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The official monopoly rules say:

In order to lift the mortgage, the owner must pay the Bank the amount of the mortgage plus 10% interest

However, the utilities have a mortgage value of $75, and 10% of $75 is $7.5. As far as I know, there are no coins or any way to pay less than a dollar to the bank. What would you do in this scenario? Round up? down?

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    There is one more property that will have a mortgage value that needs 0.5 rounding, Park Place/Park Lane (UK) has a mortgage value of 175. This and the utilities are the only three property with a mortgage value that is not even tens. – Andrew Jan 19 '18 at 5:25
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There is no official rule to address this question, so you and your play group must decide how to handle it.

Note that the same question applies in the case of landing on the Income Tax square and choosing to pay 10% of your worth.

A common thing that would make sense is to follow the same rules of rounding that is taught in most basic math... 1/2 and higher means round up, lower than 1/2 means round down. So 7.5 would round up to 8.

But if your group decides on either always rounding up, or always rounding down, that would be equally legitimate.

However, even if you want to use mathematical rounding, there are actually different conventions for handling rounding 1/2... all conventions agree that less than 1/2 means round down, while more than 1/2 means round up. But for 1/2 exactly, there are multiple options.

Because Monopoly is a game designed to simulate handling money, involving banking and such, it might make the most sense to use what is called "Banker's Rounding", which is also known as "Round to even". This means that 7.5 would become 8, but 10.5 would become 10. In other words, when dealing with 1/2, round to whichever direction would leave you with an even number.

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    One quibble - the real point of bankers' rounding is to eliminate a systemic upwards bias when both parties will engage in a large number of transactions, over time, that might round - such as interest transactions between a bank and its customers. For the same reason, it is (or at least should be) used by scientists when collecting data that will be analyzed statistically. For single transactions, such as in Monopoly, there is no overwhelming reason to adopt bankers' rounding; just make a house rule and stick to it. – Forget I was ever here Sep 18 '17 at 19:47
  • @ForgetIwaseverhere While that is true, there is no compelling reason to not use banker's rounding as the system. Though to be honest away from zero or banker's, both will round up for the three properties that are effected. The only possible round down comes in an edge case of paying percentage tax. – Andrew Jan 19 '18 at 5:27
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    @Andrew: Exactly - there aren't enough rounding transactions taking place in any (one) game for such a small statistical phenomenon to achieve significance. Hence: "Just make a house rule and stick to it." – Forget I was ever here Jan 19 '18 at 5:30
  • It's a 10% chance when paying tax, your total worth must end in $5 to end up needing to round with 0.5 rounding on the tax, with the rarity of landing on a given space, coupled with the rarity of having that dollar value, deciding to pay 10% (usually only worth it in the early game or if you're losing already) the rounding system really isn't going to matter much. – Andrew Jan 19 '18 at 5:33
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The plain meaning of "you must pay 10%" is that you must pay 10%. If you pay 7, you haven't paid 10%. If you pay 8, you have paid 10%, and you have also paid 0.5 more. There may have been some other meaning intended by the creators, but unless it is clearly stated, the plain language says that you must round up.

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enter image description here

in the official monopoly game, based on the rule "numbers ending in 5 are rounded up", utilities unmortgage value accepted 83M

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    Can you explain what the picture is showing. As of now I don't know what you are trying to show. It would also help to show a before and after picture if it is showing a mortgaged property. – Joe W Jan 28 at 16:30
  • Can you also verify that the game doesn't use banker's rounding as described in the other answer? Perhaps a screenshot of an income tax amount or something? – ryanyuyu Jan 28 at 20:31
  • @joe-w pictures meaining is so clear. there's a mortgage mark on it, there is a tap sign underneath. and it is among the yellows, you can understand from here. it is a mortgaged water works. ryanyuyu in banker rounding, the number rolling is always a double number. 83 isn't a double number. you can understand here that the game does not use banker rounding. – emre Jan 30 at 21:33
  • The meaning is clear to you but it seems it is unclear to many others – Joe W Jan 30 at 22:38
  • I assume the image is a screenshot from an officially-licensed version of the game that can be played on a computer (or online) and that when un-mortgaging the property, the cost is calculated by that implementation as 83, which would imply the 10% of 75 was being calculated as 8, i.e. rounding up. If so, the answer should state this... – Steve Apr 1 at 12:39

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