They don't say what the strategy is in the comments (duh) but I seem to remember a similar study from years ago saying the optimal strategy was to always buy if you can.
Meta, but one rule I was surprised to learn: if someone doesn't buy a property when they land on it, it is immediately auctioned off by the bank.
Many people play without the auction rule (hence, they don't even know it exists).
> I seem to remember a similar study from years ago saying the optimal strategy was to always buy if you can.
The optimal rule is a little different: don't sit on cash until a housing crisis.
Just like in a real-life business, sitting on cash that could be working for you is a bad idea.
Monopoly Junior works like this already - you MUST buy a property you land on, if you can't buy it for any reason the game ends.
It really works when playing with kids, but I noticed that the consequence of it in most games is that the player who goes first usually wins.
Another interesting strategy was to not upgrade to hotels in order to create a housing crisis by using up all the houses