (20/wk) draws a warrant far faster than a hotel (0/wk). |
Market value then drifts weekly: it rises with legitimate income and neighborhood appreciation, and falls with heat and criminal use. Fronts appreciate; labs and stashes quietly lose value. Running a front cleanly for a long stretch builds a value bonus. Stored cash and product in a building are also what a raid seizes, so a fat stash is both capacity and risk.
How to use assets: strategy
| Goal | Build this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Protect your cash | Stash House | Cash on a person is exposed; stashed cash is secured capacity (but a raided stash loses what is stored). |
| Keep product off your dealers | Drug Stash | Cuts the carry risk your crew takes on the street. |
| Grow your crew | Safe House | Raises your headcount ceiling. |
| Make your own supply | Drug Lab | Produce product instead of buying from traffickers, at high heat. |
| Turn dirty money clean | Fronts (Car Wash, Restaurant, Hotel) | The only way to convert dirty cash to spendable clean cash. See laundering. |
| Stay invisible | Rental Property, Airbnb | Lowest heat and evidence; slow, safe income and cover. |
The whole portfolio is a balance: criminal assets give you capacity and product at the cost of heat and evidence; legitimate fronts give you clean money and cover but build federal RICO exposure. A durable empire runs both and watches both bills.
Related
- Where properties live and how prices are set: Map
- Turning dirty cash clean: Economy
- The cases your buildings attract: Investigations & RICO
Modding
Building types, purposes (with all their costs, income, capacity, heat, and evidence), and acquisition methods are data files. You can retune any number, add a new purpose, or define a new acquisition method without code. See Economy Config.